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Reflecting on the events of 2017 and looking ahead to 2018, our Director, Richard Garside, said:
2017 has been one of the busiest years for the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies. We have published more than 20 reports, briefings and journal editions. We have held more than 20 events. We have met with ministers and government officials and our work has been cited in parliament.
Criminal justice across the UK has got smaller, but tougher, over recent years, according to a new briefing from the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies. While recorded crime, prosecutions and convictions have all fallen over the past decade, a 'justice dividend' has yet to be realised in the number of people in prison, which have continued to rise.
Holloway Prison Stories and Reclaim Holloway have released a short film making the case for a women’s building to be part of any future development of the former Holloway prison site in North London.
The film features interviews with women affected by the criminal justice system and women who provided support to those in Holloway.
Our submission to the House of Commons Justice Committee inquiry into 'Transforming Rehabilitation' has now been published on the Committee's website.
Whatever the government's original intentions, we argue in the submission, the Transforming Rehabilitation programme 'is sabotaging, rather than transforming, probation work across England and Wales'.
Commenting on the National Audit Office report, Investigation into changes to Community Rehabilitation Company Contracts, out today, the Director of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, Richard Garside, said:
The government admitted some months ago that it had bailed out the struggling private probation companies. Thanks to the National Audit Office, we now know that the bail-out was worth a third of a billion pounds. It is unlikely to be the last bail-out the government will make before the current contracts come to an end in early 2022.
Richard Garside, Director of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies today (Thursday, 14 December 2017) commented on a damning annual report by the Chief Inspector of Probation, Dame Glenys Stacey.
'None of government’s stated aspirations for Transforming Rehabilitation have been met in any meaningful way', Dame Glenys noted. She went on to question whether the current model for probation can deliver sufficiently well'.
Speaking today, Richard said:
Our latest report, out today, reveals new evidence on the extent of unnecessary criminal record checks. Based on Freedom of Information Act requests, Criminal record checks: is the volume of disclosures proportionate?, finds that nearly three quarters of the million or so convictions revealed to employers each year in criminal records checks related to offences that were more than a decade old.
We've had a busy few weeks in the media, making interventions on a range of matters, from youth prisons to criminal records, knife violence, to the state of the probation service.
Our forthcoming briefing on criminal record checks is covered in this morning's Observer newspaper.
In October, we called on the London mayor, Sadiq Khan, to bid for the now closed Holloway prison site, in a joint letter signed by several other organisations and individuals. In the letter, we argued that a successful bid 'could set a benchmark for the disposal of prison sites and public land in London and across the country'.