eBulletin, 29 April 2022
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We had a short break in our regular eBulletin cycle as members of the staff group took some leave over the Easter period.
We have returned with a bit of a bang. Yesterday we published our new report on the injustices of joint enterprise prosecutions and convictions. Despite a Supreme Court ruling in 2016 that the rules on joint enterprise had been misapplied for three decades, we found no discernible impact on the numbers that continue to prosecuted. The report was covered in yesterday's Guardian. More on all of this below.
Also this week, our staff and trustees have been continuing work on the development of a new strategy to guide our activities over the rest of this decade, as we approach our 100th anniversary in 2031.
We pride ourselves in our capacity to produce high-quality innovative research and policy recommendations, often developed in collaboration with others, that have the potential to foster meaningful change. This week's joint enterprise report is a good example. We also take seriously our public education role, drawing on and sharing the knowledge, experience and expertise of others to widen understanding of crime and criminal justice. Our flagship Last month in criminal justice monthly programme is a good example.
How we might best balance these two different ways of working – generating new knowledge and sharing existing knowledge – or whether we should prioritise one of these over the other, has become a central question for us. If you have some thoughts on this, do let me know. And in the meantime, the staff and trustees will continue to clarify options, with a view to launching a new strategy in the summer.
Richard Garside
Director
Out now
Six years on from a Supreme Court ruling that the rules on joint enterprise had been wrongly applied, our latest report suggests that there has been no discernible impact on joint enterprise prosecutions. We produced the report – The usual suspects – in partnership with the campaign group JENGbA, and with the financial support of the Barrow Cadbury Trust.
In 2016 the Supreme Court ruled that joint enterprise rules had been wrongly applied for three decades. Despite this, we found *no discernible impact* on the number of joint enterprise prosecutions and convictions. It has been known for some years that Black defendants, particularly young Black men, are more likely to be prosecuted under joint enterprise rules. We found that, if anything, the problem has got worse in recent years.
The usual suspects calls for the House of Commons Justice Committee to investigate joint enterprise prosecutions and convictions. It also recommends that the Crown Prosecution Service commit to proper data collection, and undertakes a review of past joint enterprise prosecutions.
Download The usual suspects here.
Check out The Guardian's coverage of the report.
Coming up
We currently run two regular monthly webinar programmes:
- Last month in criminal justice: our panel discussion on the first Wednesday of each month, looking at all the key criminal justice developments over the previous month.
- Lunch with...: our mid-month conversation with interesting and inspiring campaigners, practitioners and thinkers.
For our next Lunch with... programme, on Wednesday, 18 May we're delighted to be joined by Alex S. Vitale, Professor of Sociology and Coordinator of the Policing and Social Justice Project at Brooklyn College and the City University of New York Graduate Center, and a Visiting Professor at London Southbank University. He has spent the last 30 years writing about policing and consults both police departments and human rights organisations internationally. He is the author of City of Disorder: How the Quality of Life Campaign Transformed New York Politics and The End of Policing.
Before that, on Wednesday, 4 May, our director Richard Garside will be joined by Andrew Neilson from the Howard League, Hannah Quirk from King's College London and Deborah Sangster from StopWatch. Items up for discussion include:
- Do police powers to stop and search citizens require fundamental reform?
- A new report warning that the number of children in prison could double in the next few years.
- Are prisons failing to tackle radicalisation?
- Are our courts facing a perfect storm of a lengthy backlog in cases and a barristers' strike?
- Why is it so difficult to get meaningful reform to the rules on joint enterprise prosecutions?
You can find out more about all our current programmes and events, and book your place, on our events page.
Catch-up
This month, we had Lunch with... Charlie Weinberg of Safe Ground. If you missed the programme, or want to revisit it, you can catch-up with it here.
Also this month, on the April edition of Last month in criminal justice, Richard was joined by criminal justice consultant Rob Allen, Jess Southgate from Agenda, and Rick Muir from the Police Foundation. Among items they discussed were the strip searching of Child Q; why so many prisoners are languishing on remand; and whether the police need fundamental reform. Catch-up on the full programme here.
Commentary and analysis
Andy Mouncey, founder of Run for You Life CIC criticises "‘look at me’ campaigning and preaching to the converted", in the latest article in our 'Escaping the monotony' series of comment pieces. Read them all here.
“Mike, probation in Ukraine, nothing like this". Mike Guilfoyle writes on an interesting experience supervising Ilya.
From the archive: With concerns growing that we might be on the cusp of a big rise in the number of children in prison, here's a piece by our research director, Roger Grimshaw, on why we need to end child imprisonment.
Eye on criminal justice
A review by the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) concluded that police misuse of stop and search powers was causing "trauma" and that the problem of racial bias and stereotyping went beyond a few officers. One case cited by the IOPC was of a teenager stopped 60 times in two years from the age of 14. Also this month, the IOPC concluded that five police officers involved in the stop, search and handcuffing of champion athlete Bianca Williams should face gross misconduct charges.
The number of children in prison could double by 2024, according to a report out this month from the National Audit Office (NAO). The NAO forecast is based on an assessment of the collective impact of recruiting more than 20,000 additional police officers, reversing the Covid-19 courts backlog, and tougher sentencing following the passing of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022.
The Ministry of Justice announced plans for an expansion of close supervision centres: high security units within prisons. The announcement was made as part of a response to a report by Jonathan Hall QC, the Independent Review of Terrorism Legislation, who warned that prisons had failed to recognise the dangers posed by religiously-inspired extremism.
“The court system is creaking and there needs to be coherent, consistent planning to fix it”, the Chair of the House of Commons Justice Committee, Sir Bob Neill, claimed this month. Sir Bob made his comments on the launch of a new Justice Committee report on court capacity and the backlog in cases. Among its recommendations, the Committee called for a strengthened inspection regime and a clear plan to improve and maintain the court estate.
We’ll be discussing these, and other developments, in the May edition of Last month in criminal justice.
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