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Our Trustees

Honorary positions

  • The Rt Hon Lord Hurd of Westwell CH, CBE President
  • The Rt Hon Lord Woolf of Barnes CH Honorary President
    Lord Woolf was called to the Bar in 1955 and from 1973–74 was junior counsel, Inland Revenue. During this time he represented the Revenue in the majority of their leading cases before the High Court..., Court of Appeal and the House of Lords. In 1974 Lord Woolf was appointed first Treasury Counsel (Common Law) which he held for five years. In 1979 he was appointed to the Queen’s Bench Division of the High Court of Justice, was made Lord Justice of Appeal in 1986, and Lord of Appeal in Ordinary in 1992. Between 1996 and 2000 he was Master of the Rolls. He was appointed Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales in 2000–2005 and retired in September 2005. He was a non-permanent judge of the Court of Final Appeal of Hong Kong in 2003 to 2012 and was awarded the Gold Bauhinia Star in recognition of his services. He was the first President of the Qatar Financial Centre Civil and Commercial Court, serving from 2006 to 2012 and Chair of the Prison Reform Trust from 2011 to 2016. In addition Lord Woolf has served as Chairman of Judges for the FIRST Responsible Capitalism Awards. Lord Woolf has served on a number of House of Lords Committees and is a current member of the Joint Committee on Human Rights. He has been Patron of the Woolf Institute, which promotes inter-faith understanding, since 1998. He holds honorary degrees from 22 universities and in 2015 he was awarded a Companion of Honour by Her Majesty the Queen.

Trustees

  • Nick Stace OBE Chair
    Nick is currently on the Executive Committee (ExCo) of Barclay’s UK and a board member of the Conduit Club, having previously been CEO of The Prince’s Trust; director of strategic communications ...at No10 during Gordon Brown’s premiership; and deputy CEO and CEO of consumer organisations including Which? Nick has chaired several organisations, including three charities, the Royal Agricultural University, and the Conduit Club.
  • Lorna Maden Treasurer
    Lorna is a CIMA qualified accountant (FCMA) with over 30 years’ Public Sector experience, having joined His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) in 1991.  Until June 2023, she was Finan...ce Director at HMPPS and Director of Finance Business Partnering for the majority of the Ministry of Justice’s other main agencies and corporate functions. She is currently a Trustee at Orchard Community Trust where she Chairs the Audit, Risk and Resources Committee and is a co-opted member of the Churches Conservation Trust.  Lorna has a Master of Studies degree in Advanced Criminology, Penology and Management from Cambridge University.
  • Maqsood Ahmed OBE Trustee
    Maqsood Ahmed was appointed as Adviser to the Home Office in the Faith Communities Unit in 2003, which transferred to the Communities and Local Government in 2006 and is now called the Preventing Extr...emism Division. He was awarded an OBE for his groundbreaking work as the first Muslim Advisor to HM Prison Service. His background lies in working on anti-poverty, inter-faith and racial equality in a career which includes working in the Leicester Law Centre and the Watford Borough Council for 15 years. Other appointments include time spent as a Trustee and founding member of Drug, Alcohol Awareness Project in Ealing West London (DAAP) and Executor and founding member of the Leicester Central Mosque and Islamic Centre. He has been a Fellow of the Faith and Civil Society of Anglia Ruskin University Cambridge (2006–09) and is currently a Fellow of the University of London, Goldsmiths’ College. He has also been instrumental in holding the first ever Imams Rabbis conference in 2006 in London. This was followed in Manchester with Muslim/Jewish women dialogue event. He is also one of the Patrons of Abraham Fund UK, a Charity which works to increase Palestine/Jewish engagement. He was awarded The Muslim News Al-Barooni Award for Excellence in 2008 for his work with the Muslim Community and his Inter-faith work in the UK and internationally. He was a Senior Advisor to the Department of Communities and Local Government; an Advisor at the UK Cross Government Unit of Research Information and Communication Unit (RICU) which sits within the Home Office. He is one of the Founding Trustee of 9/11 London Project, and educational work to mark 10 years’ anniversary of the 9/11 (2005–10).
  • Lord Carter of Haslemere Trustee
  • Professor Ben Crewe Trustee
    Professor Ben Crewe has been at the Institute of Criminology since 2001. He is currently Deputy Director of the Prisons Research Centre and Professor of Penology & Criminal Justice. Ben has undert...aken a number of major research projects in prisons, focussing in recent years on prisoners serving life sentences and on a comparative study of penal policymaking and prisoner experiences in England & Wales and Norway.
  • Maya Foa Trustee
  • David Gauke Trustee
    David Gauke was MP for South West Hertfordshire from 2005 until 2019 and served as a Treasury Minister (2010 to 2017) and Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (2017 to 2018). In January 2018, he w...as appointed Secretary of State for Justice and Lord Chancellor. As Justice Secretary, he introduced a new Education & Employment Strategy, a Female Offenders Strategy and sought to review sentencing policy with the intention of reducing the number of offenders given short custodial sentences. David resigned from Government in July 2019 and is now Head of Public Policy at Macfarlanes LLP and Senior Policy Adviser at Instinctif Partners.
  • Nigel Newcomen CBE Trustee
    Nigel Newcomen is the former Prisons and Probation Ombudsman (PPO) for England and Wales 2011-17, and previously Deputy Chief Inspector of Prisons for England and Wales 2003-2011. He has degrees from ...the universities of Kent, Surrey and London. He spent his early career in university research and teaching, followed by 10 years in the Probation Service working with offenders and then leading a research and information unit in London. He joined the Civil Service in 1991 and spent 12 years in the Home Office, mainly in Prison Service headquarters, where he led numerous prison policy and casework areas including standards, diversity, lifers, parole, drugs and offending behaviour programmes. He joined the Inspectorate of Prisons in 2003 as Deputy Chief Inspector and oversaw the development of its programming and methodology, including expansion into immigration, police and military detention. As PPO, he independently investigated all deaths in custody and provided the final stage of the prisoner complaint process. His tenure as PPO saw the introduction of a broad agenda of thematic publications distilling learning from across individual investigations. He has undertaken international work on prisons, including chairing a Council of Europe Committee on Life Sentence Prisoners and supporting European funded work to create complaint mechanisms in Chinese pre-trial detention facilities. He was awarded a CBE in 2011 and the Perrie Award in 2018.
  • Dr Hindpal Singh Bhui OBE Trustee
    Hindpal is an Inspection Team Leader at HM Inspectorate of Prisons, where he leads inspections of prisons and immigration detention. He is Visiting Law Professor at the Centre for Criminology, Univers...ity of Oxford, where he teaches the postgraduate prisons course and supervises doctoral students. He has led various international projects to support prison and immigration detention reform and human rights-based oversight, and has trained prison staff and prison monitors around the world. He is an expert inspector for the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT), part of the Council of Europe. Hindpal was formerly a probation officer in London, working in the community and prison, and won national awards for his practice in both contexts. His publications relate mainly to prisons, probation, race and prisons, immigration detention and human rights protections. He is also a former editor of the Probation Journal, and has published two books, Race and Criminal Justice (Ed, Sage) and, in 2024, What Are Prisons For?  (Bristol University Press).
  • Junior Smart OBE Trustee
    Junior Smart was employed by St Giles Trust in 2006 where he set up the SOS Project as an ex-offender led gangs intervention project offering intensive, tailored one-to-one support for young people ca...ught up in the negative vortex of gangs and weapons crime. Initially started as a small south London pilot, SOS has grown over the years to become London’s largest ex-offender gangs project; with a footprint across the capital helping over 600 young people annually to break free from gang, gun and knife crime and lead positive, productive lives in the community. Junior and his team have won multiple awards including The Charity Awards 2014, The Third Sector Excellence Awards 2011, the Centre for Social Justice Awards 2010 and The South London Press Awards 2008 to name a few. Junior was listed in the Evening Standard’s list of 1000 Influential Londoners in 2014 and 2015 in recognition of his campaigning work around the issue of London’s gang problem. Junior holds a first class BA Hons in Youth Work and a distinction in his MA in Youth Crime and Justice. He also holds numerous other qualifications in areas including conflict resolution, youth work, gangs work and substance misuse and is an accredited PTTLS trainer.
  • Louise Spencer Trustee
    Louise is currently Director of Delivery for the King’s Trust, supporting young people across the UK into employment.  Prior to this, she spent over 20 years in the Prison Service, including govern...ing three prisons and as Director for the London prisons group.  She is also a trustee for the Hardman Trust, which supports prisoners serving long sentences to take their next steps in life, either in custody or on release.
  • Emma Wilson Trustee
    Emma is a practising solicitor with a background at Allen & Overy and as head of legal for various multinationals. She has been involved in the criminal justice system for a number of years, in va...rious volunteering, advisory and trustee roles. She is currently Chair of the Independent Monitoring Board at HMP Downview and also a trustee of Unlocked Graduates.

Contacting Trustees

If you wish to contact the PRT board of trustees please contact Amy Brownrigg.

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