UK NPM Leadership Change
Sam Gluckstein will be moving on from his post as Head of the UK NPM this December. He will first take some months to work with the Office of Inspectorate of Prisons in the Republic of Ireland to progress the implementation of OPCAT as Expert Senior Advisor, before returning to the UK where he will take up post as Deputy Chief Inspector of Prisons in Scotland in the Spring.
Sam has been a pivotal and transformational leader of the UK NPM and we are delighted he will continue to work as a leader of the UK NPM from his new post in HM Inspectorate of Prisons Scotland.
I would like extend my enormous thanks to Sam for his leadership and creativity during his time at the helm of the UK NPM. He has led through a period of significant and important change, and done so with fantastic results, the legacy of which leave the UK NPM in a strong place.
The UK NPM Central Team is happy to announce that Martin Kettle has been appointed Interim Head of the UK NPM from 1st of December. See Martin’s introduction below!
I am fortunate to be stepping into the role of Interim Head of the UK National Preventive Mechanism for a few months until a substantive appointment is made. On Friday 28 November, I met the NPM on screen at the National Detention Monitoring and Inspection Conference, and was struck not only by the very different detention settings but also by the consistent commitment and passion that was evident on all sides as almost 300 members joined in the first national online conference.
I have worked in and around prisons for 27 years, much of that time as an inspector with HMIP. I have inspected prisons and immigration detention especially, working closely with Ofsted and CQC colleagues, but also on many occasions police and court custody facilities. Before that I had learned much from partnership with mental health secure services, while leading a prison-based personality disorder unit.
Sam Gluckstein and his predecessors have made great strides in supporting the NPM bodies, in ways that celebrate their variety and their distinct operational contexts, while also giving an imaginative lead towards developing further the cumulative and cooperative impacts of the monitoring work that goes on week by week around the four nations. Our NPM staff are first-rate: they will cover for my deficiencies and will see you safely through to the substantive appointment in due course.
An external recruitment campaign will be run in due course to find a successor.