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The Centre for Crime and Justice Studies focuses on the education of the public around issues relating to the criminal justice system across the UK.
We seek to encourage calm, respectful and informed public dialogue, where differing positions are explored and principled differences are recognised and discussed.
We base our positions on many years’ experience in the field of criminal justice, grounded in our values as an organisation....
The centre's research on antisocial behaviour powers and young adults has been cited in the latest research from the Institute of Race Relations.
Published last summer, Antisocial behaviour powers young adults is a two-part research briefing analysing how three key antisocial behaviour powers...
Our research on stop and search has been cited in a parliamentary debate on serious violence as to the limited effectiveness of stop and search on crime reduction.
Last year's report, Young people, violence and knives evaluated recent trends in knife crime and the effectiveness of different policy responses in...
The Centre's director, Richard Garside, was quoted in the New York Times last week.
The article explores the effects of austerity on policing in the UK, where police are increasingly being used to deal with the rising numbers of non-crime-related emergency calls in the context of fewer officers and sustained budget cuts since 2010. Additionally, social services have suffered...
The Centre's director, Richard Garside, is co-signatory of a letter calling for Medway's closure.
After Panorama's revelations three years ago of the abuse taking place in G4S-run Medway secure training centre, the latest Ofsted inspection report found that pain-inducing restraint techniques are still being used.
The letter is part of a wider campaign against child imprisonment led...
The Fifteenth Special Report, Controlling dangerous dogs, has used the Centre's research briefing, Anti-social behaviour powers and young adults (2018) to inform its review of the effectiveness of the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991.
In relation to dog-related anti-social behaviour, our briefing found that:
...in a sample of 73 local authorities, the single biggest category for issuing a CPN (29%) to young persons was for animal related reasons and of those, most were dog related
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The Centre's director, Richard Garside, is co-signatory to a letter in Sunday's Guardian criticising police use of so-called 'drill-injunctions'.
The letter calls on the Metropolitan Police to desist with issuing injunctions for drill music, stating that such measures are counterproductive and a threat to freedom of expression.
The private developer that owns the Territorial Army site next to Holloway prison is now stating they can offer only 30 per cent of their development for affordable housing, reports the Islington Tribune.
This is despite the 50 per cent minimum set by Islington Council.
Islington Council and the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government won a landmark case last year against the developer which was trying to override the council’s affordable housing requirements in residential...
Susan McVie, Ellie Bates and Rebecca Pillinger recently published their research findings on violence reduction in Glasgow and London on the LSE blog.
The findings support our own research, presented in Young people, violence and knives, a briefing we published in November examining knife violence...
In November, we launched the campaign to end child imprisonment along with Article 39, Howard League for Penal Reform, INQUEST, Just for Kids Law and the National Association for Youth Justice.
The latest from the campaign is a comment piece on the serious case review of abuse and use of dangerous restraint at G4S-run Medway secure training centre. The case review was published earlier this week and was launched after Panorama had exposed the conditions at the centre in 2016.
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The Centre's director, Richard Garside, is co-signatory of a letter to Minister of Justice David Gauke.
The letter, mentioned in the weekend's Observer, expresses concern over the decision to re-let Community Rehabilitation Company (CRC) contracts. ...
The Centre for Crime and Justice Studies and the Harm & Evidence Research Collaborative at The Open University, in partnership with Professor Joe Sim of Liverpool John Moores University, will be holding a major conference on prison abolition in the UK in 2019.
The conference will be on Thursday 23 and Friday 24 May, at The Open University campus in Milton Keynes.
The prison system in the UK is in ongoing, systemic crisis. While politicians pay lip service to the need to reduce prisoner numbers, further growth and expansion are far more likely...
