Woolf: in Retrospect and Prospect

TLDR: The Woolf report on the Prison Disturbances April 1990' received a good press when it was published on 25 February 1991 as mentioned in this paper, and the Home Secretary announced that its recommendations were to be the subject of a White Paper in the summer.

Abstract: Lord Justice Woolf's report on the Prison Disturbances April 1990' received a good press when it was published on 25 February 1991. The Home Secretary announced that its recommendations were to be the subject of a White Paper in the summer. It is, of course, too early to say what impact the Report will make on prisons policy. What can be assessed at this stage is the importance of the inquiry process itself. As an insider in that process I cannot easily claim impartiality. Nevertheless, I believe that the manner in which the inquiry was conducted significantly opened up the prisons debate and provides a model which future inquiries might copy. Certainly, the recently appointed Royal Commission on the Criminal Justice System could, with advantage, emulate aspects of the Woolf recipe. Following this basic theme, this article addresses three issues. First, to describe and explain the overall strategy adopted by the Woolf Inquiry. Second, to outline some of the problems encountered by the Inquiry and the measures taken to try and overcome them. Third, to consider generally how successful the Inquiry was in realising the ambitious task it set itself. One further word is necessary by way of introduction. What follows is more than a personal viewpoint. I do not subscribe to the view that the deliberations of the jury room must remain forever secret. Indeed, I think our understanding of decisionmaking and policy formation would benefit from franker (which necessarily means more open) scrutiny of the processes, including those adopted by inquiries, to which government regularly resorts. Nevertheless, I accept that imaginative deliberation by teams of policy advisers depends crucially on trust; confidence and courtesy demands that some transactions are not made public. It is a tribute to the open manner in which the Woolf Inquiry was conducted that I have been able to write this piece, without having to confront those dilemmas of secrecy whicll all too often in Britain constrain those outsiders who, like myself, become, for a brief period, insiders. Most of what follows can be verified by consulting the documents which the Woolf Inquiry brought into the public domain.