Comment
Decriminalisation of drug use and dissent at the UN
For all of the glaring omissions in the final outcome document of April’s United Nations General...
News
Impact of alternatives to custody examined
The relationship between sentencing practices and the official crime rate was discussed last week at a packed event hosted by the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies.
The event – Alternatives to custody: Data and policy perspectives – was organised jointly with the...
Comment
Michael Gove and the future of electronic monitoring
The hubristically named 'New World' electronic montoring (EM) strategy, devised by the Conservative-led Coalition Government back in 2012, was a commercial, technological and penal fiasco and there is nothing to be regretted about its passing.
Comment
Cheaper and just as good?
This is the second of four pieces we are publishing, the product of a partnership with the University of Birmingham, discussing correlations between police recorded crime, criminal justice...
Comment
Digging into the data on crime and punishment
This is the first of four pieces we are publishing, the product of a partnership with the University of Birmingham, discussing correlations between police recorded crime, criminal justice activity...
News
Can community sentences cut prisoner numbers?
Catherine Heard, Policy and Research Associate at the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, writing for the Probation Quarterly asks why the increased use of community sentences did not lead to a...
Comment
Discussing alternatives to criminal justice
As part of the Justice Matters project we asked people to tell us what they would build in place of criminal justice to deal with the social harms that affect society. This is a challenging...
News
Alternatives to custody: national workshops
These workshops, held on 10 June and 23 September, aimed to explore why the UK's substantial use of alternatives to custody in recent years has had no effect on prisoner numbers. We wanted to identify examples of good practice, as...
News
Expanding the net of criminalisation
Catherine Heard, the Centre's Research and Policy Associate, has described how community sentences have failed to cut prisoner numbers.
In a guest blog on the CLINKS website,...
News
Community sentences failing to cut prisoner numbers
The Centre for Crime and Justice Studies has published a new on-line report, Community sentences since 2000. How they work – and why they have...
Publication
Community sentences since 2000
This report is published under our Alternatives to Custody in Europe project, which takes a detailed look at alternatives across eight EU member states. The report outlines the key policy developments since 2000 in our prison population and use of alternatives, in all three UK jurisdictions. It...
Comment
Who will benefit from more GPS surveillance?
Vera Baird, QC, Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) for Northumbria, has...