eBulletin, 28 March 2024
Our latest eBulletin, sent out subscribers on Thursday, 28 March. Sign-up for our free eBulletins here.
The first few months of 2024 have flown by for me and the team at the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies.
Whether in parliament or in the TV studios, writing reports or commenting on the latest developments, my colleagues and I have barely had time to draw breath, never mind tell our many supporters what we have been up to.
So my apologies for the relative radio silence over the last few months. It is not for lack of things to talk about, as this bumper eBulletin shows.
Looking ahead, we are planning new programmes, formats and activities, and gearing up to recruit additional staff, to improve our capacity to inform public understanding of crime and criminal justice and press for meaningful change and reform. More on these plans soon.
In the meantime, thank you for your ongoing support for and interest in our work.
Richard Garside
Director
Our work in parliament
Reform of joint enterprise
Last November we hosted a private roundtable on joint enterprise. Over a couple of hours we drew up the outlines of a plan that led to the Joint Enterprise (Significant Contribution) Bill, presented to parliament by the Labour MP, Kim Johnson, last month.
Kim Johnson’s Bill proposed changing the law, so that only those deemed to have made a significant contribution to a crime could be prosecuted for that crime. Under the current ‘joint enterprise’ laws, many relative bystanders to serious crimes can end up being prosecuted as if they were the main perpetrator.
This team effort, involving us, JENGbA, lawyers, policy specialists, researchers and more, attracted a lot of attention and support. The Guardian, Independent, Daily Mirror and Times were among the media outlets that covered the reform plans. More importantly, Kim Johnson’s Bill attracted cross-party support in parliament.
During the parliamentary debate on 2 February, Kim Johnson gave a number of examples of unjust convictions under the current joint enterprise rules, including one case where, as she explained, ‘The judge told the court room... “There is no evidence. I can't say you were at the scene or you carried a knife, there’s no DNA, no eyewitnesses. I don't have a role for you, but I’m going to... give you an 18-year... sentence”’
Watch Kim Johnson sharing examples of Joint Enterprise injustices here and here.
Ministers, it appears, are happy with the current situation, and refused government support for a change in the law. A further attempt will be made to reform the law on joint enterprise, through an amendment to the Criminal Justice Bill in the near future.
We are continuing to work on this issue – including the production of a podcast with our friends, JENGbA, as well as a new report – and will be looking for further opportunities for reform of joint enterprise either side of the General Election.
For more on our work on joint enterprise reform, check out our website.
Reform of the Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) sentence
In February and March, we joined forces with ten other organisations, to press for reform of the IPP sentence.
In 2022, the House of Commons Justice Committee called for a comprehensive approach to tackling the IPP scandal, chiefly through a resentencing exercise overseen by an independent panel. Last year, the government rejected this recommendation on the grounds of public protection and opposed an amendment by the Justice Committee chair, Sir Bob Neill, a widely respected Conservative MP, on IPP resentencing to the Victims and Prisoners Bill. A similar amendment, tabled earlier this month by Baroness Fox in the House of Lords, was also rejected by the government.
Read about our work to reform the IPP sentence here.
Over the next few months we will be working with others to map out a fresh agenda for IPP reform, keeping up the pressure in the run-up to and following the General Election later this year.
Evidence to the Justice Committee
In January, our Director, Richard, gave evidence to the House of Commons Justice Committee, as part of its inquiry into the future prison population and prison capacity. Among the subjects discussed was the government’s plans to send prisoners overseas, to reduce the pressure on places in the prisons across England and Wales. Richard said he did not think it was a serious proposal, and pointed out there were far more effective ways of relieving the pressure on prison places, including a far more energetic approach to releasing IPP prisoners languishing in prison long after the period set by the court at their trial.
You can watch the Justice Committee evidence session here.
For an overview of the drivers of growth of the prison population over recent years, check out this handy primer on the main factors.
Our work in the media
We work regularly with journalists on crime and criminal justice issues, with much of this work happening behind the scenes. We also appear in the media and contribute to shaping and informing public understanding of crime and criminal justice. Recent highlights include:
- In February, our head of programmes, Helen Mills, spoke about the need to reform the laws on joint enterprise on BBC Radio Four. Unfortunately, the BBC's rather too aggressive, in our view, tendency to remove content from its site after only a few weeks means we can’t share a link. But we are trying to track down a copy and will share it if we do.
- In February, in the run-up to the House of Lords debates on the reform of the IPP sentence, our director, Richard, wrote an article for the Morning Star, calling on Labour to ‘summon the spirit of ’45’ and back meaningful reform.
- Following the conviction of Scarlet Blake for the murder of Jorge Martin Carreno, the police confirmed that Blake’s crime would be recorded as having been perpetrated by a woman. This was because Blake, a male, identifies as a woman. Our director, Richard, was approached by The Daily Telegraph to explain why it is a problem when offences perpetrated by males are recorded as if they are perpetrated by females. You can read Richard's full article here, and a summary of his argument here.
- A few Sundays ago, Richard had to set his alarm clock extra early, to appear on the BBC One programme, Sunday Morning Live. He was there to debate the question: ‘should we send fewer people in prison’. Richard and the Howard League's Andrea Coomber were up against retired police office Peter Bleksley, and solicitor, Ayesha Nayyar. Watch it here and make up your own mind.
Reports, articles and commentary
How to resolve the IPP crisis for good
In February, our five-point-plan to resolve the 21-year injustice of the Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) sentence once and for all was covered by the Mail, Independent, Evening Standard and Times Radio, among other outlets.
Described as the “greatest single stain” on the UK’s criminal justice system, the IPP was partially abolished in 2012. Yet nearly 3,000 IPP prisoners remain behind bars today, because the 2012 abolition was not retrospective.
Our five-point-plan, published in our latest report – How to resolve the IPP crisis for good – calls on the government to:
- Release the most distressed prisoners on compassionate grounds.
- Launch a recovery and reparations programme for IPP prisoners.
- Ease restrictions for over-tariff IPP prisoners still in custody.
- Commit to review all forms of preventive detention.
- Complete a resentencing exercise for all those under an IPP as soon as possible.
Download How to resolve the IPP crisis for good here.
Articles
Elsewhere on our website check out the latest editions of Prison Service Journal (PSJ).
In this General Election year, the January edition (PSJ 270) includes an article by Gregory Davies and Robert Jones on the barriers to voting faced by prisoners – such as remand prisoners – despite being eligible to vote. Also in PSJ 270:
- Claudia Vince and Emily Evison on female prisoners’ experience of long-term imprisonment, and
- an interview with Pia Sinha, who joined the Prison Reform Trust as CEO in 2023, after a 24-year career working the prison service.
Among the articles in the March edition (PSJ 271) are:
- Jon Yates on what works in reducing knife crime, and
- Georgia Barnett, Helen Wakeling and Lisa Short on improving outcomes for young adults in prison and on probation.
You can find all of these articles, and much more, on the PSJ page on our website.
If you want to give your brain even more of a workout, there’s more content than you can shake a stick at in the British Journal of Criminology, which we publish in partnership with an independent Editorial Board of some of the finest scholars in the world and Oxford University Press. Recent articles include:
- Thomas Guiney on the politics of crime
- Ben Crewe on how prisoners cope with long-term imprisonment
- Kitty Limperopoulou on ethnic inequalities in sentencing
- Hannah Marshall on county lines exploitation of children
- Hannah Smithson and Deborah Jump on the impact of COVID-19 on the youth custodial estate
- Nicola Renehan and David Gadd on working with domestic violence perpetrators on probation
Members of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies benefit from a highly-discounted subscription to the British Journal of Criminology. If you are a member and want to know more, drop us a line.
Commentary
Earlier in March, members of the House of Lords debated a series of amendments to the Victims and Prisoners Bill, aimed at reforming the IPP sentence. The number of amendments, and the arcane procedures in the House of Lords, left many of us scratching our heads. Luckily for us, parliamentary expert Charley Allan has written this overview of what took place and what to look out for now.
A year after his death in 2022, the first annual lecture in memory Lord Ramsbotham, the former chief inspector of prisons (and much else besides), was held on 29 November 2023. Sir Bob Neill MP, chair of the House of Commons Justice Committee, spoke about Lord Ramsbotham’s work on prison reform. Richard Burgon MP, former shadow Justice Secretary, spoke about Lord Rambotham’s work on probation. The lecture was introduced and chaired by Mary Glindon MP.
We were delighted to be approached by the organisers to host the lecture. You can find it here.
We’re always on the look-out for new writing talent for our comment pages. One of our latest recruits is Katelyn Owens, a PhD student in sociology at the University of Kent, studying the impact of gentrification on the sexual geographies of King’s Cross in London and Pigalle in Paris. So far, Katelyn has written three articles for us, reflecting on her experiences working with prisoners and those in the community in the United States and in France. You can find them all here.
Save the date
Our next Annual General Meeting (members only) will be in the late afternoon/early evening of Tuesday, 14 May. On the same evening, straight after, we will be holding our annual event, open to all.
More details in due course. In the meantime, if you want to get in the mood, check out our 2023 annual event – Hope and Change: Campaigning for a better future – a conversation between Gloria Morrison of JENGbA, Sara Ramsden of UNGRIPP, Marcia Rigg of UFFC and our then Chair of Trustees, Charlie Weinberg.
Change at the top
In December we bade a fond farewell to our chair of trustees, Charlie Weinberg, who stood down after more than eight years as a trustee, six of them as chair. Elaine Player, Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at King’s College London, has taken on the chairing role.
We were also delighted to welcome three new trustees – Ruth Bloomfield, Bronwen Frow Jones and Paul Weatherstone – who joined the trustee board from the start of 2024.
Support our work
In the last 12 months, around one pound in every ten we received in income came from individual donations. We are so appreciative of the vital support we receive from our donors and supporters.
If you like what we do, and can afford to make a donation to support our important work, we would be very grateful.
You can also spread the word about our work by forwarding on this bulletin to others and encouraging them to sign up.