Our January eBulletin is now out
WHAT HAVE WE BEEN UP TO?
Helping them with their inquiries
The Centre's Director, Richard Garside, gave evidence to the House of Commons Justice Committee on 28th January as part of their inquiry into crime reduction policies. We submitted written evidence and you can watch the evidence session on the parliament website. Richard also wrote a piece for the openDemocracy website on why the most effective policies for promoting greater safety are not badged as 'crime reduction' nor delivered by a man in a uniform. Read all about it here.
Lifting the lid on Pandora’s box
The Centre's Rebecca Roberts and Helen Mills kick off our Justice Matters for Women initiative with a comment piece on the limitations of criminal justice in reducing the harms experienced by women. They argue that at its best criminal justice is about firefighting; at its worst it throws more fuel on the fire. In collaboration with Women in Prison we are publishing a series of comment pieces and holding a workshop on 26th March to consider what downsizing criminal justice means for women. Rebecca Roberts also attended the Fabian Women's Network event on restorative justice and the challenges involved in tackling violence against women.
Let's get radical
Work continues on our Justice Matters initiative, promoting radical alternatives to criminal justice. We want to hear from you on how this work should develop so do please complete our online consultation. We are holding a CCJS MEMBERS ONLY event prior to our AGM on Wednesday 5th February. The following month, on March 24th, there will be an event open to all comers. We hope to see you at one or other of them, or both.
Accentuate the positive
Arianna Silvestri and Will McMahon attended the fourth gathering of the European Prison Observatory in Athens at the beginning of January. A database of prison conditions in the partner nations is being established and the findings from each national study are to be merged into a final report for EU policy makers to consider. The project is also considering what positive practices can ameliorate poor prison conditions and improve prisoners’ human rights. If you are aware of any such initiatives please let us know by emailing arianna.silvestri@crimeandjustice.org.uk. Find out more about the project here.
More from the 'justice specialists'
There's been a tonne of commentary and analysis on crime stats and criminal justice policy this month. Richard Garside refuted claims that the criminal justice system needs to toughen up, arguing in a comment piece on our website that it is more punitive, harsh and dehumanising than ever. Richard was quoted in a Channel 4 FactCheck. An editorial in The Guardian examined the reasons for the falling crime rates, arguing that this is not down to police intervention but rather designing out crime by better lit streets and improved security measures. The online version of the editorial includes a link to the Centre's UK Justice Policy Review website, with a link on the words 'justice specialists'. (Thank you, The Guardian!). It's all summarised here.
Criminology: White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant?
We ran a plain English competition this month after being bamboozled by references to 'hegemonic epistomologies' and the 'tendency to over-write the metropolitan experiences of the Northern hemisphere' in the conference blurb for the forthcoming British Society of Criminology Conference. You can read the entries here.
COMING SOON
BOOK NOW: The problem with the 'gang' label
On 3rd March 2014 we'll be hearing from Patrick Williams of Manchester Metropolitan University on the criminalisation of Black men and 'gang' label is dangerous and counterproductive. Register now for this free event. Last month Jon Shute and Juanjo Medina wrote a comment piece for our website arguing that the government's gang strategy is 'shameful and appalling'.
BOOK NOW: How violent is Britain?
We are looking forward to the 'How violent is Britain?' conference, organised in collaboration with the University of Liverpool and taking place on Friday 16 May 2014. The event will explore how state, institutional and corporate violence in Britain should be tackled. Check out the line up and book your place on the event webpage. Price: £20 waged, £5 low income. Venue: University of Liverpool.
HAVE YOU SEEN?
The coming probation disaster
Find out why the probation privatisation plans look set to be an implementation disaster, in this comment piece on our website.
To infinity and beyond...
In response to the UK Statistics Authority's decision to downgrade the 'offical' status of police recorded crime figures, Nic Groombridge argues that the amount of 'crime' is infinite and flexible. More crime can be created through new laws and reduced by legalising the formerly illegal.
Gambling with public safety
Former probation officer Mike Guilfoyle assesses the privatisation of the probation service and argues that current plans are akin to 'corporate vandalism'. This comment piece can be found on the Works for Freedom website. It was originally published on openDemocracy.
TAKE A LOOK AT THIS....
Vive la révolution!
Women's imprisonment was placed under the spotlight by the New Statesman where Rachel Halford, director of Women in Prison, calls for a 'a complete abolition of the women’s prison estate as it exists today'. The Feminist Wire also published articles this month from Angela Y Davis and Mumia Abu Jamal on 'Alternatives to the present system of capitalist injustice' and another from Beth E Richie on 'How anti-violence activism taught me to be a prison abolitionist'. If abolition is your bag, then you might like this resource for community organising and transformative justice as well as this handbook, Instead of Prisons. For links to all the articles, click here.
Economics, law and crime
Publisher Taylor and Francis has collated a series of articles tackling questions of political economy and criminal justice. Many of the articles featured were published originally in our very own Criminal Justice Matters magazine. Elsewhere, check out the January issue of the Annals of the American Society of Political and Social Science for a fascinating collection of articles on criminal justice and inequality in the United States (subscription required).
Ignoring logic and evidence
There is a shaky evidence base for incredibly long sentences (100 years plus), Siddhartha Bandyopadhyay, Senior Lecturer in Economics at the University of Birmingham argues in a recent post on The Conversation.
IN THE NEWS......
Boris goes all Tarantino
The Mayor of London had a Pulp Fiction moment this month. The police should 'get medieval' with rioters, he told London Assembly members. He also dismissed concerns over the Metropolitan Police deploying water cannon. They already had 'much more violent' weapons at their disposal, so what was all the fuss about? Read it all here.
The injustices of incarceration
A new report from Women for Refugee Women highlights the plight of refugee women locked up in the UK, with rape and torture a common experience prior to reaching Britain. In a separate report, the Care Quality Commission has said that it is 'a serious cause for concern' that so many people admitted informally to a mental hospital for treatment were subsequently detained. According to The Guardian, over 50,000 people were detained under the Mental Health Act in England during 2012-13, up 12 per cent in five years. Read more here.
Immigration detainee 'died in handcuffs'
Suffering from dementia and judged unfit to be in detention, a man of 84 has died while in handcuffs at Harmondsworth Immigration Removal Centre.
Going Dutch
The Ministry of Justice in The Netherlands wants to introduce a charge on prisoners of 16 Euros a day for up to two years - giving the phrase 'going Dutch' a whole new meaning.
Greek prison system collapsing
Austerity has hit the Greek prison system hard, with reports of gross overcrowding and appalling conditions of detention.
NUMBERS OF THE MONTH
93 - The number of deaths with a known or suspected 'racial element' since 1999, according the new Investigated or Ignored report from the Institute of Race Relations.
305 - of under 18s detained in police custody in the first 11 months of 2013 under the Mental Health Act because police officers said they did not have anywhere else to take them. Community Care magazine.
26,000 - The number of children under the age of 14 stopped and searched by Scottish police in one year.
$6million - The amount the Chief Executive of GEO, the US group behind the Harmondsworth Immigration Removal Centre near Heathrow, was paid last year.
QUOTE OF THE MONTH
The British crime map doesn't feature corporate crime, so it's a bit like a British flood map that registers only bathroom floods.
— Gary Slapper (@garyslapper) December 28, 2013
'How can the vicious circle of mass incarceration be broken? Much of the political significance of incarceration lies in its intimate connection with extreme poverty. Because of its social and economic effects and because of the sense of injustice it fuels, incarceration adds mightily to the social distance between the poor and the affluent.' Bruce Western, 'Incarceration, inequality and imagining alternatives' (subscription required).
HEADLINE MALFUNCTION OF THE MONTH
The Independent had a spot of bother distinguishing between the private school system and crime. Or was it a political statement?
CARTOON OF THE MONTH
We liked this Steve Bell cartoon of Chris Grayling and the disturbances at HMP Oakwood. In this coverage from the BBC it was claimed that prisoners in Oakwood have been 'treated like animals'.