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Offensive Weapons Homicide Reviews are unlikely to save young adult lives finds a new Centre for Crime and Justice Studies report. A new duty to review homicides involving offensive weapons is unlikely to achieve its aim of reducing weapons-enabled homicides, whatever else it may accomplish, the report says.
Offensive Weapons Homicide Reviews (OWHRs) were introduced by the previous Conservative Government in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022. Their stated purpose is to help national and local agencies understand the causes of serious violence and prevent future weapons-enabled homicides.
The report by Dr Susie Hulley and Dr Tara Young, published by the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, examines the potential benefits and risks of this new duty, particularly its impact on young adult safety. The authors analysed evidence about existing homicide reviews, such as Domestic Violence Homicide Reviews, which have been in operation for several decades. Homicide reviews, they argue, are not without merit. The research found that reviews can offer additional, important information about what happened, not least of all to a victim’s family and friends. However, the report finds that the recommendations from homicide reviews are frequently not acted upon, raising serious concerns about whether the learning from these cases is being effectively implemented – particularly given the lack of statutory duty or resources to do so.
If, after the pilot, OWHRs are rolled out nationally, the report provides recommendations that could mitigate some of the identified risks of existing homicide reviews, including for a publicly accessible national database of findings and recommendations. However, the authors conclude that OWHRs are unlikely to prevent weapon-enabled homicides involving young adults, and urge the Government to put well-evidenced interventions that reduce serious violence at the forefront of its approach to serious violence.
Authors of the report, Dr Susie Hulley and Dr Tara Young said:
“In light of these findings and the government’s ambitious target to halve knife crime over the next decade, we urge the Government to reconsider the cost effectiveness of a national rollout of OWHRs, and to instead focus on well-evidenced interventions that reduce serious violence and support young adults to flourish.”
Helen Mills, Head of Programmes at the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, said:
“If OWHRs are rolled out this report highlights important learning about how they can best work. However, we have some scepticism about whether this is the right approach. Clear evidence already exists about how to best prevent and respond to serious violence, and that the particular needs of young adults are often overlooked. Yet good practice remains frustratingly fragmented, and lacking the long-term sustainable funding it needs.
Today, Friends, Families and Travellers (FFT) released ‘Trapped in the turnstile: Understanding the Impacts of the Criminal Justice System on Gypsy, Roma, Traveller young adults and their families’, offering first-hand insights into young Romany, Roma and Traveller people’s experiences of the criminal justice system. A summary version can be found here.
Partnering with specialist organisations Hibiscus Initiatives, York Travellers Trust, TravellerSpace, and Travelling Ahead, as part of a two-year project for the Transition to Adulthood Alliance, FFT held focus groups with young Gypsy, Roma and Traveller people in prison as well as interviewing their families.
Key findings included:
- Lack of support throughout the custodial journey for Gypsy, Roma and Traveller people and their families.
- Lack of accessible and culturally appropriate education, practical courses and workshops, or support for mental health needs.
- Poor awareness and understanding of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities.
Experiences were varied, but underlying themes of hopelessness, unrelenting discrimination, and a fatalism to repeat the cycle were woven in the stories FFT heard.
The report shines a light on the prejudice which permeates every life stage for Romany, Irish Traveller, Roma and New Traveller, with respondents referencing exposure to the CJS from an early age.
Testimonies also spoke of the ‘revolving door’ where people in prison find themselves trapped in a turnstile without the necessary tools to secure stability post-release.
The report calls for:
- Effective alternatives to remand for Gypsy, Roma and Traveller offenders.
- Signposting and support for individuals at every stage of the criminal justice pathway, including co-produced, accessible resources for families.
- Cultural competency training for staff including probation/parole staff across CJS.
- Culturally appropriate education and additional practical courses for Gypsy, Roma and Traveller prisoners.
Designed to support professionals working with young Gypsy, Roma and Traveller in the CJS, the report includes key recommendations so that in the future, no one gets trapped in the turnstile.
Read the full report and a summary version.
Report author and Criminal Justice Policy Officer at Friends, Families and Travellers, Sam Worrall, said:
“This report is the culmination of two years of focus groups and interviews with Romany, Roma and Traveller people currently experiencing the unrelenting gears of the criminal justice system.
‘Trapped in the Turnstile’ provides a crucial platform for prisoners and their families to have their experiences amplified, in the hope that those responsible will take vital steps to ensure no one is subjected to unfair and unequal treatment, regardless of their background.”
Debbie Pippard, Barrow Cadbury Trust Director of Programmes said:
“Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities are among the most marginalised in the UK, and vastly over-represented in the incarcerated population…Despite this, their voices and views are seldom heard. We warmly welcome this report, which contains a wealth of contributions from young Gypsies, Roma and Travellers.
We trust that this important report marks the start of increased understanding of their views, experiences and culture, leading to improvements in the criminal justice response and a decrease in numbers imprisoned.”
The Alliance for Youth Justice briefing ‘Adultifying Youth Custody: Learning lessons on transition to adulthood from the use of youth custody for young adults’ explores how the Government’s decision to temporarily raise the age young people transfer from the children’s secure estate to the adult secure estate from 18 to 19 resulted in a 253% increase in the number of over 18s in the child estate. The briefing highlights the lost opportunity for systemic reform during this time and warns of the long-term risk of blurring the boundaries between youth and adult justice systems.
Key recommendations include:
Custody as a last resort
The Ministry of Justice must recognise the vulnerability and potential victimisation of children and young people who come into contact with the law, along with the genuine harm imprisonment brings. Where imprisonment is unavoidable, custody should treat children as children, with an emphasis on rehabilitation over punishment. Secure Children’s Homes must become the norm.
Remove the Youth Custody Service from HMPPS and create a Department for Children:
Child First policies must be at the heart of youth justice, so we’re calling on the YCS to be removed from HMPPS. We propose a new Department for Children to bring the care of all vulnerable children into one place.
Ensure the distinct character of the children’s secure estate, keeping it separate from the adult secure estate:
The children’s secure estate cannot become an overflow for a failing adult prison system. The children’s secure estate must be restricted for the care of under 18s only, other than on a case by case basis.
Develop a comprehensive plan for young adults in custody:
With the lessons learned from the temporary transitions policy change, HMPPS must create a far-reaching policy that addresses young adults’ distinct needs, entitlements, and maturity. The Ministry of Justice should conduct a review of domestic and international models for young adult custody to determine the most effective approach.
Supportive transitions on a case-case basis:
The Ministry of Justice must identify all barriers to case by case decision-making on when a young person transition from youth to adult custody. These decisions must always centre the individual young person’s wants and needs. There also needs to be continuity in the education, youth work provision and other services they are able to access when making the transition.
We’re delighted to hear The Justice Secretary’s announcement in her speech at Labour Party conference yesterday about the creation of a Women’s Justice Board.
T2A (Transition to Adulthood) Young Adult Voices is a new podcast featuring conversations between eight young adults from across the UK with lived experience of the criminal justice system. Six episodes are now available to listen to and are available on all major platforms by searching ‘Young Adult Voices’ as well as on the T2A website
In each episode, contributors unpack a new topic – covering everything from race and care experience to resettlement and prison education programmes. Their discussions offer wide-ranging insights for professionals in the justice system on how to work more effectively with young adults.
T2A would like to thank Switchback, Leaders Unlocked, the Muslim Women in Prison project, Drive Forward Foundation, and Revolving Doors Agency for supporting the individuals who contributed to the podcast.
Learn more about working with young adults
For more than a decade T2A has been building and commissioning resources to help professionals working with young adults in the criminal justice system. If you want to learn more about working with young adults, look at our guides for practitioners and our research and reports.
MPs will this week make a fresh attempt to reform the joint enterprise legal dragnet, which has seen groups of friends and associates collectively punished for the crimes of an individual.
Spearheaded by Liverpool MP Kim Johnson, MPs have tabled an Early Day Motion, calling on the Government to make good on its pledge, while in opposition, to reform Joint Enterprise law, with a view to narrow the wide scope of the current law and to provide a fairer framework for prosecution and sentencing. As a practical first step, MPs are proposing a review by the Law Commission, with a view to it developing proposals to narrow the scope of the laws on joint enterprise and establish a fairer sentencing framework for those convicted under joint enterprise.
The call comes as the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies releases a new report, written by researcher and academic, Nisha Waller. The report – The legal dragnet – highlights how the current law on joint enterprise ‘allows and indeed encourages cases to be constructed with the absence of rigour and quality’.
Joint enterprise law – referred to in legal terms as secondary liability – allows for individuals to be convicted of crimes they did not physically carry out, if they are deemed to have encouraged or assisted the perpetrator. The approach has faced mounting criticism for the way it allows minor players and those on the periphery of crimes to be tried and convicted as if they were the perpetrator, with recent reports suggesting a rise in the number of people convicted of murder and manslaughter under joint enterprise law over the past five years.
In one case, highlighted in the report, three young men were given life sentences for murder. At the time of the offence, one was present but played no physical role in the offence, another was downstairs outside the flat where the offence took place, and the third was not even present at the scene. Meanwhile, the individual who actually committed the murder remains at large.
Speaking to the House of Commons Justice Committee in 2012, Sir Keir Starmer, who at the time was the Director of Public Prosecutions, said that joint enterprise prosecution ‘does not work well’ in the case of murder convictions, where ‘someone has played a very minor part in a very serious offence but is none the less convicted’. Some juries, he added, ‘may feel that it simply does not feel fair to convict someone for playing a very small part in a very serious offence’.
One barrister quoted in the report said: ‘We’re convicting people of murder when they play a “very small role, they’re just more than merely present’. Another said:
“the law allows them to draw so many people in they don’t have to go to pinpointing an individual, so they grab as many people even as tangentially as they can… it almost feels as though even if they lose a couple of them… they’ll get enough… that’s what it feels like… throw the net as wide as we possibly can.”
Earlier this year, the Labour MP, Kim Johnson sought a change to the law, to reduce the risk of unfair joint enterprise convictions. Her initiative ran out of parliamentary time, due to the early General Election. However, the then shadow minister for youth justice, Janet Daby MP, told the House of Commons that ‘Labour has previously said that it would look to reform joint enterprise, and that remains our ambition’. In July the Justice Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, told the House of Commons that joint enterprise was an issue of ‘real concern’ for MPs across the House.
Supporters of the current arrangements argue that joint enterprise law gives the police and prosecutors flexibility to catch and convict all those who may have been involved in a crime. However, the report argues the very vagueness of the rules, and wide scope of their application, ‘leaves the state unable to confidently asset that only those truly responsible are being convicted’. Narrowing the scope of joint enterprise law, the report argues, would ensure ‘better precision from the police and prosecutors… and allow greater confidence that juries are convicted defendants based on their contribution to the crime, rather than the prosecution’s case theory and narrative’.
Reform of joint enterprise law would also allow the justice system to focus its resources, and contribute to easing the unprecedented demands faced by the courts, prison and probation services.
Report author, Nisha Waller, said: “Joint enterprise is unjustifiably vague and wide in scope. Law reform will not eradicate institutional racism and broader issues with police and prosecution practice however, the current law encourages the overcharging of suspects and allows cases to be propelled forward based on poor quality evidence. Prosecutors are then left to fill the gaps with speculative case theories and often racialised narratives from which juries are invited to infer joint responsibility.”
Helen Mills, Head of Programmes at Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, said: “This report shows people are being convicted of the most serious crimes on the basis poor quality evidence and dubious stereotyping, particularly regarding gangs. The current ease of prosecution needs to be balanced with clearer thresholds about prosecuting multiple people for the crimes of one person. Reform of joint enterprise law is long overdue. The Law Commission review this report calls for would be a good first step to a safer law and for Labour to make good on its promise to reform joint enterprise law.”
Gloria Morrison of JENGbA said: “This research again exposes the dangerous flaws in using joint enterprise in murder/manslaughter trials further validating JENGbA’s concerns. Neither the courts nor the CPS are able to sort out the abuse of joint enterprise resulting in thousands of wrongful convictions.
Yet again JENGbA call for an immediate suspension of its use, particularly in light of mass overcrowding and the prison and probation crisis.”
Felicity Gerry KC, a legal expert and barrister who has represented people in joint enterprise cases said: “This report reveals the persistence of injustice in cases where the law overly criminalizes and punishes individuals under ‘joint enterprise’ laws, despite their minimal or non-existent contribution to the crime, for which others are responsible.
It underscores the urgent need for legal reform, not only as a matter of legal necessity, but as a moral imperative. Reform is crucial to restore fairness, clarify accountability, and rectify the severe legitimacy crisis in the criminal justice system, particularly in the most serious of cases”
Today, 55 co-signatories working across the women and girls’, criminal justice, mental health, and youth work sectors, including Barrow Cadbury Trust, are calling SOS on the crisis facing women and girls across Britain.
Agenda Alliance has written to the leaders of the four main political parties, to ask that whoever forms the next government creates a stand alone Secretary of State for Women and Girls in their Cabinet.
The letter – sent to Sir Keir Starmer (Labour), Rishi Sunak (Conservatives), Sir Ed Davey (Liberal Democrats) and Carla Denyer/Adrian Ramsey (Greens) is in full below:
“Policymakers need a kick up the butt. They need to do something, and they need to do it fast otherwise there are going to be so many more disadvantaged women; more suicides, homelessness, child removal. It needs acting on and it needs acting on fast.”
Nici, member of Agenda Alliance’s Women’s Advisory Network
“We are writing from Agenda Alliance, a coalition of over 100 member organisations working to make a difference to the lives of women and girls at the sharpest end of inequality. Our Alliance includes large national bodies and smaller, specialist organisations, working in collaboration to influence public policy and improve the response to women and girls experiencing multiple unmet needs. As the 4 July General Election approaches, we are writing to ask you to commit to a central ask to improve the lives of women and girls. We want the next government to create a dedicated Secretary of State for Women and Girls, matching the seriousness of women and girls’ needs with serious political resource.
There is a strong case for ensuring women and girls are represented at the highest levels of politics – especially women and girls experiencing multiple disadvantage. Multiple unmet needs are often interconnected, complex and gender-specific. They may include contact with the criminal justice system, poverty, using substances to cope, having no recourse to public funds and having no safe place to call home. For many women and girls these challenges are underpinned by extensive experience of abuse and violence throughout their lives. However, single issue policy responses which try and address these problems one at a time ignore the connections between them, causing these problems to escalate.
Far too often, women experiencing disadvantage and misogyny are stigmatised, labelled as just ‘victims’; ‘criminals’; ‘bad mothers’, ‘addicts’, ‘poor’ or ‘useless’. These labels stick, and they ignore the fact that women and girls experiencing multiple unmet needs are whole individuals, who are hopeful, inspiring, joyful, aspirational and caring.
Early intervention from relational, cross-cutting services which provide gender-, age-, culture- and trauma-responsive support is critical – but without senior political backing, effective, gendered prevention won’t have a lasting transformative impact. Political focus on the issues women and girls face has been diluted for too long: since the inception of these roles, ministers assigned to support women and girls have only had a position in Cabinet because they also hold other full-time government roles, such as Home Secretary; Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport; or Secretary of State for Business and Trade. Responsibility for women and girls facing the greatest disadvantage shouldn’t be a bolt on to other more senior roles.
We all want society to be safer and more functional – polling tells us that the majority of Britons, whoever they vote for, think public services are in a very bad state. A Secretary of State for Women and Girls would work across Government at the most senior levels to reshape public services and embed a preventative approach. They should draw together healthcare, education, housing, violence against women and girls and justice policy to deliver lasting change which addresses how women and girls’ problems are often multiple and interconnected. Primarily, we believe that a Secretary of State for Women and Girls should:
– Centre prioritisation and prevention. A cross-cutting, Cabinet level women and girls’ representative will work across government departments to embed early intervention and hold them accountable for ensuring that all policy responds to gender, age, culture and trauma as a matter of course.
– Share their power. Women and girls with lived experience have the answers to so many persistent policy problems – but they are so rarely included. This role should hold a core focus on designing future solutions alongside women and girls with lived experience, from consultation to legislation, service delivery to service evaluation.
– Champion the sector. After decades of declining investment in vital services, women and girls need high level political advocacy to bring departments together and address the distinct issues the specialist sector supporting them faces. We need funding models which embed full-cost recovery, articulate the cost-savings of prevention, and provide ring-fenced resource for specialist and by-and-for organisations.
We are attaching to this letter detailed policy recommendations which set out our ambitions for what a senior political focus on women and girls could achieve. If we are bold enough to address gendered multiple disadvantage with fresh eyes, the returns will be huge. The 55 organisations who are signatories to this letter are urging you to pledge your support, and call for dedicated political focus on women and girls now.
We would welcome the opportunity to meet you or a member of your team and discuss this manifesto ask further; do not hesitate to get in touch with our Policy and Public Affairs Officer Tara on [email protected] to arrange a meeting.
Yours faithfully,
Indy Cross
Chief Executive of Agenda Alliance
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:
- Adoption of good practice grant making approaches and techniques bysharing learning and advocating for women within its own Trusts and Foundations and funder networks.
- Identifying and implementing good and promising practice, sharing key learning with practitioners, funders, and decision makers.
- 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.
- 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
Barrow Cadbury Trust is very pleased to be part of the funders collaboration – The Corston Independent Funders’ Coalition (CIFC) – which has recently submitted its response to a consultation on Imposition of community and custodial sentences guidelines.
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.
We’ve worked for decades with partners to highlight the need for reform of women’s justice, including supporting the Corston Independent funders coalition, which has kept alive one of the main recommendations of the 2007 Corston Review that women should be diverted from prison and supported in the community.
And our funded partners Agenda Alliance Women in Prison and the Prison Reform Trust have campaigned tirelessly for the trauma-informed support women need if they are to successfully exit the criminal justice system.
In our work developing the T2A – Transition to Adulthood we have built up significant evidence on the need for a distinct approach for young adults 18-25 years old. We hope that when the Women’s Justice Board is formed it understands the ongoing and distinct life changes young adult women are going through and develops evidence based service for this cohort.
In 2023 the Ministry of Justice developed the long-awaited Delivery Plan for the 2018 Government Strategy on women’s offending, it is ready and waiting to be implemented with four clear aims: prevention and early intervention; reducing the use of prison whilst increasing the use of community sentences;
improving outcomes for women in custody; and improving outcomes for women on release.
The Women’s Justice Board should also adopt the recommendations from the Farmer Report on the role of families, and ensure multi-agency engagement and the involvement of third sector organisations in the delivery of services.
It also needs to explicitly include action to address the double disadvantage experienced by Black, Asian and minoritised women which has been recently documented by an alliance of organisations headed up by Hibiscus Foundation.
Partnership working with specialist charities such as those in the National Women’s Justice Coalition is the key to delivering impact. Let’s hope the new Board will seize the opportunity to collaborate with our funded partners and create a new system of transformational justice for women.