Two ways that Twitter can, literally, save lives. The Natalia Project from @crdefenders provides human rights’ workers with an alarm bracelet that communicates their exact location in times of danger via social media. Volunteers sign up to follow the workers on Twitter and can instantly raise the alarm and bring public pressure to bear.
Nathan Constable is an anonymous police Tweeter and blogger Tweets by @NathanConstable Finding my voice on
The new MoJ data lab promises small voluntary organisations access to information about their effectiveness – for free. It could be invaluable for organisations looking to win reducing re-offending contracts under the new payment by results framework. But how will it work in practice?
Jane Mansour international payment by results expert argues that much of the current debate about the Work Programme and the justice re-offending commissioning confuses cost with value. Chris Grayling has described many of his reforms in both employment and justice as “delivering value for money for the taxpayer”. It is difficult, however, to find evidence of the consideration of ‘value’ in recent and planned changes. Instead, as discussions about public services become increasingly polarised, cost and value are conflated. The nuance of what those terms mean and how they are measured is lost.
Mark George is a Queen’s Counsel at Garden Court North Chambers, and specialises in civil liberties
When should you follow someone on Twitter? When most of us start tweeting, we follow anyone and everyone. Anyone that crops up in our friends’ timeline and definitely anyone who follows us. After a while, though, it pays to start becoming a bit more discerning. There’s only so many people you can realistically follow. At least if you want to actually read what they Tweet. Some of my best virtual friends don’t follow me because I tweet too much for their taste.
Ollie Evans, @dietjustice, is the founder of Diet Justice, a popular online community originally launched as a
PbR is simple in theory…
Payment by results is quite a straightforward concept. Its chief attraction lies in its ability to incentivise providers to deliver exactly what a commissioner wants. For example, any PbR contract concerned with reducing reoffending should ensure that organisations receive the biggest payments when they succeed in getting prolific offenders to give up crime. This saves the commissioner – the Ministry of Justice – and the country money and is to the benefit of everyone in society.
However, getting the contract right in practice is proving rather more challenging – indeed, I’ve yet to go to a PbR event where at least one speaker hasn’t said: “The devil is in the detail.”
Greater Manchester police have taken their conversation with the communities they serve to the next level by inviting in local residents to spend a day with police and act as community reporters.
This is a Storify account of the first ever global police tweetathon with over 200 iPlods tweeting from all over the world.
Read all about the first global police tweetathon and follow almost 200 police forces tweeting live from around the world. You can see the #POLTWT hashtag stream live on the post.
Irene Curtis is newly elected President of the Police Superintendents’ Association of England and Wales
