She will be remembered by a whole generation of Bath University social policy and social work students.
We have a long drive from the West Country but stay in a wonderfully hospitable hotel and reminisce about our dear departed. I have to speak at the crematorium. My voice breaks up. I feel embarrassed, but am assured that it's okay for grown men to cry. I submit an entry for The Guardian's Other Lives obituaries column.
Wednesday and Thursday: Two more intense days at the London School of Economics where the Criminal Justice Alliance (formerly the Penal Affairs Consortium) is having its inaugural meeting and the British Society of Criminology is having its annual conference.
I'm speaking at both, at the latter alongside Liberty director Shami Chakrabarti and chief inspector of prisons Anne Owers in a plenary session. My message is the same to both audiences: we must reduce the criminalisation of children and young people, not least because, all other things being equal, it doesn't reduce reoffending. Informal controls work better.
The responses are overwhelmingly supportive and I muse during my journey back that I'm going to have to devote myself to getting a campaign off the ground. There's no other issue I feel more strongly about, except perhaps Iraq, but my anger is almost spent about that now.
On Wednesday evening the British Society of Criminology has its conference dinner on a paddle steamer. Tower Bridge opens for us and the Greenwich Royal Observatory looks magnificent from the river at night. Two hundred and fifty criminologists are at play - wonderful.
Friday: At home I am dealing with my emails and grappling with writing deadlines. My article on children's wellbeing that was published last weekend in the Independent on Sunday and the speeches I gave in London have generated a gratifying response.
More invitations to speak and write come in. And someone draws my attention to the advert in The Times for my old job, chair of the Youth Justice Board. The first requirement of the role is apparently a commitment to diversity. Shouldn't it be to young people? I agree.
- Rod Morgan is Professor Emeritus at Bristol University and is former chair of the Youth Justice Board.
