My colleague, Martin Seddon, who has died aged 78, was an innovative probation officer. Later he was an international consultant and adviser on criminal justice reform in eastern Europe and the Balkans.
Martin played a key role in developing alternative sanctions in eastern Europe. He persuaded leaders in the justice sector that reform and rehabilitation of offenders, through community-based programmes, is more effective than incarceration. He worked principally in Russia and Ukraine, but he also spent time in Georgia, Moldova, Serbia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Romania, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan.
Born in Crediton, Devon, Martin was the younger son of John Seddon, an accountant, and Eileen (nee Whicher). Martin went to Exeter school and studied mechanical sciences at St John’s College, Cambridge, graduating in 1968. The following year he did a BA postgraduate course in offender management at Exeter University.
He joined the Probation Service in 1972 in Southampton, moving to Doncaster and later Hereford and Worcester, and progressing to be an assistant chief probation officer. In 1989 he left to join the charity Crime Concern as a crime prevention adviser; from 1994 to 2001, he worked with Group 4 in prison regime development in the UK, South Africa and Australia.
In 2001 Martin became an independent consultant specialising in penal reform in developing countries. Over 20 years he completed 40 prison and probation projects in Eastern Europe and the Balkans. His clients were the EU, the Council of Europe and the Department for International Development.
Martin and I worked together in Moscow from 2007 to 2009 on an EU-sponsored programme delivering alternative sanctions to prison and introducing for the first time in Russia a pilot electronic monitoring scheme, in a penal colony called Pereleshnoye. At that time, the Russian prison population was 820,000.
When the electronic monitoring pilot was successful, the justice ministry wanted to extend the model to 200,000 pre-trial detainees so that most of them could be tagged, rather than remanded in prison. The electronic tagging model was also extended to probationers in the city of Voronezh.
By the end of 2009, the chief legal adviser to the Duma, together with MPs, was satisfied by pilot outcomes and approved the introduction of electronic monitoring to the Russian criminal justice services.
Martin was strategic, effective and brilliant at staff training and organisational development, with a warm and engaging personality, and the ability to get along with key ministerial and probation personnel.
He said that his partner, Julia Stafford, whom he met in 1990, and his children gave him the best sense of well-being in his life. He also loved sailing, classical music concerts and refurbishing jukeboxes.
He is survived by Julia, his civil partner since 2020, and their children, Luke and Ruth, and by his children, Rachel, Jack and Amy, from his earlier marriage to Tricia Langford, which ended in divorce, and six grandchildren.
