The Corston Independent Funders’ Coalition (CIFC) has today launched its revised Statement of Purpose (SoP).

The SoP will tell the next government that the Coalition is renewing its commitment to working in partnership with many of our funded partners and other kindred organisations and funders “to realise a world where women experience justice, fairness, safety, and equitable treatment within a justice system which values their rights and needs”.

 The focus of this collaboration has been expanded to include all stages in which women are in contact with or at risk of contact with the justice system, including early intervention work. The Coalition is also exploring whether prevention work with girls should be a focus to enable it to realise the recommendations set out by Baroness Corston in her seminal report in 2007, which advocated for ‘a radical new approach, treating women both holistically and individually – a woman-centred approach’.  

The coalition is currently ten full members and four supportive funders, including Barrow Cadbury, who are friends of the CIFC, and its next steps are to build working groups and pilot projects to deliver on its four objectives which are: 

1. Adoption of good practice grant making approaches and techniques bysharing learning and advocating for women within its own Trusts and Foundations and funder networks. 
2. Identifying and implementing good and promising practice, sharing key learning with practitioners, funders, and decision makers.
3. Identifying emerging issues facing women in the criminal justice system and the organisations that support them and leveraging the heft, legacy, and expertise of the Coalition to work with and alongside those partners to secure improvements to local and national legislation, policy, and practice.
4. Mobilising its own resources to deliver a robust and vibrant funding model and, where possible, advocating for a similar approach from statutory funders so that women’s centres and specialist organisations and services have the funds needed to deliver vital services.

There will be a test and learn phase until at least the end of this year to understand where and how the most impact can be made in this new phase of the Coalition’s life. Watch this space!

As a member of the Corston Independent Funders Coalition (CIFC) and a long-time advocate of progressive criminal justice policies for women, Barrow Cadbury Trust welcomes the announcement that the Government has paused its plans, announced by the Ministry of Justice in January 2021, to build 500 women’s prison places.  

Those 500 new prison places in existing prisons were estimated to cost £150 million – pulling funding away from badly needed and proven community approaches.  These cuts appear to be driven by the Government pulling in its belt rather than acknowledging what campaigners have long argued – that community-based interventions have better outcomes for women and their families.   

In Feb 2023 Barrow Cadbury Trust asked Doctor Kate Paradine to comment on the Female Offender Strategy Delivery Plan.  She expressed disappointment that it had taken 5 years to put together a delivery plan for the 2018 Government Strategy on Women’s Offending, despite prompts in January 2022 from a National Audit Office report criticising “disappointing” progress in implementing the strategy, and in April 2022 a Public Accounts Committee report calling for the Ministry of Justice to get a grip on delivery with a clear plan, funding and measures of progress. 

Despite so many setbacks and delays there is still collective energy and commitment from campaigners to push for implementation of the MoJ’s Female Offender Strategy.  In line with Baroness Corston’s vision set out in the Corston Report from 2007, the CIFC seeks to enable systemic change in how women experience the justice system supporting women-centred, holistic, and trauma-responsive approaches to divert them away from crime. Chloe Geoghegan, Chair of CIFC said:  

“The recent announcement that plans to build 500 new women’s prison places have been paused is much welcomed. The new prison places always flew in the face of the Government’s own Female Offender Strategy, which sought to reduce the number of women in contact with the justice system and increase the number of women managed in the community. 

If the Government is serious about its commitments, the £150 million earmarked for these prison places urgently needs to be reallocated to community services engaged in prevention, early intervention, and rehabilitation work with women. Central to these objectives are  continued, increased, and long-term commitments to funding women’s centres, a vital lifeline for women facing multiple disadvantages. 

The women who access these centres have experienced extreme trauma, deprivation, and social exclusion and are all too often, unjustly, swept into the revolving door of criminalisation as a result. With this £150 million, the Government has a unique opportunity to secure the long-term sustainability of services that interrupt cycles of harm and crime and, in doing so, could leave a legacy of helping to transform the lives and futures of thousands of women and their families.” 

The announcement gave no indication that the money earmarked would be spent on women in the community and we fear that, if not clawed back, it will be used to expand the male prison estate.  But the Trust working with CIFC will keep up the pressure to ensure the needs of women in contact with the criminal justice system do not continue to take a back seat in spending and policy priorities. 

Laurie Hunte, Criminal Justice Programme Manager 

The CIFC believes that all women should have access to justice in the criminal justice system – women already involved in the system as well as those at risk – and that women’s specific needs must be met:

• at each point of contact with the criminal justice system, as opposed to being shoe-horned into a system that does not account for their specific gendered needs
• through trauma responsive ways of working which address the underlying vulnerabilities and disadvantages that the vast majority of women in the criminal justice system experience, as
  well as nurturing their strengths.

In line with Baroness Corston’s vision set out in the Corston Report, the CIFC seeks to enable systemic change in how women experience the justice system including through supporting women-centred, holistic, and trauma-responsive approaches to divert them away from crime. Much of the way the member organisations fund, and work more widely, therefore is shaped by systems thinking. The group understands that the issues it is seeking to address are complex, that causes and consequences are interconnected, and that the power to create change is spread across the system. This work therefore requires partnering, collaboration and co-production with all actors, particularly those with lived experience of the criminal justice system, to find solutions that will alter the underlying structures and supporting mechanisms which make the system operate in a particular way. And it is this commitment and approach that it brings to the table.

The CIFC is a diverse group of funders with different charitable objectives, interests, and institutional frameworks. Opportunities for members to engage are structured around the three ways in which the Coalition seeks to make a difference – networking and sharing information and learning about policy, practice and grant-making, collaborative funding, and influencing policy and practice.

The overarching objective of the programme is to challenge and change the criminal justice system, from policy through to service design and delivery, through building leadership capabilities. The pilot programme will have four core elements:

• Personal development and wellbeing
• Networking
• Systems thinking and policy development and influencing
• Leadership competencies and organisational development

The role of the evaluator will be to conduct a formative and summative evaluation on the impact of the programme for participants and the wider criminal justice sector.

A budget of £25,000 is available for the evaluation.

Pilot programme outputs

The programme will recruit up to 20 Black and Global Majority leaders in the criminal justice system, including both people in current leadership roles and emerging leaders.

The training methodology will focus on experiential learning; group facilitation; action planning; coaching & mentoring both in-person and virtual; expert-led classes; shadowing opportunities and access to on-line learning; and research analysis.

We anticipate the successful bidder to provide:

• Co-produced monitoring, evaluation and learning framework for the programme, including any associated measurement tools.
• A final impact report on the programme (no more than 30 pages).
• A workshop to share final findings on the impact of the programme with the programme provider, participants and funders.
• A standalone executive summary to a standard that can be published externally.

T2A Chair Leroy Logan welcomes the government’s recognition that steps must be taken to use prison better and that short prison sentences are counter-productive. Prison population pressures have hindered progress on important initiatives to respond to young adults in age appropriate ways. We hope that alongside the measures being taken to stabilise prison population growth, consideration is given to how best to support young adults to develop positive identities as they navigate the transition to adulthood while in custody. It is our hope that with the presumption against the use of short custodial sentences the creation of distinct young adult community sentences will be developed. Such initiatives are crucial for young adults to reach their potential and move away from crime and therefore key to rehabilitation and improving public safety.

While we understand the need for strong responses to serious offences, careful consideration must be given to how to balance sanction and rehabilitation. Imposing longer sentences on young adults during a critical time in their brain development and social maturation may be counterproductive as removal from society for long periods seriously compromises their ability to build stability in employment, accommodation and relationships, all of which are known to have a great impact on subsequent offending. The greatest impact will fall on the most vulnerable, for young adults who are care experienced it will effectively remove the support available from local authorities that they are entitled to up to the age of 25.

We urge the government to put young adults at the heart of Ministry of Justice’s strategic approach to prisons and community sentencing, by developing and embedding distinct maturity appropriate interventions that ensure young adults are fully supported to live crime free lives.

Chance to Change removes the legal requirement of an admission of guilt from individuals who have committed low-level offences and offers them the opportunity to engage in a rehabilitation programme to defer their prosecution. Created in response to the 2017 Lammy Review into racial disparity in criminal justice, it aimed to divert people, particularly those from racially minoritised communities, away from the criminal justice system, reduce the number of first time entrants into it, and prevent those accused of an offence from receiving a criminal record.

Manchester Met and their partners oversaw a qualitative review in which Chance to Change service users and stakeholders, including programme practitioners, took part in theory of change workshops and interviews. A key benefit of Chance to Change highlighted in the review was that young adults could avoid going to court.  As one Chance to Change service user commented: “I didn’t want to drag this out or I didn’t want it to be something that holds against me at the end of the day either”.

According to practitioners interviewed for the review, the programme offered an opportunity for individuals to access interventions and support packages tailored to their individual needs, to prevent repeat offending for similar offences.  One pilot participant said: “[Chance to Change] is more flexible and adaptable [than other court orders] around the young person and  rather than ‘this is something that you need to do’ “it’ was fitted to the purpose of that young person.”

One of the central tenets of  deferred prosecution was the removal of an admission of guilt.  This enabled people accused of an offence to access targeted interventions before a plea had been entered.

Practitioners delivering Chance to Change viewed this as a positive aspect of the scheme, providing individuals with the option to voluntarily engage and access support and help without a focus on their guilt.  However, practitioners also questioned whether an admission of guilt should be required for individuals to take part in Chance to Change.

On the issue of racial disparity, responses were mixed.  However, some racially minoritised participants said the scheme provided opportunities to improve trust in the police.

Chance to Change was perceived as supporting the development of a ‘child first’ approach to criminal justice as it provided the opportunity to avoid stigmatising, labelling and punishing young people as  ‘criminal’. However, questions were raised as to whether there was still a risk they would be labelled once they started working with the youth justice service as part of the project, which potentially conflicts with the aims of the pilots.

Kevin Wong, Reader in Community Justice and Associate Director of Policy Evaluation and Research Unit (PERU) at Manchester Met, said: “The project has demonstrated the potential to reduce criminalisation and offer a scheme which affords individuals access to valuable support and resources, which they would potentially otherwise be unable to access.

“This is central to a child-first approach and could help to shape youth justice service delivery. However, the research also highlights the challenges of trying to address racial disparity and the trust deficit in the criminal justice system, with a single intervention or scheme delivered by criminal justice practitioners and agencies.”

Laurie Hunte, Criminal Justice Programme Manager at Barrow Cadbury Trust, adds: “It’s heartening to hear the positive reflections from the service users in London, who felt that access to tailored support and early interventions helped to divert them away from involvement with the criminal justice system.

“However, it’s clear that no one intervention can address Black and minority ethnic young adults’ deficit of trust in the justice system and policing. Furthermore, it was worrying to hear service users in the London pilot remark that they felt a sense of pressure to enter the scheme. Clarity in the application of the scheme is also needed with some practitioners unaware that an admission of guilt was not required by participants.

“It’s vital that the findings of this report are taken on board as these diversion schemes are developed to ensure they are robust and effective.”

Read the full final report findings in the Chance to Change Pilot Qualitative Review Research Study.
Find out more about T2A’s transition to adulthood work.

A group of leading charities, lawyers, care experienced children and young adults have worked together to produce a new guide for lawyers ‘Dare to Care’.

Care experienced children are up to six times more likely to be criminalised than other children. In 2022, 1% of children in England were in care, but 59% of children in custody in England and Wales had been in care.

It does not have to be this way.  Law and policy affecting care experienced children and young adults can be used to achieve fairer outcomes.  This guide will help lawyers prevent the unnecessary criminalisation of looked-after children and care leavers.

The guide will be a key resource for all lawyers working with children and young adults in the justice system. It provides powerful testimony from children and young adults, as well as the key legal framework and practical tips.

Laura Cooper, Director of Youth Justice Legal Centre (YJLC), which has published Dare to Care as part of its seminal series of youth justice guides said:

“It is incredibly unjust that care experienced children are disproportionately represented in the criminal justice system when these are the very children we should be supporting. We are extremely proud to publish this comprehensive legal guide which we know will be a vital resource for practitioners in preventing the unnecessary criminalisation of care experienced children.”

Jordan Morgan, founder of the Policy Forum and Trustee of the Drive Forward Foundation, said: 

“To complement this vitally important guide, the Policy Forum is calling for the Justice Select Committee to urgently launch an inquiry into youth diversion schemes and their application to care experienced young people. We warmly welcome collaboration to achieve this aim and to support young people leaving the care system to live a full, dignified life where their aspirations can be met with opportunities.” 

Laurie Hunte, T2A Campaign Manager, said:

“For far too long, children and young adults with care experience have been vastly overrepresented in the criminal justice system. That’s why T2A and the Barrow Cadbury Trust are proud to support the publication of this much-needed guide for defence lawyers. Its ultimate aim is to ensure that every child and young adult is treated fairly and that their care experiences are considered and taken into account by criminal justice professionals. We have no doubt that this guide will play a crucial role in reducing the over-criminalisation of children and young adults with care experience.”

Kate Aubrey-Johnson, Director of CRYJ and barrister at Garden Court Chambers, said:

“Care experienced children and young adults deserve lawyers who understand their needs, the legal protections available and the reasons why they are so vulnerable to criminalisation. We are delighted to have worked with the Policy Forum at the Drive Forward Foundation. They are the most impressive group of young people who have, for the first time, explained to lawyers how to represent care experienced young people. Our hope is that this new legal guide will play a key part in addressing the shocking overrepresentation of care experienced children and young adults in the criminal justice system.”

The guide will be free to access online.  

Notes to editors

1. Dare to Care: Representing care experienced young people written by Kate Aubrey-Johnson (barrister) and Dr Laura Janes (solicitor) in collaboration with the policy forum at the Drive Forward Foundation and is published by the Youth Justice Legal Centre.  Confidential advance copies are available to the press prior to the launch on request or it can be downloaded from 13 September 2023 at: https://yjlc.uk/resources/legal-guides-and-toolkits

2. Drive Forward Foundation supports care experienced young people into sustainable and fulfilling employment. The Policy Forum was founded by Jordan Morgan to promote legislative and policy change in the care system. Its members, who have lived experience of being needlessly criminalised, campaign on a number of issues, including mental health provision and education.   The forum worked with MOPAC to secure the creation of a London-wide protocol to reduce the criminalisation of looked-after children and care leavers.

 Informed by conversations with leaders of Black, Asian and minoritised  ethnic led charities working in the criminal justice system, the pilot will aim to support enable organisations to give them the tools to have their voices heard in the national policy debate, build personal and organisational resilience and network with other criminal justice leaders. 

Background  

In the UK, the voluntary sector plays a vital role in providing services, supporting those most at risk of engagement in the criminal justice system, campaigning for policy reform, informing the media and influencing public debate.  

 The sector is diverse but, due to historic underfunding, organisations run by and for people from Black, Asian and minoritised ethnic groups tend to be smaller and find it harder to achieve critical mass and sustainability.  

 Informal conversations between independent trusts and foundations and organisations run by and for people from Black, Asian and minoritised ethnic backgrounds concluded that investing in leadership development could be transformative and contribute to positive social change for people in the criminal justice system and wider society.  

Barrow Cadbury Trust and Lloyds Bank Foundation now wish to commission an organisation (or a partnership) to design and deliver the pilot programme over two years to support Black, Asian and minoritised ethnic leaders.  

About the Community Leadership Development Programme 

What is the primary objective of the programme? 

The overarching objective of the programme is to challenge and change the criminal justice system, from policy through to service design and delivery. To do this a stronger and more experienced specialist sector should be empowered and enfranchised to promote radical change and advocate for new approaches. The programme should be a unique leadership development programme tailored to Black, Asian and minoritised ethnic leaders working in criminal justice. 

The pilot programme will have four core elements:  

• wellbeing; 
• networking;  
• policy development and influencing; and  
• organisational development.  

The aim is to increase the resilience and capabilities of current leaders, supporting them to lead social change.  

What sort of knowledge and expertise is needed? 

We expect the provider to be, or work in partnership with, an organisation which is led by people from Black, Asian or minoritised ethnic communities, and have knowledge of the policy context for criminal justice charities and leadership development for charities. The provider/partnership should have clear demonstrable experience of delivering work in line with the programme design brief. 

Will the programme be monitored and evaluated?  

Over the course of the programme the provider will be expected to capture learning and feedback. The provider will be expected to design and implement a robust monitoring and outcome evaluation framework as part of the programme delivery model.  The Barrow Cadbury Trust and Lloyds Bank Foundation are considering an external evaluation this which will be funded separately. 

How much budget is available?  

The Barrow Cadbury Trust and Lloyds Bank Foundation have a budget of up to £200K for this programme.  

What is the Application Process?  

This is a two stage application process. The deadline for the first stage is 5pm 27 March, with the preferred supplier appointed at the end of June. 

Download a copy of the full programme design brief
Download a copy of the bidder profile form