I want to use my blog posts as an opportunity to get more prison officers involved in the reports and research that are being published about the criminal justice sector. While working as an officer, it has been important to me to inform my practice using the most up-to-date research being conducted about my place of work. This kind of research is available to everyone to see, but often it’s thought that the only people who need to see it are policy makers, or members of parliament. This is not true! In these papers is a wealth of knowledge that can inform the frontline workers who are coming into daily contact with the people the publications are aiming to help.
As a prison officer, I come into contact with so many different people, often with very different needs, and understanding why they have those needs can often be the answer for how best to help them. Looking at papers like how to prevent young adults being caught in the revolving door, coming in and out of contact with the criminal justice system again and again, I can see the men that I work with, in the middle of that cycle themselves.
Catching them before they come to prison is ideal, but I know that it is never too late to help them break the cycle of reoffending. Research into young people who are care experienced, and LGBTQ+ people, for example, is important as it recognises and highlights the impact of different environmental experiences, such as spending time in care, or being discriminated against because of your gender and/or sexuality. This can teach frontline workers, such as prison officers, about triggers, which will help them build trust, and inform them about what people need with respect to these vulnerabilities, whether it be building a connection with someone who has found it hard to access consistent support in the care system, or researching resources that will help a LGBTQ+ person get back on their feet when they are released from prison.
Sometimes, working in a prison can feel like you have a thousand and one jobs to do at once, and having to cater for individual needs seems like an unnecessary additional burden. While I understand that feeling, I also know that by understanding these individual needs, I can predict who needs what, and this helps me manage my time better, as well as building relationships with the men. This can be as big a thing as understanding how to help someone who has just experienced a bereavement, down to just wishing Eid Mubarak to the Muslim population who have just finished fasting for Ramadan. This is the kind of good practice that highlights the importance of frontline workers who want to see change in the men and women they’re working with.
Thank you very much for reading this blog. I hope you learned something from it, and I hope you read some of the reports I linked to – especially if you are another prison officer! Even though I work with male offenders, I think the reports are just as valuable wherever you work, whether it’s the male or female estate, young offenders or adults. I’ll be writing another blog next week, which I hope you will also enjoy. See you then!
Criminal courts should take account of age and lack of maturity when imposing sentences on people between the ages of 18-25. Guidelines say that young adults should be treated less severely when their level of psychological development makes them less responsible for a crime or increases the impact of punishment on them.
But what about the decisions courts make prior to sentence – in particular whether a defendant should be remanded in custody awaiting trial? Should age and maturity be relevant factors here?
A new report I’ve written for the T2A (Transition to Adulthood) argues that more should be done to keep young adults out of pre-trial detention. For one thing a spell in prison on remand can be just as damaging as a prison sentence – sometimes more so. Earlier this month inspectors sharply criticised the treatment of young adults in prison and, separately, argued that increased time spent on remand as a result of court delays will inevitably add to the anxieties and frustrations of individual prisoners of all ages. “A growing, and increasingly-frustrated remand population has the potential to have a serious adverse effect on the stability of prisons”. The remand population as a whole grew by 24% during 2020.
It’s also the case that defendants should only be remanded to custody if they are likely to receive a prison sentence in the event of conviction. As sentencing guidelines make prison terms less likely for under 25s than over 25s, maturity should be taken into account at the remand stage too. But it seldom is.
As the Sentencing Council has recognised, many young people who offend either stop committing crime, or begin a process of stopping, in their late teens and early twenties. Therefore, a young adult’s previous convictions may not be indicative of a tendency for further offending. This is an important consideration for courts to take into account when considering risk.
Young Adults on Remand finds that – until the pandemic at least – the last ten years have seen a welcome fall in the use of custodial remands. But there is scope for both the CPS and judiciary to incorporate a greater recognition of maturity factors in relevant guidance on remand decision-making for practitioners. Courts in particular should adapt their ways of working to ensure a fairer and distinct approach to young adults at the remand stage.
Magistrates who routinely deal with children in the youth court may place a higher weight on maturity on the occasions when they sit in the adult court. But youth magistrates (about 15% of JPs) may not always be able to persuade their adult court colleagues of its significance. The view that “he’s 18, he’s old enough to know what he’s doing” is still heard.
Pre-trial arrangements are very different for under 18s and today’s report argues that the welcome policy of further restricting the use of custodial remands for children should be extended to young adults. In the shorter term, there is a case too for removing young adults, as well as children, from the remit of the emergency law extending custody time limits during the pandemic.
If custodial remands are to be reduced, sufficient services will be needed to support and supervise young adults on bail, whether from the probation service, local government, NHS or voluntary organisations. And bail information schemes need to ensure that courts are made aware of non-custodial options in individual cases.
The local authority may have continuing responsibilities for young adults who have been in their care and may be able to contribute support which could help secure bail. The report suggests that transferring budgetary responsibility for young adult defendants to a more local level – as is the case for under 18s – could stimulate better provision of community-based measures, including suitable accommodation. Current bail hostel arrangements are inadequate.
The report also recommends that more is done to monitor bail and remand decision-making in respect of young adults to inform efforts both to reduce custodial remands overall and tackle any disproportionate use for black and minority ethnic defendants.
Thanks in large part to the determined and longstanding work of the Barrow Cadbury Trust, recent years have seen a growing consensus that young adults aged 18-25 require a distinct and tailored approach from the justice system. Making the necessary changes to law, policy and practice has been a slow and chequered process. Remands are an area where the pressures of the pandemic could help to accelerate progressive change.
A new report: Stories of Injustice: The criminalisation of women convicted under joint enterprise laws, prepared jointly by authors from MMU and the national campaign group JENGbA, highlights new and disturbing evidence of the hidden and ongoing injustice of Joint Enterprise in England and Wales. Drawing on personal testimonies the research uncovers over 100 girls and women convicted as secondary parties, most serving long and life sentences for convictions of murder or manslaughter, who have not committed violence.
The research examines the process of criminalisation, revealing there are a number of critical moments, decisions and actions, or omissions that lead to these wrongful convictions. This begins with the early actions of the police and the CPS and their decisions to charge women with serious violent crimes. Significantly, once in a trial as a defendant, the findings then reveal a range of strategies drawn on by the prosecution teams to support the conviction of women regardless of their lack of involvement, lack of violence or presence at the scene.
This involves a dual process, simultaneously obscuring the context and silencing the immediate and longstanding experiences of violence that many women have experienced, yet over highlighting their ‘involvement’ or ‘role’. To construct the women’s role or culpability the prosecution draw on a number of lines of argument: her presence was encouragement; she should have foreseen what would happen; she intended the violence to occur for X reason; her non-action during and / or after the event indicates a common purpose.
These arguments rely heavily on a number of myths, stereotypes and gendered narratives. These can draw on, echo and feed on and into wider mediated narratives and often draw attention to the ways in which they have failed as girls or women. Importantly, the findings show how defence teams are complicit in silencing by failing to introduce important contextual factors or engage in adequate challenge to these gendered narratives.
The report highlights critical concerns, calls for intervention, and asks us to reimagine justice and what this means for girls and women marginalised and criminalised by the continued injustice of the legal principles underpinning joint enterprise legislation.
To celebrate the Barrow Cadbury Trust’s steadfast one hundred years of social justice, this was to be a blog about prison reform – a cause so generously supported and well understood by the Trust throughout its history. Instead it is a call to Government to save lives.
I would have covered the painstaking steps taken since the Woolf report – appropriate since the publication of this blog, 1st April, coincides with the start of the disturbances at Strangeways prison thirty years ago. I could have celebrated the tremendous drop of over 70% in child imprisonment and the corresponding reduction in youth crime in recent years. Locking up children is the surest way to grow the adult prison population of the future. I could have welcomed, and documented, a growing acknowledgement that prison should not be used as a place of safety for vulnerable people who are mentally ill or those with learning disabilities and all forms of neurodiversity.
I could have bitterly regretted the swingeing budget cuts that put paid to access to justice and legal aid; stripped the prison service of over 30% of some of its most experienced staff and served to fuel a tragic rise in violence and suicide in custody. Recorded incidents of self-harm reached a staggering 61,461 in the year to September 2019. And I could have explored what needs to be done to reform the criminal, and wider social, justice system to support victims, people who offend, families, prison staff and volunteers in our least visible, most neglected, public service.
Instead when the lives of people in custody and the staff who look after them are at risk, this blog is about survival, leadership and accountability. As Covid-19 spreads, Ministers and officials are faced with some of the most difficult decisions they have ever had to make about balance of risk and the best ways to keep people safe.
To meet its human rights obligation to take active steps to protect lives, Government must embark without further delay on, and give a clear public explanation for, a programme of planned prison releases. This should be done on a cohort by cohort, case by case basis. People who should be considered for immediate safe release include those near the end of their sentences; those serving short sentences; or held on remand, for non-violent crimes; those recalled for technical breach of licence; those who are elderly often with co-morbid health conditions; pregnant women and mothers and babies – where an important start is at last being made. For individuals approved for, but still awaiting, transfer from prison to psychiatric care (a comparatively small group but in high need and one that inevitably makes for disproportionate calls on staff time) this work should be expedited.
The priority now is to reserve prison for serious and violent offenders so that the public is not put at risk and hard-pressed prison governors and staff have the physical space and time to hold those individuals safely and securely. In the context of a global pandemic, countries worldwide from South Korea and Iran to the US and Canada, from Holland to Ireland and Northern Ireland have already released thousands of prisoners variously on a temporary, compassionate or executive basis.
Meanwhile the prison service in England and Wales has made commendable and rapid moves to improve, amongst other things, hygiene and cleanliness, communication with prisoners and phone contact with families to mitigate against further isolation and distress. Emergency use of other secure environments is being explored. Notwithstanding these important steps, in an unprecedented public health crisis it is not fair or proportionate to condemn prisoners, and staff responsible for them, to try to survive in insanitary, overcrowded institutions devoid of independent oversight.
Prison and family charities, supported by the Barrow Cadbury Trust and other charitable foundations are receiving heartfelt pleas for help. At the Independent Advisory Panel on Deaths in Custody we have just received two such requests:
‘My husband is on remand we need help. We are all very worried. Fears of loosing our loved ones with out seeing them. Prisoners are dying because of the virus, who can guarantee that my husband will be safe. Trials not happening, nobody knows when this all will happen and finish. Please help’
‘We want them home we are all alone please help us to be with our family. We are all locked down. Please help please raise this issue in the parliament’.
People are sent to prison to lose their liberty not their lives. We look to Government Ministers to exercise moral leadership, to meet their human rights obligations and to accept full responsibility for the lives of people held in state custody.
For those of you looking for an addition to your summer reading list, I have a strong recommendation – ‘You are what you read’ by Jodie Jackson.[i] Jackson, a partner at the Constructive Journalism Project[ii] and one of this year’s CJA Media Awards judges, has spent the last decade researching the psychological impact of the news, finding a negativity bias in reporting that leads to a sense of ‘crisis’ and lack of hope amongst readers.
The NCVO Constructive Voices project highlighted the 2019 Digital News Report, which showed nearly a third of people say they actively avoid the news because it has a negative effect on their mood and they feel powerless to change events.[iii] Constructive Journalism sets itself apart from this, remaining critical, but also seeking to foster conversation, hope and action.
Within criminal justice reporting a negativity bias is all too apparent. Of course, the multitude of issues plaguing the criminal justice system invite criticism, and raising the public’s awareness of the challenges is important. But Jackson argues that explaining the possible solutions is also vital.
The 2017 report Reframing Crime and Justice[iv] also highlighted ‘It’s commonly thought that there is little government or society can do to reduce crime. Communications that dwell on the problems of the criminal justice system, but do not suggest solutions, will trigger fatalism.’ The annual CJA Awards help to combat this negativity by promoting the innovative and effective work of Outstanding Organisations and Outstanding Individuals across the country. (The 2019 awards are now open for nominations!)
The CJA also presents an award for Outstanding Journalism. This year we have worked with a group of experts including journalists, CJA members and people with lived experience to refresh the criteria and nominations process and ensure the award champions journalism that drives the conversation forward.
Why have we done this? Talking with CJA members last summer when developing our strategy[v], there was a recurring theme – the need to positively engage with the public debate about criminal justice and to change public opinion:
‘We need to change public opinion – it can be done. Look at public attitudes to smoking 25 years ago.’
‘The general public are key stakeholders. Rehabilitation is a shared responsibility. We need the public to help people re-connect and not be stigmatised.’
‘We need to leverage support from the public, to bring people with us.’
‘This sector tends to preach to the converted, not those who need to be convinced.’
It became clear that a key element of achieving the CJA’s vision of a fair and effective criminal justice system is through influential communications with the public through the media. Inspired by the Mind Media Awards good practice criteria for mental health reporting,[vi] the CJA’s expert group has developed our own good practice criteria for criminal justice reporting, drawing on constructive journalism and reframing principles. The criteria[vii] include:
- Show what works, not just what is broken.
- Include ‘hidden’ voices and issues.
- Challenge myths and avoid stereotypes, clichés, negative terminology and sensationalism.
- Portray individuals’ experiences authentically, humanely and sensitively.
- Set individuals’ experiences within a wider social policy context.
- Influence and inspire people to think differently, care about the issue and take positive action.
We will promote these principles to the sector and media through our awards and we also plan to work with the National Union of Journalists to produce more detailed guidance on criminal justice reporting. This is a timely piece of work because of the growing interest in the role of the media on public perceptions of criminal justice. For example, the London Violence Reduction Unit’s new strategy includes an objective to ‘change the message around violence’ as they recognise that ‘the way in which issues are represented by the media […] shapes our views and as a result, can shape our behaviour.’
Our expert group also recognised the growing volume and quality of digital media including blogs, vlogs and podcasts, which often allow individuals to bypass traditional media outlets and to develop their own criminal justice related content. We are therefore excited to introduce a new Outstanding Digital Media Champion category to celebrate and promote the growing importance of these mediums.
The judges for the 2019 Media Awards are: Danny Shaw (BBC Home Affairs Correspondent), Raphael Rowe (Reporter for Netflix, the One Show and Panorama), Penelope Gibbs (Author of Reframing Crime and Justice), Jodie Jackson (Constructive Journalism Project) and Nadine Smith (CJA trustee).
For more information about the CJA Media Awards and how to nominate or email [email protected]
[i] https://www.jodiejackson.com/you-are-what-you-read/
[ii] https://www.constructivejournalism.org/
[iii] https://www.ncvo.org.uk/about-us/media-centre/constructive-voices/about-constructive-journalism
[iv] http://www.transformjustice.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Reframing-crime-and-Justice-a-handy-guide_Transform-Justice.pdf
[v] http://criminaljusticealliance.org/cja-strategy-2019-2022-connecting-change/
[vi] https://www.mind.org.uk/news-campaigns/mind-media-awards/2017-mind-media-awards-criteria/
[vii] http://criminaljusticealliance.org/criminal-justice-alliance-media-awards-2019/
“Whilst carrying out my Review I was surprised and concerned by the indifference to race in our criminal justice system – in this respect it is hugely lagging behind other parts of our public sector and other nations. The people who staff our prisons, courts and even voluntary sector organisations working in criminal justice don’t reflect the people who receive their services. The picture of individuals working in the criminal justice system is a very different one you see from the people who live in it – particularly the picture you see when you go into our youth jails.
But let’s be clear, if you are in the criminal justice business in this country then you have got to be in the race business. There needs to be a step change to ensure that this issue does not fall off the table again.
Our criminal justice system can learn from other sectors, particularly education. Notwithstanding the poorer attainment of black boys there isn’t a school in London that doesn’t recognise and understand these issues. Practice might be patchy outside of diverse metropolitan areas but the recognition that we need to tackle this issue is deeply embedded within the educational establishment and across our schools. By contrast our criminal justice system is decades behind and this needs to change.
Our criminal justice system can also learn from other legal systems across the world. In New Zealand, for example, there is an established general principle that everything possible needs to be done to prevent BAME people getting a criminal record in the first place – and this is a bipartisan and accepted view across the political spectrum.
This recognition is vital because of what it means for a BAME person to end up in the criminal justice system. The double penalty of being from an ethnic minority background and having a criminal record can be hugely damaging for employment prospects and a third of those on Jobseeker’s Allowance have a criminal record. We need to tackle this across the piece but the latest stop and search figures show that we are moving in the wrong direction – whilst the use of stop and search has reduced, disproportionality has actually increased – you are now eight times more likely to be stopped and searched if you are BAME.
It is clear that the system is not working for any BAME group. We need a specific and culturally competent approach and a key part of the solution is a vibrant third sector. There is a need to grow and sustain the number of voluntary sector organisations with the confidence and ability to work with and meet the specific needs of cohorts such as Muslim women or Travellers. These groups are often small in number but high in need and experience high levels of disproportionality – for example, although the data does not exist I suspect from my work on the review that the greatest disproportionality in the system in fact involves the Traveller community.
In terms of legacy I am clear that I will remain on the scene to drive my recommendations forward. Significant work needs to be done to address sentencing disparities and a response is needed on this from the judiciary. The government has accepted my principle of explain or reform and we have succeeded in creating a cross party moment around these issues and the Labour Party as well as government are looking at my recommendations. In summary we have come a long way but there is still a lot of work to do.”
Convenience is great when all others things are equal. Making services easy to access is important. But not if it compromises the values of the service itself. Our new report suggests that video justice may threaten access to justice.
Video courts (where defendants appear on video into court from prisons and police stations) have been presented as a huge step forward in convenience, and thus access to justice. It is true that prisoners on video avoid the apparently disgusting “sweat box” vans, and hours waiting in a court cell for a fifteen minute appearance. Vans transporting prisoners regularly arrive at court late, thus delaying hearings and sometimes keeping witnesses waiting. And the inconvenience prisoners fear most is that they will be transferred to a completely new prison at the end of the court day. So for prisoners, video courts are definitely more convenient. As well as (maybe) saving the courts service money.
But is anything lost for the gain in convenience? A potentially huge impact is on genuine access to justice. As it is, defendants frequently feel excluded from our complex criminal justice system. Good advocates are the gatekeepers to that system – they advise and support their clients and articulate their defence. Video courts jeopardise and compromise that relationship. There are technical problems which mean that defendants trying to talk to their lawyer over video can’t hear or see well, and the service often breaks down. The fifteen minute time slots allowed for consultations are not nearly long enough, particularly when it is the first meeting between lawyer and client. The Lammy report highlighted that defendants from BAME communities too often distrust the legal profession. Our research suggests video justice is a recipe for increasing that distrust.
“On those occasions when the video link works, we have very limited time. We often use a lot of it shouting for the custody staff at the other end to hear us on the video screen in the video room, and then come in and speak to us. When the defendant is produced on the other end, he seems remote, and I often find I can’t be sure if he understands my empathy/sympathy/other emotions which are essential to cultivating a working relationship in this very difficult circumstance” (criminal lawyer)
Access to justice means ensuring that defendants understand and can participate in their own criminal justice process. This is challenging in the best of circumstances, given we often put defendants in a secure dock, and use complex procedures and language. There is evidence that forcing or encouraging defendants to appear on video compromises their effective participation. Respondents to our survey, including magistrates, were concerned that being on video changed defendants’ behaviour in two ways, both negative.
“You can only see their face [on video] and there is little interaction. In my experience unless you have time with the young person to prepare, it is very hard to tell the difference between surly teenage behaviour, a total lack of confidence and/or significant learning difficulties and a lack of understanding ” (YOT officer)
In some cases, being remote made defendants feel they were not part of the proceedings and disengage. In other cases, being remote made defendants frustrated, and robbed them of the ability to gauge the atmosphere of the room and the impact of their behaviour. Lawyers said defendants were more likely to swear and walk out. Those with mental health problems, learning difficulties and/or autism are doubly disadvantaged, particularly if their disability is “hidden”.
Without effective participation there is no access to justice. And without evidence, we have no real idea how great is the negative (or positive) impact of video hearings on the participation of defendants. Prison to court video links have been running for 17 years. In that time no in-depth research has been done on the impact of video on defendants’ participation, or on the outcome of their cases. Nor has anyone challenged the convenience argument. If travelling to court is inconvenient, why not improve the journey rather than abolish the physical court hearing?
Three years ago, six projects set out to demonstrate the effectiveness of a ‘whole pathway’ approach to young adults involved in crime – from point of arrest to release from prison. Manchester Metropolitan University’s (MMU) independent evaluation of this ‘T2A Pathway’, published today, tells the story of these projects from design to delivery during a time when local services faced unprecedented turmoil and austerity.
It highlights the extraordinary resilience, flexibility and skill of voluntary sector organisations in meeting the needs of society’s most vulnerable people, turning young lives around and pulling them back from the brink of a life of crime, self-harm, addiction and, for many, an early death.
A distinct approach to young adults that is tough on crime
What the T2A Pathway delivered was unequivocally “tough on crime”. There’s nothing soft about intervening to calm down a young man wielding a samurai sword in a park full of children. There’s nothing fluffy about coming to the aid of a brain-injured young man who, every day, sits naked on a bridge and threatens to thrown himself off. It’s not a charitable nicety to secure a safe place to live for a teenage mother and her new-born child who are both at high risk of sexual and physical abuse.
Commissioning services for 16-25 year olds that enable them to address their behaviour and turn their lives around is not do-gooding – it’s a high-return investment. No other age group is more likely to desist from crime, and no other group of adults has as much life still ahead of them. All of the 414 young people supported by the projects were causing harm to their communities (three quarters already had criminal records) and even more harm to themselves.
The evaluation is further evidence of the unmatchable value to people with complex needs of relationship-based, intensive support. This doesn’t mean services that are either high-cost or slow – quite the opposite. Services were described as “quicker” and “tailor made”, in comparison to statutory provision.
Benefits to other agencies
Of course, the work of projects like these benefits criminal justice agencies – reducing offending, avoiding breach and increasing compliance – all big wins for the police, courts, probation and prisons. It saves money, reduces crime and, perhaps most persuasive, saves these agencies precious time. As a police borough commander put it to me in conversation, “these projects help us spend more time catching bad guys”.
Yet it’s a direct benefit to other agencies too – mental health services (many of which have raised their thresholds to unreachable heights for young people) won’t have to pick up the pieces of acute crises; social care and child protection services won’t have to take as many children into care.
Gender and race
Nearly a third of the young adults supported by the projects were female, and one project was women-only. These teenage and young adult women had even more needs than the young men: 63% had experienced abuse, rape or domestic violence, and 15% had been involved in sex work. The evaluation reports great additional benefit from a gender-specific approach within the young adult focus.
A third of the young adults were BAME, with a higher rate in the prison-based projects than the community-based projects. A concern arising from the evaluation is disproportionately low levels of referral of young BAME men, in particular, by statutory agencies to voluntary sector services -, raising questions about the ability to meet the cultural, faith and ethnicity needs of this group -compared to referrals of young white men.
Sustainability
The most effective projects shared some common features in their structure and design, such as having a clearly defined distinct offer for young adults, strong partnerships in place from the beginning and a referral criteria and process that was co-designed by the project team and the referring agencies.
Sustainability of the projects beyond the pilot phase was universally tough at a time of continually shrinking budgets. Two projects were incorporated into the delivery model of a wider contract by the lead charity, two came to an end, and two secured further funding to carry on as they were. A reconviction study and economic analysis from MMU will conclude later this year, and be published in early 2018.
Wider impact
As a collective, T2A Pathway projects contributed evidence to the House of Commons Justice Select Committee’s inquiry on Young Adult Offenders, which concluded in 2016 that there is “overwhelming evidence” in support of a distinct approach to young adults throughout the criminal justice system. Professionals and young people from the projects spoke at national conferences and local events alongside politicians, Police and Crime Commissioners and senior officials. The projects took part in an array of pioneering research projects, including ones on brain injury, bereavement and race equality.
The projects’ legacy is still emerging, but it is clear they have already delivered immense impact, not only on the lives of hundreds of young people and their communities, but also on the people who work with them, and on those who make the policies.
This blog was written by Max Rutherford, Criminal Justice Programme Manager at the Barrow Cadbury Trust in response to the Final Process Evaluation report of the T2A Pathway. For more information email Max Rutherford.
The Lammy Review is an independent review into the treatment of, and outcomes for black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) individuals in the criminal justice system. Published last month, the significant race inequalities in our criminal justice system were once again highlighted.
Over the party conference season Clinks held two roundtable events at both Labour and Conservative Conferences, supported by Barrow Cadbury Fund, to discuss the Review’s findings and recommendations. This blog is the first in a series of blogs following on from those events. Each week an attendee at one of the roundtables will write about their reflections on the review and what they plan to do in response to it. Keep an eye out for future blogs from David Lammy MP, Kate Green MP, Shaun Bailey AM, and PCC Paddy Tipping amongst others.
What did we hear?
David Lammy MP spoke at both roundtable events. At the Labour conference he was joined by the Shadow Secretary of State for Justice Richard Burgon MP, and at the Conservative conference Sam Gymiah MP, Minister for Prisons and Probation. Members of Parliament, Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) and voluntary sector organisations from across the country attended both meetings.
Discussion at both events was lively and interesting with real commitment across politicians and the voluntary sector to undertake action to finally redress racial disproportionality in the criminal justice system. Police and Crime Commissioners highlighted the role they can play in instigating local action.
What can the voluntary sector can do to support Lammy’s recommendations? Discussion of the importance of BAME organisations, which are rooted in the lived experience of the people they are working with, contrasted starkly with the finding from Clinks latest state of the sector survey which found that these organisations are 30% more likely to be at risk of closure. So the fact that the Review draws attention to probation supply chains failing to tap into the expertise of BAME voluntary sector organisations was welcomed.
There was also recognition from larger voluntary sector organisations around the table that they must also play their part in ensuring that government now acts on David Lammy’s recommendations and make sure they lead by example within their own work.
According to the Review data is not consistently collected across the system and David Lammy’s recommendations on this, as well as those aimed at ensuring that data is properly understood and acted upon, were welcomed.
Both events raised the glaring disproportionality in the youth justice system and the potential for diversion schemes such as deferred prosecution, currently being piloted in West Midlands and Durham, also highlighted by the Review.
Participants welcomed the Review’s recognition of the multifaceted nature of the BAME category and the specific needs of particular groups within it, such as Gypsy, Traveller and Roma people or people of Muslim faith. The Review’s exploration of how being from a BAME background and in contact with the criminal justice system intersects with other issues such as gender, complex needs and family links and support was also welcomed.
There was a strong feeling from participants that the Review’s recommendations be considered alongside other Ministry of Justice work including developing a female offenders strategy and responding to the Farmer Review into support for family links.
The Review’s focus on trust was welcomed, as was the need to remove the ‘us and them’ culture in the criminal justice system by improving the workforce diversity, alongside a call to ensure that all staff are ‘culturally competent’.
What next?
There is of course so much more in David Lammy’s Review, including his recommendations for the courts, prison system and criminal records regime. However, there was a real feeling in the room that this was just the beginning of the conversation.
David Lammy was clear that he is committed to this agenda for the long term. Local and national politicians from both sides of the political divide were keen to continue to engage, discuss and work with voluntary sector partners and others to take action to finally begin to address the poorer outcomes faced by BAME people in our criminal justice system.
Clinks looks forward to publishing the reflections of other attendees at the events over the coming weeks and to working with our members and policy makers, politicians and criminal justice agencies to identify action and good practice that can drive change and improve equality in our criminal justice system.
Read Clinks statement on its findings and recommendations here. A full briefing on the report will be available soon.
Taking Account of Maturity: A Guide for Probation Practitioners was published by T2A in 2013; by 2016 the Guide had been mentioned in NOMS guidance for pre-sentence reporting, marking a significant official acceptance. What happened in the interval?
In the publication Making Sense of Maturity, research with practitioners and managers shows ways in which the Guide was disseminated and embraced within probation services, and how they see it in the present context. We wanted to find out how the Guide was being used to develop frontline probation practice, to discover any ‘ripple’ effects (for example, on other agencies), to provide a template for monitoring use of the Guide and to scope out directions for future guidance.
Because fieldwork started in 2014, at the point when Transforming Rehabilitation brought abrupt structural changes, the research was delayed as probation grappled with its new priorities. Later, it proved possible to listen to practitioners who were operating with the Guide in the new context that prevails today. Amid the turbulence, the buy-in of senior management to promoting a maturity agenda was a factor in making the Guide a part of practice with young adults, though not all probation areas will have followed the same path. The Guide’s use was enhanced by practice briefings and support which could then chime with organisational delivery, especially by specialist teams.
Maturity looks different from the point of view of probation practice, because there are specific social pathways that have created challenges to the maturity of young adults under supervision.
‘So maturity is fundamental, it’s absolutely fundamental. About 30% of our young people have been in care. 50% of them didn’t finish school. Out of the 50% that did, only 5% got a formal qualification. So the rites of passage that you would normally associate with teenage growth and maturity, they just haven’t hit those milestones.’ (Probation manager)
Missing out on education, going through the care system, having difficulty communicating with agencies: these are just some of the experiences that need to be properly understood. Good communication and the development of trust are vital if young adults are to be engaged. Hence caseloads have to be adjusted to allow time for this sensitive work and other agencies must be fully engaged.
Crucially, the future health of maturity initiatives in probation depends on: an active strategic commitment to developing practice sensitive to the maturity of young adults; and an awareness of the pathways and milestones that a well-informed social policy binding together all agencies should address. If practitioners want to turn those conditions into reality, our research will give them plenty of ammunition and evidence.
