CEP Senior Advisor Ian Acheson writes: "Thanks to a new National Audit Office report on jail capacity, we now know that prison is awful — but there’s also not enough of it. This paradox sits at the heart of the present overcrowding crisis."

"Robinson presents a problem for the prison service. “The decisions around how and where Robinson will be held are fraught with difficulty for prison bosses,” said Ian Acheson, a counter-extremism adviser and former prison governor...Acheson warned that attempts were being made to propagandise his imprisonment, and misinformation about his treatment was already spreading on social media. The Tommy Robinson propaganda machine seems unlikely to go away."

"“Love or loathe him, all can agree that Tommy Robinson faces a torrid time as he is committed to imprisonment after pleading guilty to contempt of court. At Woolwich Crown Court this week, we heard from Mr Justice Johnson that Robinson’s breaches of an injunction following a libel trial that he lost were so serious that any suggestion of a non-custodial sentence was impossible… Ian Acheson, the former head of security at HMP Wandsworth, told me the authorities will face ‘a big headache when dealing with Robinson' s custody.’ He said that on the one hand the offence for which he received a prison sentence is relatively minor and there is no record of him misbehaving in his previous sentence.”

"Robinson was also kept isolated during his last stint in prison, something which would be a "headache" for prisoner officers, according to former prison governor Ian Acheson."

"Writing in August, Ian Acheson, a former counter-terrorism official who also worked as director of community safety at the Home Office, warned that pursuing a strategy of minimal information risked creating a void that would be exploited by elements of the far-right determined to break community cohesion. Acheson called for all the facts about the background of the alleged perpetrator to be disclosed “as soon as possible,” urging the police not to engage in “further dithering”."

"Former prison governor Ian Acheson said the decision where to put Robinson would be a 'real headache' for the prison service.

'You have someone who would not be considered an escape risk, hasn't been convicted for a crime of violence and has been found guilty of breaking a civil restriction, so normally he could be put in open conditions,' he said.

'But open prisons are very unsupervised and that could leave Robinson at risk of being attacked.

'There is also a risk of his presence disrupting the good order of the prison due to the presence of people who might sympathise with him - particularly as the far-right push the narrative of the rioters being ''political prisoners''.' "

“Ian Acheson and Paul Embery discuss the rioter who has died in prison. This is a clip from the latest episode of the spiked podcast.”

CEP Senior Advisor Ian Acheson writes: "Does Airbnb drive up crime in London? That’s the question posed of the world’s most successful short-term rental service in new research by the Cambridge Institute of Criminology. The UK’s holiday rental market is enormous, projected to reach £3.5 billion this year. Airbnb eats up a sizeable chunk of that revenue; millions on the move take advantage of what the platform has to offer in the nation’s capital. And surely where there’s brass there’s muck?"

CEP Senior Advisor Ian Acheson: "‘House arrest’ may be a term more usually associated with tinpot dictatorships but it has in fact been a key feature of our crime control apparatus for years. Home Detention Curfew (HSC) was brought in under Labour in 1999. Now the Justice Secretary wants to extend that Blairite concept which covered only the last six months of an offender’s custody to the whole sentence. Will this make a difference in solving Britain’s omnishambles prison crisis?"

“Former prison governor Ian Acheson says the justice system is much worse than just two-tier policing, after an asylum hotel rioter died in prison. "The first thing I want to say to Mr. Lynch's family is that I've got huge amounts of sympathy for them."”