Our latest eBulletin, sent out to subscribers on Friday, 28 June. Sign-up for our free eBulletins here.
If the polls are right and we end up, next week, with the first Labour government in 14 years, what are the prospects for criminal justice?
The immediate context for the incoming government are grim, with problems across the criminal justice system. Earlier this week, the BBC journalist Sima Kotecha tweeted that civil servants were ‘putting together a “black swan” list of difficult issues for new govt to deal with next week after election, and prisons is at top’, something that will hardly come as a revelation to prison staff, prison reformers and those who keep their eyes on such things.
In May, Circular 252 from the Prison Officers’ Association warned the government against using the cover of parliament’s dissolution and the General Election to breach prison overcrowding rules. Earlier this week, the Prison Governors’ Association warned that not only prisons, but ‘the entire criminal justice system stands on the precipice of failure’.
Our panel discussion on the General Election manifestos, earlier this week, discussed whether the main party offerings, particularly from Labour, were up to the job of addressing the problems the system faced.
There were some spirited disagreements, including on the scale of the problem of knife violence and what needed to be done about it. In general, though, the panel was distinctly underwhelmed.
Towards the end of the discussion, we asked the audience the following question: ‘By the time of the next General Election, do you think the problems facing the justice system will be...’, followed by various options.
Ten per cent of those who replied thought the problems would be ‘somewhat resolved’. Fifty seven per cent thought it would be case of ‘same old, same old’. Thirty five per cent thought the problems would be ‘even worse’. No one thought the problems would be largely resolved.
This was not a scientifically selected sample. The audience was, though, a knowledgeable one, many with long memories and deep experience.
If Labour does form the next government, it will have its work cut out from day one. And in the case of criminal justice, we must hope that things do get better, rather than get even worse.
Richard Garside
Director
Crime, Justice and the General Election
On Monday this week, nearly 200 people joined our joined our online panel discussion on the crime and justice offers in the General Election manifestos. Our Director Richard Garside was joined by Ian Acheson, Frances Crook, Phil Bowen and Jo Phoenix to pick over the good, the bad, the maybe and the meh. With a panel like that, they weren’t going to be short of things to say.
The result was a helter-skelter ride through the main elements in the Labour manifesto, as well as some of the distinctive offerings from the Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and Greens.
If you missed it, or want to watch it again, you can find the video on our website, and on our YouTube channel.
‘You can’t be a “Black Man” in prison’
Earlier this month, Jason Warr from the University of Nottingham knocked it out of the park, with a bravura performance, talking about how he got into criminological research, why the experiences of racialised populations in the criminal justice system matter, and the big challenges for criminology and criminal justice policy-making.
This was blended event, with the audience joining us both in-person in our meeting facilities, as well as online. Those who attended in-person where also treated to a fabulous buffet, cooked up for us by Arfa Shah, from our local cafe, the Bonnington Cafe.
Watch the video (though not the buffet) here.
In the news
Our Head of Programmes, Helen Mills, spoke to The Guardian about the ongoing scandal of joint enterprise convictions. “The laws regarding joint enterprise are still vague, wide in scope, operate without clear thresholds, and have racialised outcomes”, she told the paper. “They overcriminalise and overpunish, particularly young Black men and boys”.
Also speaking to The Guardian, our Director, Richard Garside, offered his thoughts on the Labour manifesto, including efficiency savings (they generally release “far less cash than promised”), Respect orders (joining a “very crowded space of existing civil orders”) and the pledge to half serious violence in a decade (welcome, but to achieve this Labour “will need to move swiftly beyond the first, small steps it sets out in the manifesto”).
What’s what in The British Journal of Criminology?
For more than sixty years, The British Journal of Criminology has published the highest-quality research and scholarship.Here’s a run-down of the five currently most-read articles:
- From 2021, Fiona Vera-Gray, Clare McGlynn, Ibad Kureshi and Kate Butterby on the way that pornography normalises sexual violence.
- In 2015, Stephen Farrall, Colin Hay, Will Jennings and Emily Gray examined the relationship between housing tenure and the experience of property crime.
- Lizzie Seal and Alexa Neale dug into the historical archive, for their 2023 article on the assassinations of Sir William Curzon and Sir Michael O’Dwyer in London in 1909 and 1940.
- For her 2021 article, Emma Buxton-Namisnyk examined the murders of First Nations women in Australia by their male partners. The failure of the police to respond to earlier reports of violence was a common feature.
- Does stop and search prevent crime? This is the question posed by Matteo Tiratelli, Paul Quinton and Ben Bradford in their 2018 article, based on an analysis of London police data. Short answer: not really.
Prize-winning articles in the Prison Service Journal
Every year the Editors of the Prison Service Journal award the Bennett prize for the best article published that year. Here are the last two winners.
- ‘Feeling Safe in an Unsafe Place’, the 2023 winning article by Scarlett Thomas, looked at trauma-informed care practice in a category B local prison.
- ‘Living in the present, imagining the future’, by Rachel Tynan, won the 2022 award, for her article on the pains of being sentenced to life imprisonment under the joint enterprise rules.
We will continue the run-down in the next edition of this bulletin.
Commentary
Our comment pages have been a bit quiet this month. We've been rushed off our feet with our events, planning new publications, and keeping up with the twists and turns of the General Election.
We did, though, publish this interesting piece by John Kendall, who argues that independent police custody visitors are neither independent, nor effective. We’ll be publishing part two of John’s argument next month.
If you want to write for our website, here are the guidelines.
News from our partners
In the latest episode of the Trapped podcast on the Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) scandal, Sam Asumadu meets Mary, mother of Martin Myers. Given an IPP in 2006, with a tariff of 19 months, Martin remains locked-up in prison, more than eighteen years on.
Sam also meets Mark Fairhurst, National Chair of the Prison Officers’ Association, and Tom Wheatley, recently-appointed President of the Prison Governors’ Association, who talk about their own concerns about the IPP sentence.
Listen to the latest episode, and catch-up on the archive, here.
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