Our latest eBulletin, sent out to subscribers on Friday, 28 November
Juries are “a success story of our justice system”, the Justice Secretary David Lammy wrote a few years ago.
“Our jury system may be centuries old,” he added, “but it is still fit for purpose today”.
What a difference a few years, and a new job, make.
Back in 2017, when he wrote these words in the official report on race and the justice system that bears his name, Lammy was a backbench MP on the opposition benches. These days, he is the Justice Secretary and Deputy Prime Minister, with, if reports are to be believed, plans to restrict radically defendants’ access to trial by jury.
To govern is to choose, the saying goes. It is also to leak, and to float ideas, only to disavow them later.
One read of Lammy’s leaked plans is that jury trials will be radically cut from the current 70,000 to 80,000 a year to fewer than 10,000. It is, though, a fool’s game to get too drawn into speculation on shadowy briefings that are light on detail.
The main game in town remains, for now at least, the Independent Review of the Criminal Courts, under the retired senior judge Sir Brian Leveson. The part one report, published earlier this year, also proposed restrictions on jury trials, though ones less far-reaching than the proposals leaked over recent days.
There are good reasons to be sceptical – concerned indeed – about the impact on defendants’ rights – and the principles of justice – of limitations on jury trials. Further restrictions do, though, appear to be on their way: whether in the form envisaged by Leveson, by Lammy’s leaked plans, or something else.
Whatever happens, suggestions that further restrictions would be a dagger to the heart of the justice system are, I think, overblown. In the twelve months to June 2025, over two million criminal prosecutions commenced. Of these, around 76,000, or four per cent, were prosecutions involving a jury.
This is not a good argument for doing away with jury trials. As David Lammy pointed out in his 2017 report, “juries are representative of local populations – and must deliberate as a group, leaving no hiding place for bias or discrimination”.
The vast majority of criminal defendants, however, do not get their day in court with a jury. This has been the case for many years, and nothing Leveson, or Lammy, are proposing will change that.
Richard Garside
Director
New initiative on women’s justice
Earlier this year, we published Breaking out of the Justice Loop. The report, authored by Birth Companions Director Naomi Delap and women's justice expert Liz Hogarth, and co-published with the National Women's Justice Coalition (NWJC), delivered a stark verdict: the criminal justice system, designed by and for men, has been failing women for decades.
We're now working with Naomi Delap, Liz Hogarth and the NWJC to take this analysis forward, with a ground-breaking initiative intended to be a game-changer for women's justice: the Breaking out of the Justice Loop thought-leadership programme.
The programme aims to challenge the status quo and drive change by collaborating with diverse organisations, centring the voices of women and girls with lived experience, and integrating innovative ideas from various disciplines to reshape the narrative around women's justice.
We plan to engage both established stakeholders and new audiences, using a dynamic mix of traditional and creative outputs.
We were reminded just last month how important creative mediums in particular are for women in prison as we hosted a private screening of prisoner-produced short films. The shorts – produced as part of a project led by Dr Deirdre O'Neill and funded through an award from University of Hertfordshire’s AHRC Impact Acceleration Account – enabled the women to tell their own stories and opened up broader discussions.
We’re still in the process of planning our initiative and are on the lookout for ideas, potential partners, moral and financial support.
To learn more about our new initiative, and how you could get involved, visit this page.
Contribution to Committee Inquiry into electronic monitoring
In September, our Director, Richard Garside, gave evidence to the House of Lords Justice and Home Affairs Committee, as part of their Inquiry into electronic monitoring (EM).
In a letter to Justice Minister Lord Timpson and Home Office Minister Alex Norris MP, the Committee said the planned doubling of those subject to EM – to around 48,000 people – was proceeding without a clear strategy, sufficient evidence or adequate resources. They drew on a number of points Richard made to the Committee during his evidence session.
Our summary of that letter, and our written submission to the Committee, can be found on this page.
Our report referenced in House of Lords debate
Our report on joint enterprise, The Legal Dragnet, by Dr Nisha Waller, made its way into Parliament earlier this month.
The report was referenced by Lord Berkeley of Knighton during the Second Reading of the Sentencing Bill. Throughout the debate, peers questioned whether the proposed reforms to sentencing and offender management confront longstanding injustices. In this context, Lord Berkeley drew on the report’s findings on inconsistent decisions, muddled legal tests, and the knock-on effects for communities.
As we outline in our news piece on the debate, the ongoing scandal of imprisonment for public protection (IPP) sentences was also raised by several members of the House of Lords.
The debate illustrates how independent research is important for parliamentary scrutiny. Alongside Nisha Waller’s report, our work on joint enterprise and IPP continues to influence policy thinking, providing robust evidence for reform and highlighting the urgent need for change.
Call to stop using remand for defendants’ own protection
This month our Director Richard Garside joined a coalition of 42 experts and civil society organisations in supporting a letter, coordinated by JUSTICE, which called on the Deputy Prime Minister to “use the Sentencing Bill to remove the courts’ power to remand defendants in custody for their own protection”. The letter states that prisons are not a place of care and notes the impact of this use of remand on women. The full letter can be read here.
In It Together
Earlier this year, we produced a podcast series on joint enterprise – In It Together – with JENGbA (Joint Enterprise Not Guilty by Association) and the specialist podcast producer, EarWorm Productions. The series was kindly funded by the Institute of Now and the Barry Amiel & Norman Melburn Trust. You can listen to the series and download it here.
We were delighted when the series was recognised with a nomination in the Creative Media category of the 2025 Criminal Justice Alliance Awards. Congratulations to Faye Claridge, the ultimate winner of the Creative Media category, for We Roar: an exhibition of art and poetry by prisoners in England and the USA.
And thank you to all those who took part in In It Together, especially those subject to joint enterprise convictions, their families and friends, and the presenter, Maxine Peake.
Commentary and analysis
This month, Dr Anne-Marie Day presents a blueprint for reducing the disproportionately high levels of youth justice involvement amongst neurodiverse children.
Paul Raymond responds to the proposal to increase the utilisation of electronic monitoring with some suggestions from a procurement perspective. Meanwhile, Janet Carter points out how the Sentencing Bill is missing a trick on domestic abuse protection.
Also this month, one of our Trustees, Ruth Bloomfield, reflects on how to turn optimism into action to address the challenges in criminal justice.
Finally, our Head of Programmes Helen Mills explains what the Law Commission Homicide Review should do about joint enterprise.
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 (BJC) has published some of the most significant research in the field.
This month we've chosen to highlight two open access articles from previous years as they may offer some insight into current discussions around court backlogs and Police and Crime Commissioners respectively:
- In November 2021, Barry Godfrey, Jane C Richardson and Sandra Walklate looked at the causes and effects of backlogs in the courts.
- In November 2023, Ben Bradford, Evi Girling, Ian Loader and Richard Sparks analysed people's evaluations of local policing in terms of their sense of security.
And check out the latest edition of the BJC, with a number of open access articles on themes including:
- Rosie Cornish and Iain Brennan on the links between school exclusion and violence victimisation.
- Gwen Robinson and others on organisational change in the Probation Service.
- Pernille Søderholm Nyvoll on open prisons in Norway.
- Mitra Mokhtari on criminology teaching in Canadian universities.
- Valerie Houghton and Thaddeus Muller on disability hate crime.
- Bronwyn Arnold on perpetrators of child sexual abuse.
Prison Service Journal Archive
We are in the process of digitising and uploading the entire back catalogue of Prison Service Journal, from the first edition in 1960. A complete run from 1960 to 1991 is currently available, alongside a complete run from September 2010 to the present day.
This month the PSJ editors have highlighted articles from editions 13 through 15.
Edition 13
Women in preventive detention, by A M Morgan, is the UK’s first published article to delve into the histories and types of women sentenced to Preventive Detention (PD) compared to those in Long-Term Imprisonment (L.T.I.) at Holloway. In 1961, the survey recorded 26 women under PD. The article examines whether the regime effectively supported these women in reintegrating into society post-incarceration.
Edition 14
The Life of a Prison Officer, by Margaret R. Croom, provides a fascinating account of one woman's 30-year career, between 1935 and 1965, in the Prison Service. Her career story includes working in many institutions, including borstals and prisons. She concluded: “The life has been absorbing, enjoyable, at times frustrating, but mostly satisfactory and given the choice if it were possible, I would choose it again as a career.”
Edition 15
Drunk! Who cares?, by A.J. Marshall and M.L. Huggett, explores the lives of habitual drinkers in Pentonville Prison. The article describes the failure of welfare systems and societal attitudes to address the root causes of alcoholism and homelessness. Through informal meetings with prisoners, they describe how many drinkers sought shelter and companionship, not necessarily sobriety. The authors advocate for self-supporting prison camps and longer sentences with meaningful work to break the cycle of arrest and release, highlighting the need for practical, empathic solutions.
Stopped press: Prison Service Journal November edition
Publication of the November edition of the Prison Service Journal is running behind due to some unavoidable printing delays. We’ll publish it as soon as we can.
Hello and goodbye
This month we welcomed Mimi Marijetic, who joined us as Policy and Communications Officer. Mimi joins us from House of Lords Library, where she supported the parliamentary research and information service, and previously served as clerk to a Circuit Judge. Her experiences have shaped her interest in access to information, fairness, and public service, and she hopes to bring both her legal and parliamentary knowledge to the role.
This new start follows the departure of our Policy and Research Officer Daisy Lutyens, who returned to New Zealand over the summer. Among many other things, Daisy contributed a great deal to our work on IPP, Offensive Weapons Homicide Reviews and evidence submissions (including this piece on recall). Thanks Daisy. It was great working with you.
News from our partners
Tomorrow evening on Radio 4, Rex Bloomstein will reflect on more than 50 years of television and radio programmes he has made about the British penal system. The programme, A Journey Behind Bars, will go out at 8pm and will be available online shortly after broadcast.
Coming up next month
Following our publication this summer of Smaller but Tougher – a report on trends in young adult justice – we are are working on the next stage of the project, exploring the reasons behind the striking race and gender disparities highlighted in the report. From next month we’ll also be sharing infographic summaries of the main findings of Smaller but Tougher, offering an alternative and accessible presentation of the trends we identified.
Support our work
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