In the Media

Edwina Grosvenor: the lady who can't leave jail

PUBLISHED September 25, 2012
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Born into almost unimaginable wealth and privilege, Lady Edwina Grosvenor is not someone you might expect to bump into on a prison landing. But over the past 12 years, the second daughter of Britain's richest landowner (the Duke of Westminster, 7th on Britain's Rich List with a fortune of around £7.3bn) has been quietly establishing a role for herself as a discreet but potent champion of prison reform. Her work, which began when she spent part of her gap year working in Kathmandu Central prison in Nepal when she was 18, has taken her into more than 50 prisons in the UK and abroad. Aged 22, she commissioned research into the multiple needs of ex-offenders. Since then she has sat in on prisoner adjudications, been involved in restorative justice sessions and spent a year as a support worker in the notorious Styal women's prison in Cheshire. As impressive as her prison-related activities are however, the big question for me is: why?

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