Richard Garside

Knife crime should be treated as a public health challenge, not a policing problem, our Director, Richard Garside, tells The Guardian newspaper today.

There is renewed concern that knife violence is on the rise following the publication of the latest crime data showing a 22 percent increase in knife crime and an 11 percent rise in gun crime.

The death by shooting of a 17-year-old girl in Tottenham has raised fresh concerns about apparently rising violent crime in London.

According to official data, there were 100 suspected homicides in London in the 12 months to March 2012. The following year, it rose to 109, before falling. In the 12 months to March 2017, there were 108 suspected homicides.

Our Director, Richard Garside, spoke on last night's BBC Newsnight on the dismissal of Nick Hardwick as Chair of the Parole Board.

Richard told the programme:

It’s really important as we look forward that the independence of the Parole Board from political interference is absolutely guaranteed.

It’s really striking in his resignation letter that Nick Hardwick raises the question, effectively, of whether parliament itself should intervene to guarantee the independence of Parole Board decision-making.

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, alcohol and mental health problems, poverty and disadvantage, social antagonisms - as if they are a simple set of crime problems, be resolved through punishment'.

Our submission to the House of Commons Justice Committee inquiry into the prison population in 2022 has been published on the Committee's website.

Submitted in partnership with the analytical services organisation, Justice Episteme, our submission offers an analysis of the historical trajectory of the custodial population in England and Wales from 2003, and a projection for the period to 2022 and beyond.

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.