Frances Crook was Chief Executive of the Howard League for Penal Reform for 30 years until October 2021.
Prior to taking up her role at the Howard League, she worked as a teacher, a campaigner for Amnesty International and in non-executive roles at both Greenwich University and NHS Barnet.
Frances has campaigned for the whole UK penal system to be subject to a radical overhaul. She has highlighted the structural inequalities and injustice of the existing system and argued that a smaller more ethical and compassionate prison system would save public money, transform lives and change incarceration for good. During her tenure at the Howard League, Frances oversaw work with the police to reduce child arrests by two thirds, and under her direction the number of staff and turnover of the charity grew twenty-fold. She was described by David Lammy MP as "the single most influential campaigner for prison reform of our times".
