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Julia Sudbury examines how grassroots campaigning is set to transform criminal justice in the US.
This article is republished from Issue 77, Sept 2009 of Criminal Justice Matters and is available to view in full here.
On 19 November 2015, the Centre hosted an academic roundtable discussion - 'Is criminal justice reform obsolete?'. We heard from Dr Bree Carlton (Monash University, Australia) and Dr Erica Meiners (Northeastern Illinois University, USA). They explored the relationships between reform, decarceration and the longer term goals of achieving structural change and ending the use of imprisonment and criminal justice.
William R Wood questions whether restorative practices operate as an alternative to incarceration and reduce prison rates.
Helen Mills assesses the Community Order and Suspended Sentence Order
Last week the British Academy published a new report on addressing high prison numbers
Helen Mills and Rebecca Roberts consider the opportunities and challenges for progressive penal reform followed by responses from George Mair, Jamie Bennett and Mick Ryan.
Helen Mills questions claims that community sentences cut prison numbers.
We held an event at our offices to share the findings from the first stage of the Reform Sector Strategies project. The project intends to generate a forward looking dialogue about the development of coherent and credible approaches to tackle penal expansion and think through the challenge of reducing the prison population in the longer term.
As the population in custody in England and Wales hits a record high, a report from the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies questions the role of community sentences in controlling or reducing prison numbers. Community sentences: a solution to penal excess? argues that there are inherent limits to what community sentences can achieve beyond relatively minor adjustments to the numbers in custody.
At a time of spending cuts and continued increases to inequality, a new report argues the prison population is likely to rise further, despite the coalition's expressed aim to contain and manage prison numbers. Reducing the numbers in custody argues that the key levers for reducing record high prison numbers are located in wider social and economic policy and not in changes to community sentences or reforms to criminal justice policy.
