Sir Ronnie Flanagan, GBE, MA

Sir Ronnie (born 1949) joined the Royal Ulster Constabulary in 1970 and served as a Constable and Sergeant in Belfast, spending time in uniformed and CID disciplines. On the promotion to the rank of Inspector in 1976, he was transferred to Londonderry and later Strabane where he experienced Border Policing; he also served in the Personnel Department. In 1982 he was appointed Detective Inspector in Special Branch and the following year, on promotion to Chief Inspector, was responsible for the selection, training and operational control of specialist uniformed anti-terrorist units. He was transferred to Armagh in 1987, on promotion to Detective Superintendent.

Following his promotion to Chief Superintendent in 1990 he was appointed to the Police Staff College at Bramshill as Director of the Intermediate Command Course and subsequently of the Senior Command Course, which prepares selected officers for Chief Officer rank.

Returning to Northern Ireland in 1992 on appointment as Assistant Chief Constable, he headed the Operations Department; in April 1993 he was appointed as Operational Commander for the Belfast region; and in August 1994 was appointed Head of Special Branch. In March 1995 he was appointed Acting Deputy Chief Constable, Support Services and formally appointed Deputy Chief Constable in February 1996, taking over Operations in April of that year. During 1996 he conducted a fundamental review of the structure and organisation of the Royal Ulster Constabulary.

On 31 March 2002, Sir Ronnie retired from the PSNI and on 1 April 2002 was appointed Her Majesty’s Inspector of Constabulary for London and the East Region.

On 1 February 2005 Sir Ronnie was appointed Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary.

Patrick Carter

Lord Carter of Coles

Patrick Carter, Lord Carter of Coles, is a Labour Peer who, in addition to a career in business, has advised the Government on a wide range of issues. He has Chaired a number of Government reviews including Commonwealth Games 2002, The English National Stadium (Wembley), National Athletics, Payroll Services, Criminal Records Bureau, Offender Management, Public Diplomacy, the Procurement of Legal Aid, Pathology and Prisons.

In 1985, he founded Westminster Health Care which he built into a leading healthcare provider which he sold in 1999. He is a private investor and director of public and private companies in the fields of insurance, healthcare and information technology.

He was Chair of Sport England from 2002 to 2006, was a member of the Home Office Board and is a member of HM Treasury’s Productivity Panel.

Anne Owers

HM Chief Inspector of Prisons

Anne Owers was educated at Washington Grammar School, County Durham, and Girton College, Cambridge. On leaving college she went to Zambia to teach and to carry out research into African history.

While taking time out to bring up her three children, Anne continued to undertake research and voluntary advice and race relations work. In 1981 she joined the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants as Research & Development Officer, becoming General Secretary four years later. During this time she was also a member of the Race & Community Relations Committee of the Church of England and the Board of the Centre for Research into Ethnic Relations at Warwick University.

Anne's most recent post was as Director of JUSTICE, a post she held for nine years. During that time she was a member of various Government committees including the Home Office Task Force on the implementation of the Human Rights Act and the Lord Chancellor's Advisory Committee on Legal Education and Conduct. She carried out work on human rights, asylum and the provision of legal services, becoming a member of both the Public Interest Advisory Panel of the Legal Services Commission and the Bowman Review of the Administrative Courts.

On 1 August 2001 she was appointed HM Chief Inspector of Prisons.

The Rt Hon the Baroness Scotland QC

The Attorney General

Appointed as Attorney General on 28th June 2007 from the Home Office, Baroness Scotland previously had responsibility for Respect, anti-social behaviour policy, crime reduction strategy, youth crime, all legislation in the Lords, domestic violence, the Office for Criminal Justice Reform and criminal law, race equality, international issues and was also the ministerial adviser on legal affairs.

Previously she was Parliamentary Secretary at the Lord Chancellor's Department from 2001 to 2003, and Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office from 1999 to 2001. She was also an Alternate UK Government Representative of the European Convention from 2002 to 2003.

After graduating with LLB Hons (London), Patricia Scotland was called to the Bar, Middle Temple, in 1977, received Silk in 1991 and became a Bencher in 1997.

She is a member of the Bar of Antigua and the Commonwealth of Dominica. She is an Honorary Fellow of The Society for Advanced Legal Studies, Wolfson College, Cambridge and of Cardiff University. She has an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Westminster and the University of Buckingham.

Baroness Scotland is a Dame of the Sacred Military Constantinian Order of Saint George. She is a patron of The Margaret Beaufort Institute, GAP, and is a member of the Thomas More Society and the Lawyers' Christian Fellowship.

She is a former member of the Bar Public Relations Committee, Race Relations Committee, Professional Conduct Committee, Judicial Studies Board Ethnic Minority Advisory Committee, House of Commons Working Party on Child Abduction, Legal Advisory Panel on the National Consumer Council, the Independent Committee for the Supervision of Standards of Telephone Information Services and the National Advisory Committee on Mentally Disordered Offenders.

In addition, she was formerly one of Her Majesty's Commissioners for Racial Equality, a former Honorary President of the Trinity Hall Law Society, a former Chairman of the ILEA Disciplinary Tribunal, a member of the BBC World Service Consultative Group, Chairman of HMG Caribbean Advisory Group, the Dominican Representative of the Council of The British Commonwealth Ex-Service league and served as a member of the Millennium Commission from 1994-99.

She has specialised in family and public law and has chaired and represented parties in a number of Inquiries relating to Child Abuse, Mental Health and Housing. She was voted Black Woman of the Year (Law) 1992.

She was founder member and former Head of Chambers of 1 Gray's Inn Square.

Baroness Scotland was created a peer as Baroness Scotland of Asthal, of Asthal in the County of Oxfordshire, in 1997 and was raised to the Privy Council in July 2001.

Edward Garnier QC MP

Shadow Home Affairs Minister

Edward Garnier has been the MP for Harborough since the general election in April 1992.

He was called to the Bar in 1976 and practises as a defamation and media law specialist from chambers at 1 Brick Court in the Temple, London. He became a Queen's Counsel in 1995, a Crown Court Recorder in 1998 and a Bencher of the Middle Temple in 2001. Edward is also a consultant to the leading insurance law firm, Greenwoods, who have offices in London, Milton Keynes and Bristol, and who act for some of Britain’s largest insurance companies both at home and abroad. He was a Visiting Parliamentary Fellow at St Antony's college, Oxford 1996-97.

From 1992 to 1994 Edward Garnier was a member of the House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee. From then until the 1997 general election he worked as a Parliamentary Private Secretary at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, to the Attorney General and Solicitor General, and to the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.

Following the 1997 election when the Conservative Party left office William Hague appointed Edward Garnier Shadow Minister, Lord Chancellor's Department, until 1999 when he became Shadow Attorney General. When Iain Duncan Smith became Leader of the Opposition in September 2001 Edward Garnier stepped down from the Conservative front bench.

In 2005 he was appointed Shadow Home Affairs Minister.

Helen Edwards

Director General , Criminality & Offender Management, Ministry of Justice

Helen Edwards was appointed Director General Criminal Justice on 1 April 2008. Prior to this she was Chief Executive of the National Offender Management Service from April 2006 after acting as CEO from November 2005

Prior to this Helen Edwards was appointed Director-General of the Home Office's Communities Group in January 2004. She was responsible for the Home Office's work on volunteering, the voluntary and community sector, race equality, faith, community cohesion and civil renewal. In 2001, Helen received a CBE in recognition of her services to offenders.

Helen joined the Home Office in 2002 as the Director of the Active Communities Directorate. Prior to that, she worked at NACRO, the national crime reduction charity where she did a variety of jobs over an 18 year period including spending the last five years as Chief Executive of the Charity. Before joining NACRO she worked for the Save the Children Fund in the London Borough of Lambeth and originally trained and worked as a social worker for East Sussex County Council. She is a Trustee of the Washington based Eisenhower Foundation.

Juliet Lyon

Director of the Prison Reform Trust

Juliet Lyon is the director of the Prison Reform Trust, a leading independent charity working to create a just, humane and effective penal system. The Prison Reform Trust produces information, conducts applied research and effects policy leverage. It provides the secretariat to the All Party Parliamentary Penal Affairs Group. Through SmartJustice, it promotes community solutions to crime. The Prison Reform Trust’s advice and information service responds to 4,500 prisoners and their families each year. Programmes of work include ‘No One Knows’, in partnership with Mencap, to identify, and prompt a response to, the needs of people with learning difficulties and disabilities in the criminal justice system; ‘Troubled Inside’, supported by the Nuffield Foundation, to improve the response to people with mental health needs and a new strategy, supported by The Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund, to reduce child and youth imprisonment.

Previously Juliet was associate director of Trust for the Study of Adolescence. On commission to the Prison Service and the Youth Justice Board, she directed the team that produced the first specialist training for staff working with young people and with women in custody. She worked for fifteen years in mental health, managing Richmond Fellowship therapeutic communities, and in education as head of a psychiatric unit school. She has acted as independent advisor to, amongst others, ChildLine, the Social Exclusion Unit, the Haliday review of the sentencing framework and the Corston review of vulnerable women in the criminal justice system. She represents the Prison Reform Trust as independent member of the executive steering group for the new Strategy for Offender Health and Social Care and the Ministerial Roundtable on Prison Suicide. Juliet’s publications and broadcasts mostly concern social justice, prisons and those at the margins of society. She has recently been elected secretary general of Penal Reform International.

Sir Ken Macdonald QC

Director of Public Prosecutions

Sir Ken Macdonald QC was educated at grammar school and at St Edmund Hall Oxford, where he read Politics, Philosophy and Economics, graduating in 1974. He was called to the Bar by the Inner Temple in 1978 and specialised for 25 years in criminal law. His practice ranged from fraud, terrorism and gangland violence to export control violations and corporate advisory work. He took silk in 1997 and became a Recorder of the Crown Court in 2001.

He was elected a member of the Bar Council in 2000 and became vice Chairman of the Bar Public Affairs Group in 2001-2002. He was elected Chairman of the Criminal Bar Association in July 2003. In November 2003, he was appointed Director of Public Prosecutions. He was knighted in the 2007 New Year’s Honours List.

Tim Godwin

Assistant Commissioner, Territorial Policing

Completing secondary education at 16, Tim left school and joined the Merchant Navy where he spent six years, achieving the rank of second mate, the navigating officer of the ship. He joined Sussex Police in 1981 achieving Superintendent rank by 1992. As a Superintendent he performed the roles of Head of personnel and Divisional Command of a large OCU, which included Crawley New Town. In 1996, he was appointed Force Crime Manager for Sussex, with responsibility for Force level intelligence, crime and drugs operations, scientific support and major crime investigations, attending the Strategic Command Course at the Police Staff College, Bramshill, in 1999.

He was appointed Commander within the Metropolitan Police Service in November 1999 and served as Commander (Crime) for South London, South East Territorial Commander and then Commander Crime for Territorial Policing. He was promoted to Deputy Assistant Commissioner in Territorial Policing in 2001 then to Assistant Commissioner, Territorial Policing a year later.

During his time in Territorial Policing he has introduced a revitalised forensic strategy, instigated and led the safer Streets initiative, which has seen robbery reduce by 30 per cent in 3 years, through Operation Sapphire he has overseen a complete overhaul of our approach to the investigation of serious sexual assault and in partnership with the NHS has introduced a number of 'Havens' in London where victims can receive immediate medical and psychological support in a non-police environment where self reporting is far less intimidating. He leads for ACPO on Mobile Phone crime and leads jointly with Dennis O'Connor on the National Reassurance Policing Programme. He is currently responsible for the implementation of the Safer Neighbourhoods programme delivering dedicated teams of officers to Wards throughout London.

He received the Royal Humane Society Testimonial in 1991 for rescuing a man from a high bridge over a railway line, was awarded the runner up prize for Equal Opportunities Achievement in the Police Service by the Home Secretary in 1996, and in 1998 received the National Prize for Public Management Leadership by the Office for Public Management.

Tim is keen rugby fan, having played in younger years and attends matches as and when time permits. Tim was awarded the OBE in the Queen's New Years Honours List in 2003.

Completing secondary education at 16, Tim left school and joined the Merchant Navy where he spent six years, achieving the rank of second mate, the navigating officer of the ship. He joined Sussex Police in 1981 achieving Superintendent rank by 1992. As a Superintendent he performed the roles of Head of personnel and Divisional Command of a large OCU, which included Crawley New Town. In 1996, he was appointed Force Crime Manager for Sussex, with responsibility for Force level intelligence, crime and drugs operations, scientific support and major crime investigations, attending the Strategic Command Course at the Police Staff College, Bramshill, in 1999.

He was appointed Commander within the Metropolitan Police Service in November 1999 and served as Commander (Crime) for South London, South East Territorial Commander and then Commander Crime for Territorial Policing. He was promoted to Deputy Assistant Commissioner in Territorial Policing in 2001 then to Assistant Commissioner, Territorial Policing a year later.

During his time in Territorial Policing he has introduced a revitalised forensic strategy, instigated and led the safer Streets initiative, which has seen robbery reduce by 30 per cent in 3 years, through Operation Sapphire he has overseen a complete overhaul of our approach to the investigation of serious sexual assault and in partnership with the NHS has introduced a number of 'Havens' in London where victims can receive immediate medical and psychological support in a non-police environment where self reporting is far less intimidating. He leads for ACPO on Mobile Phone crime and leads jointly with Dennis O'Connor on the National Reassurance Policing Programme. He is currently responsible for the implementation of the Safer Neighbourhoods programme delivering dedicated teams of officers to Wards throughout London.

He received the Royal Humane Society Testimonial in 1991 for rescuing a man from a high bridge over a railway line, was awarded the runner up prize for Equal Opportunities Achievement in the Police Service by the Home Secretary in 1996, and in 1998 received the National Prize for Public Management Leadership by the Office for Public Management.

Tim is keen rugby fan, having played in younger years and attends matches as and when time permits.

Tim was awarded the OBE in the Queen's New Years Honours List in 2003.