Many will know of Mike through the regular articles he wrote on probation practice for the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies website. The articles evoke what feels like a lost world: a service motivated by the values of ‘advise, assist and befriend’.
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19 November 2023
Mass Supervision offers not only a comprehensive critique of probation and parole in the US but also a provocative and compelling argument for abolishing both. Imagine if probation didn't exist!
This really pushed me into thinking afresh of a client for whom probation was perhaps an ill-suited sentencing option but ended up on my caseload.
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13 November 2023
At StopWatch, we’re currently working in partnership with the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies on a research project funded by the Transition to Adulthood Alliance, on serious violence reduction orders (SVROs).
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25 October 2023
It’s a reform proposal that’s been in and out of favour in recent years.
Back in 2019 Chalk’s predecessor at Justice, David Gauke and the then Prison Minister Rory Stewart set out a rationale for introducing restrictions on short prison sentences. But a planned green paper detailing options was abruptly shelved following Boris Johnson’s election as leader and Prime Minister.
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19 October 2023
As a recent book – Rethinking Community Sanctions – points out, a more democratic politics around community-based sanctions might help to address the lurch to carceral ‘solutions’.
Whilst taking on this challenging academic text, I mused on twin recollections of my time as a field probation officer in London.
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4 October 2023
The data revealed by the pilot is new. But the picture it paints is a familiar one to those acquainted with concerns about the operation of joint enterprise.
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29 September 2023
In England and Wales, by contrast, three people were fatally shot by the police in the twelve months to March 2023. I am not aware of any fatal shootings by police officers in Scotland and Northern Ireland during the same period.
I can only imagine the grief, anguish and anger any fatal police shooting must cause family members and friends. We should always aim for no fatal police shootings across the UK, as has been the case in some years.
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27 September 2023
You might think that I would agree with him, but I don’t.
He correctly identifies what is wrong with the prisons. Wandsworth is designated as having space for 1,000 men but is holding 600 over that. Even 1,000 is too many and is a number assessed by the prison service itself. Similarly the other prisons he identifies as being not fit for purpose are dilapidated, vermin infested and simply locking men up all day.
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22 September 2023
It also requires a commitment to the often-overlooked importance of offering respect and dignity to defendants and court users. The impact of this commitment reaches out into the local community.
Such was the lesson from The Power of Dignity, a memorable account by retired US Judge Victoria Pratt of her many years sitting on the bench in New Jersey.
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19 September 2023
In June, we submitted the first freedom of information request to the Home Office as part of our new research on SVROs (which you can read more about here).
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31 August 2023
In the wake of Black Lives Matter and their call to defund the police, the Casey Report on the serial failings of the Metropolitan Police, Liberty’s collaborative report, Holding Our Own, and the Police Race Action Plan produced by the National Police
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22 August 2023
Such was the case with the edited collection, The Good Prison Officer, which vividly portrays insider perspectives from contributors who have experienced incarceration and those entrusted with the role of of prison officer.