The Centre for Crime and Justice Studies is embarking on a new, long-term programme.
The new programme, with the working title After Prison, is grounded in a simple proposition: there is always a better way to use a particular piece of land than as a place for a prison.
Over the coming months and years, we plan to work with a wide range of partners – local,...
This month, the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies is embarking on a new, long-term programme, a commitment we freely acknowledge could run for many years.
Our long-term project looking at how the land currently occupied by prisons might be better used for the benefit of local communities.
There are at least two ways of thinking about the prisons crisis and about what it would mean to get out the crisis.
First, we can think about the prison crisis as a crisis in prisons...
The Centre for Crime and Justice Studies has welcomed today’s report from the House of Commons Justice Committee on the government’s prison planning approach.
The report – Prison Population 2022: planning the future – finds that the government’s current approach to planning and funding future prison accommodation is inefficient, ineffective, and unsustainable.
Speaking today, the Centre’s Director, Richard Garside, said:...
We are saddened to announce that the conference, Prison Abolition in the UK, planned for 23 and 24 May, has been cancelled.
Unfortunately, one of our conference partners has, in recent weeks, been subjected to concerted pressure by those intent on disrupting the conference. In the circumstances, they felt they had no option but to pull out.
As an organisation, the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies walks the...
Whether there are too many people sent to prison can be debated, but that there are too many people in prison for the system to manage decently is generally agreed. Little by way of improvement in...
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...
October's Treasury Budget announcement confirmed the construction of two new mega prisons as part of the Prison Estates Transformation Programme, Corporate Watch reports.
The programme plans to build six new prisons altogether, whilst the two confirmed in the budget will be built on the HMP Wellinborough and HMP Glen Parva sites and will create 4,000 new prison places.
Our former Senior Policy Associate, Rebecca Roberts, has previously...
Our Director, Richard Garside, gave evidence to the Justice Committee earlier today as part of the Prison Population 2022: planning for the future inquiry.
Key questions were asked about:
A clip of the proceedings can be found below....
Once the envy of the world, UK crime and punishment policies have lost all semblance of what is smart or humane to do about crime. As always, the bureaucracy and its chorus line want to hire more...
Our Director Richard spoke about the prisons crisis at a meeting of the Friends of Le Monde Diplomatique earlier this week.
Richard said that that 'the prisons crisis is not, fundamentally, a crisis in prisons: one that can be resolved if the right reforms, the right action, is taken. It is a crisis of prisons: of our unbending attempts to treat a complex set of social problems - violence, drug,...
