eBulletin, 28 February 2025

eBulletin, 28 February 2025

Our latest eBulletin, sent out to subscribers on Friday, 28 February

Close to 20 years ago, in December 2007, the Labour peer Lord Carter presented a report to the then Labour government on how to resolve the prisons crisis.

Among the recommendations in his report, Securing the future, I mention two.

First, Carter argued that “the current building programme has to be accelerated and expanded”, in order for capacity to keep up with demand.

Second, he called for changes to sentencing to reduce the imprisonment of low risk offenders, “reserving custody for the most serious and dangerous offenders“.

Few ideas are entirely new in politics and, faced with another prisons crisis, the current generation of Labour ministers have come up with much the same answers as the previous generation did.

On the one hand: build thousands more prison places, on an accelerated timetable, to try to keep up with the rising demand parliament has manufactured through successive legislation.

On the other hand: change sentencing and other practices (recall, for instance) to reduce the number being unnecessarily imprisoned.

The prison building programme is badly behind schedule, as the National Audit Office pointed out just before Christmas. It seems unlikely that the Labour government will be able to get it back on course in time to meet projected rising demand.

This is good. We lock up far too many people as it is.

This leaves sentencing reform and improved resettlement arrangements as one of the few big levers that ministers can pull.

This is a complex area of policy and I was delighted that a number of colleagues in other criminal justice organisations took up our invitation to share their ideas on what needs to be done.

You can read all the articles here. We'll be publishing further pieces in March.

Richard Garside
Director

Upcoming event on women’s justice

On Tuesday, 18 March, the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, in collaboration with the National Women’s Justice Coalition, will host the event Breaking out of the Justice Loop.

The online-only event is set to take place shortly after the publication of a new report, Breaking out of the Justice Loop: Creating a criminal justice system that works for women, scheduled for release on 10 March.The report, by Naomi Delap (Director, Birth Companions) and Liz Hogarth (Independent women’s justice expert), examines why the justice system continues to fail women, and what needs to change.

The event and report comes at an important time for women’s justice. The Labour government has announced a bold approach to respond to these issues. The creation of a Women’s Justice Board and its new strategy will, it is stated, reduce the number of women in prison and tackle the root causes of women’s offending by driving early intervention, diversion and alternatives to custody.

Details of the event, including registration, can be found here.

The Centre goes to Westminster

This month, Head of Programmes Helen Mills gave evidence to the Westminster Commission on Joint Enterprise (JE). The sitting was opened by Labour MP Kim Johnson (who launched the Commission in November 2024) and Labour peer Lord Woodley. 

The Commission is calling on witnesses and inviting written submissions from those with experience and knowledge of the policy and practice of JE. They expect their work to take 18 months. In this first sitting, Helen was one of six witnesses who gave evidence and came away feeling that there was a consensus that there should be more clarity around JE laws.

Adding to this momentum, we are pleased to announce that, in collaboration with JENGbA, we are releasing a podcast series on Joint Enterprise, due to drop in March. Produced by EarWorm, this will be a four-part podcast series, where expert guests will unpack what joint enterprise laws are and who has been affected by them.

Also this month, our work was referred to in a house of commons debate on knife crime, by Liberal Democrat MP Luke Johnson. Johnson argued that the potential of Violence Reduction Units as “hubs of proactive action” against knife crime had been “woefully unrealised”. You can watch the full debate here.

New report looks at Offensive Weapons Homicide Reviews

Last week, we published ‘Learning from tragedy? The potential benefits, risks and limitations of Offensive Weapons Homicide Reviews’, authored by Dr Susie Hulley and Dr Tara Young, and funded by the Barrow Cadbury Trust.

Introduced by the previous conservative government in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, Offensive Weapons Homicide Reviews (OWHRs) are currently being piloted. Their stated purpose is to help national and local agencies understand the causes of serious violence and to prevent future weapons-enabled homicides. Young adults (18- to 25-year-olds) were identified as overlooked by existing homicide reviews, and as such were considered a priority for OWHRs. 

The authors examine the learning from previous homicide review powers to identify the potential benefits and risks of this new duty. While the report provides recommendations that could mitigate some of the identified risks of existing homicide reviews, it ultimately calls on the government to put well-evidenced interventions that reduce serious violence at the forefront of its approach to serious violence. 

Helen Mills, Head of Programmes at the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, commented:

If OWHRs are rolled out this report highlights important learning about how they can best work. However, we have some scepticism about whether this is the right approach. Clear evidence already exists about how to best prevent and respond to serious violence, and that the particular needs of young adults are often overlooked. Yet good practice remains frustratingly fragmented, and lacking the long-term sustainable funding it needs.

We are looking to host a small roundtable meeting to discuss the implications of the report for homicide reviews specifically and to help feed into our understanding of the broader challenges and priorities for good violence reduction policy for young adults more generally. 

if you’d be interested in taking part or to register an interest, please drop us a line.

Looking at IPP through the lens of management systems theory

In his second working paper, Imprisonment for Public Protection - The dynamics of the failure, Dr Mike Lauder uses Disaster Incubation Theory (DIT) to explore the Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) sentence. Adapting the six stages of DIT, which includes a failure to foresee risks, an incubation period of growing problems, an eventual crisis, and the creation of a New Normal, Lauder is able to analyse why the IPP sentence has failed.

He writes:

One of the conclusions that may be drawn from this assessment is that maybe the legal systems should face the same degree of scrutiny and rigour as do safety critical systems, as system failures can cause a great deal of unintended harm to individuals in their care.

Interested in writing a Working Paper? Have a look at the guidelines here. 

The wisdom of Mike Guilfoyle

Mike Guilfoyle, who authored over 80 comment pieces, often reflected fondly on his experiences with service users while working for the probation service.

In his memory, we would like to highlight some of our favourite pieces:

Mike was a long-standing friend of the Centre and a NAPO stalwart. The Centre, in collaboration with NAPO, is hosting an essay competition in his memory. It is open to all serving and former probation staff, as well as those in training to become probation officers. 

This year’s essay question is: What does professionalism mean in probation?

We recognise that probation staff often have very demanding schedules and, in hopes of accomodating this, we are extending the submission deadline to now be 28 March 2025, 11:59pm.

You can access the guidelines and submission page here.

Commentary and analysis

Following the Independent Sentencing Review's call for submissions, we reached out to some of our network who had made submissions, asking whether they would like to write a comment piece based off of their submission. We are pleased to say that (so far) we have been able to publish six pieces, listed below:


As well as a piece from Policy and Research Officer Daisy Lutyens, based on the Centre's own submission, discussing how we can learn from Europe when addressing the UK's high rates of recall to prison.

We also are pleased this month to have published a comment piece by Julie Corbin, who writes about the challenges individuals face navigating education in prison. With experience working as a tutor in UK prisons, Julie is able to shine a light on the lack of resources and qualified educators in many prisons, making it difficult for many prisoners to access the consistent education that is so valuable for rehabilitation. 

Interested in submitting a comment piece? Drop us a line.

What’s what in The British Journal of Criminology?

For more than sixty years, The British Journal of Criminology has published some of the most significant research in the field.

A number of open-access advance articles have been published this month:

Prison Service Journal 

The next issue of the PSJ will be out next month, and, if you haven’t had a chance already, the January issue is available to read and download here.

News from our partners

We would like to congratulate our partners at the Association of Prisoners Maintaining Innocence (AMPI), who have now officially become a limited Company. AMPI strives to support to current prisoners, ex-prisoners and those on probation who maintain innocence. 

Our friends at StopWatch recently spoke on the panel at Bristol Cop Watch's event on No to Section 60, Alternative Solutions to Policing in Response to 'Youth Violence' and Predictive Policing. StopWatch are campaigning for the repeal of section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, on the basis that it is 'outdated, ineffective, and fails to meet modern human rights standards'. Read more about it here. 

Additionally, StopWatch will soon be releasing a report and short film about their Women & Girls Project. Keep an eye out for it here.

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