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Michael Gove is a refreshing change from his predecessor as Justice Secretary, Richard Garside writes. But he should leave out the God-talk.
Police officers are concerned their work won’t get picked up by other struggling public services, argues Richard Garside. But that’s for politicians to deal with.
On Friday, 25 September, the preliminary findings of research led by economist Siddhartha Bandyopadhyay on the relative effectiveness of non-custodial sentences will be presented at a workshop at the University of Birmingham.
There will also be talks by:
The deployment of Public Defender Service lawyers to beat a solicitors boycott shows how austerity can make for some surprising political choices
The fourth in an annual series by the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, supported by The Hadley Trust, tracking year-on-year developments in criminal justice and social welfare across the UK.
Combining analysis of the main developments with key data on issues such as spending, staffing and the numbers going through the criminal justice system, UK Justice Policy Review offers an accessible overview of UK-wide developments.
The Director of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, Richard Garside, today said that Pentonville Prison in North London should be demolished, with affordable housing for Londoners built in its place.
His comments follow another grim report by the Chief Inspector of Prisons, which found that prisoners were placed in filthy cells and that levels of violence had almost doubled in under two years.
Richard said:
A review of mental health crisis care in England and Wales by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) has found that the police are regularly the first point of contact for those in mental distress.
Nightime is often the peak time for acute mental health episodes, the report found, with many mental health services geared to operate during the day. As a result the police were often left operating as first responders to those in crisis.
On this site a couple of weeks ago, Professor Tim Hope called for a major overhaul of the Crime Survey for England and Wales. The current survey, he argued, is 'much better at not measuring crime than it is at measuring crime’s true extent, which is no doubt why policy-makers have come to rely upon it so much'.
Police recorded crime will remain compromised for as long as the police collate the data, Richard Garside argues.
Our director, Richard Garside, was on The One Show on BBC One yesterday talking about the challenges faced by cuts in police budgets.
'There is no more deterrent from the police just being around,' Richard said, 'than if you have more nurses and people will be deterred from being ill'.
For more on police budget cuts, read this comment piece by Richard Garside.
