Statement on the Criminal Justice Alliance

The Centre for Crime and Justice Studies was a founding member of the Criminal Justice Alliance. We helped to establish the Alliance because we recognise the importance of organisations working together to challenge unnecessary criminalisation and champion progressive reforms.

The Centre is currently engaged in a number of challenging and significant pieces of work. This includes:

• Our Justice Matters programme, promoting holistic, social solutions to those challenges wrongly treated as crime problems.
• Our UK Justice Policy Review series of reports and events, which informs public understanding of criminal justice developments across the UK.
• The One Small Thing project, bringing trauma informed practice to prisons and community settings.
• Working with local residents to develop a community plan for the land occupied by the now closed Holloway Prison in North London.
• Working with spied on individuals and communities to ensure their voice is heard by the Pitchford Inquiry into Undercover Policing.

We are also midway through a three-year strategy, which commits us to raising awareness of the harmful effects of criminalisation: on individuals, their families, communities and society more generally.

We respect the work of the Criminal Justice Alliance and recognise the value many of its members place in it.

We have concluded that our ongoing membership of what has become a loose grouping of organisations, with often conflicting positions on a range of important criminal justice questions, is not the best means for us to press for the changes we consider are necessary. We have therefore decided not to renew our membership of the Alliance.

We will continue to build effective and durable partnerships and coalitions with like-minded organisations to achieve real and sustained change to criminal justice and related policy areas.

We are also committed to maintaining good relations with the Criminal Justice Alliance and its members. We will leave open the option of rejoining it at a future date.