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.
In this year of unprecedented challenges for charities, we asked two of our trustees, Esther McConnell and Cathy Pharoah, to tell us about their experiences of being trustees of Barrow Cadbury Trust during the pandemic, what’s made a difference, what was difficult, and what might be round the corner.
Esther McConnell
Esther is the great great granddaughter of Barrow and Geraldine Cadbury. Esther became a Trustee in 2016. She currently works at the East European Resource Centre as the Deputy CEO. Previously, she worked at the Anti-Trafficking and Labour Exploitation Unit (ATLEU) and volunteered with Stop the Traffik. She studied Global Migration at UCL with a focus on community responses to migration and change.
“I don’t believe our risk register or strategy embraced the possibility of a pandemic or a national lockdown, though we had included the fallout by other means. Being a Trustee over the past eight or so months has meant grappling with this fast-changing and ever-complicating landscape – a landscape which has affected our charity, our people, and our partners.
Working with a grant-making charity often gives you a marvellous overview of the work and profile of a sector. From this viewpoint – it has been clear that COVID-19, the lockdown, and the associated economic fallout, have exacerbated existing inequalities and created new ones. Across our programmes there has been a whole lot of hardship and, at times, this has felt overwhelming. But there has also been a good amount of hope. Hope sprung, primarily, from the hard work and dynamism of our partners in all their different guises, and their staff.
But what of the finer details of governance operations? We have adapted ourselves to work remotely – with a simplified meeting structure and regular updates. We have missed speaking in person and sharing thoughts in that easy way we took for granted. But our staff have supported us to recreate a sharing environment by enabling small discussion groups within our agenda.
It has certainly been a very strange and disrupted year – but the consistency and steadfastness of BCT staff and fellow Trustees has meant that being a trustee has felt like a calm and steady ship in the storm”.
Cathy Pharoah
Cathy has been a non-family trustee since 2015. She is Visiting Professor of Charity Funding and co-director of the Centre for Charitable Giving and Philanthropy at Cass Business School. She is an expert on voluntary sector funding, specialising in research on philanthropy. She is a founder of Voluntary Sector Review, and presents widely on giving and philanthropy.
“The pandemic has brought challenge, change, privilege and opportunity to trusteeship. In a future of continuing uncertainty, it will continue to do so. Looking back to the anxieties of March the Trust might breathe a sigh of relief. Operations have been moved successfully to online and home working, a substantial programme of emergency and other grant-making has been delivered in a timely way, finances are still afloat, thankfully few staff and trustees have suffered from COVID19 infection, and Zoomed Board meetings have been efficient. And Board and staff are all still allies and friends.
However, none of the effectiveness in responding to the impact of the pandemic can be taken for granted. In the case of the Trust, it has been – and will continue to be – underpinned by the principles and ‘capital’ of good charity governance already in place. This includes high standards of financial and risk monitoring and oversight, clarity and unity around the charity’s mission and purposes, efficient managerial processes, regular detailed Board reporting and an organisational culture of learning. We have been able to draw on a well-oiled machine to develop rapid-fire, flexible approaches to the fast-changing landscape of grantee and beneficiary need. CEO and Chair leadership in steering the organisation through change, and supporting staff through the personal and professional challenges of the pandemic, have been vital. Trustees have had a key role in recognising the need to work differently, and providing fit-for-purpose oversight to enable staff to get on with the job in a timely way.
Most importantly, however, and critical in holding all the initiatives together, are the strong relationships of trust between staff and board members. From the perspective of a Trustee, these build up over time, through face to face engagements in Trustee meetings, events and joint project visits, not to mention invaluable, informal opportunities to get to know staff and other Trustees better at social occasions. We have lost these to the pandemic, and they are sadly missed. In the process, however, it is important also to recognise that trustee boards and staff have been sharing new experiences and partnerships together around fighting the impact of the pandemic and responding to calls for greater equality and diversity in the sector. These are providing the new platforms on which to build future governance, and more effective programmes for social change.
http://www.barrowcadbury.org.uk
We recently hosted a conversation for small charities with those who fund and support them, to explore their social change role over the next 12-18 months. This was partly to build on our recent publication of Small charities and social change, a study which describes the approaches of 11 small charities to advocacy; and partly because through our work in response to Covid-19, we’re hearing a lot about the need to strengthen the sector’s collective voice: ‘We have to have some real conversations. We’re lots of voices, collective voices, but we’re being drowned out with all the noise’.
The pandemic has presented many and varied challenges for small charities – and uncertainty is now part of the new normal. Alongside this, we have all been affected by the events that followed the killing of George Floyd – the protests, the debates, the anger, the pain, the calls to action. Profound questions are being asked about diversity, equality and inclusion – these need to be front of mind as we turn our attention to the process of recovery and renewal out of the crisis that we have been living through.
We were privileged to hear from four people with different experiences of social change: Raheel Mohammad, Director of Maslaha; Christopher Stacey, Co-Director of Unlock; Debbie Pippard, Director of Programmes at Barrow Cadbury Trust; and George Barrow, Civil Servant at The Ministry of Justice.
Seven things stood out from their reflections and the discussions that followed:
- ‘Covid-19 has pulled back the curtain and demonstrated the number of people that have been marginalised’ by previously unfair and closed decision-making processes. Small and medium charities undertaking social change work have to look at ways in which they can link up with other groups who are led by and/or represent individuals and groups whose voices and experiences are going unheard.
- ‘Majority white-led organisations do not have the specialist knowledge or expertise to understand how certain social issues affect communities of colour.’ Work to unpack and respond to the experiences of communities of colour must be led by or run in partnership with them so that it ‘registers emotion, vulnerability, heritage, culture and religion’. If this social change work is being carried out ‘through partnerships between black and brown-led and white-led and organisations’, it is most effective when based around something tangible: ‘it’s in the action that you open up new parameters and new horizons’.
- Ensure that you are actively and demonstratively accountable to the individuals, groups and communities you are advocating on behalf of. We must avoid being the creators or perpetuators of ‘artificial examples of good practice’, only putting forward solutions for policy and practice that are based on the genuine experience and voice of those you represent Always ask yourself: ‘Do you know what good looks like?’ for a particular group or community.
- Collaboration is essential, particularly between large and small charities. Larger charities are often more likely to have a seat at the table and have their voices heard, and they have the time and capacity to engage in decision making processes. But small charities tend to have the proximity to lived experience and in-depth knowledge of how policy and practice plays out on the ground.
- We must continue to work both inside and outside of the system. For example, building relationships with local and national government, but also being willing to mobilise and challenge where necessary. Recognise that it’s about understanding what is the most appropriate and effective strategy for the change you are seeking to influence at a given point in time.
- When attempting to influence central government policy or legislation, there are three things it is useful to keep in mind. First, develop personal relationships with key civil servants, or work in partnership with an organisation who can build or has these relationships. Second, work together in loose networks: ‘If you’re all on the same page we do get the message’. Third, understand that government moves slowly, so being able to commit and be in it for the long term is important. Small charities also have a very important role to play in being able to bring the ‘corporate memory’ on certain social policy issues and previously tried and tested solutions.
- More funders need to commit to funding social change work and understand what it takes to fund this kind of work. Be willing to fund over an extended period of time, stick with social change processes for the long term, and allow those doing social change work the freedom and opportunism to act in a responsive and adaptive way. More work may need to be done with trustees of trusts and foundations to help them to understand the importance of investing in social change work alongside service delivery.
You can read more about how and why small charities are challenging, shaping and changing policy, practice and attitudes here.
A statement from Erica Cadbury, Chair of Barrow Cadbury Trust
The killing of George Floyd in the US, together with the spotlight on the origins of philanthropic capital, taken up around the world by the Black Lives Matter movement, has prompted Barrow Cadbury Trust to scrutinise more closely the early commercial activities of Cadburys, specifically in relation to the labour which produced cocoa and sugar. We have asked ourselves “how was the wealth of the business, and therefore the endowment of the Trust, created?” The wealth which ultimately provided the endowment which funds, and has funded, the Barrow Cadbury Trust’s work for a century.
In the spirit of transparency, we want to answer honestly any questions our partners and colleagues, and the organisations we support, might have about the origins of funds of the Trust. We also recognise that governing a family foundation is both public service and a great privilege in equal measure. Although our board is still comprised mainly of family, we do also recruit non-family trustees who bring complementary skills and perspectives.
For those not familiar with the Barrow Cadbury Trust, it is celebrating its 100th anniversary of social justice work this year. Our founders, Barrow and Geraldine Cadbury, were very different from other philanthropists in that they didn’t believe in helping only the so-called ‘deserving poor’. True to their Quaker convictions, they believed that all humans were of equal value and entitled to equal treatment. Though our focus today has shifted from that of Barrow and Geraldine Cadbury in 1920, there are many elements which remain the same, particularly the focus on inequality and the importance of structural change.
The religious denomination known as Quakers was founded in the middle of the seventeenth century. The involvement of individual Quakers in the eighteenth century slave trade is problematical. Eric Williams, in his groundbreaking book ‘Capitalism and Slavery’ (first published in 1944) found that: “Quaker non-conformity did not extend to the slave trade. In 1756 there were 84 Quakers listed as members of the [West India] Company trading to Africa, among them the Barclay and Baring families. Slave dealing was one of the most lucrative investments of English as of American Quakers.”. In the course of the eighteenth century both American and British Quakers sought to outlaw the ownership of and profit from slavery amongst individual Quakers. In 1774, in America, after the campaigns of John Woolman and Benjamin Lay, any Quaker owning slaves was expelled from the community. At the beginning of the 19th century in Britain, as the abolitionist movement gained traction, many Quakers were involved in campaigning for it and supporting William Wilberforce. During the civil war American Quakers were active in the “underground railroad” which enabled slaves to reach freedom through networks of safe houses.
This, however, pre-dates the Cadbury cocoa business which was started in 1824, 17 years after the 1807 Slave Trade Act. By 1833 slavery had been formally abolished under the Slavery Abolition Act, though it is common knowledge that it was many years before slavery truly ended, and there was considerable political and commercial resistance for decades. The common view was that as pro-abolitionists, the Cadburys did not knowingly do business with plantations which used enslaved or indentured labour. And, for the most part, it appears they did not.
In the early 20th Century William Cadbury, Barrow’s brother and fellow board member of Cadbury Brothers discovered that the firm was buying cocoa from plantations in the Portuguese colonies Sao Tome and Principe, where there were indentured labourers – as good as slaves. The matter was investigated over several years, but the issue it does not seem to have been pursued with great haste although eventually the firm moved their business elsewhere. An investigative journalist Henry Nevinson took up the issue but it was successfully challenged in court by William Cadbury as a libel. You can read more here. Other than that, we can find no evidence of any support of the slave trade itself – direct or indirect – in the commercial activities of Cadburys. But we cannot be 100% certain.
So, how has the Barrow Cadbury Trust’s endowment been used for a century? The concern of Barrow’s uncle, George Cadbury, in addressing the fundamental causes of poverty, was a huge influence on Barrow. To this end George Cadbury had created Bournville, a model village for the workforce and other residents , with decent housing, gardens, and green spaces. He also argued strongly for effective intervention from central and local government to do something about the shocking poverty of late Victorian society. For the Cadbury family, a better, fairer society could only be achieved by a combination of state action and individual effort. With their increasing wealth and influence Barrow and Geraldine Cadbury were in a position to encourage both and address the root causes of social problems. The introduction of welfare reforms during the Liberal government of 1906 were wholly supported.
This continued with the foundation of the Barrow and Geraldine S Cadbury Trust in 1920 (renamed as Barrow Cadbury Trust in 1994) and throughout the following century.
Undoubtedly in the present there is still a huge amount of work to be done on structural and racial inequality, and these have been areas of the Trust’s work for many decades. As a relatively small foundation we are involved in policy, advocacy and campaigning, rather than service delivery. And we are strong supporters of BAME-led and other equalities infrastructure, as well as working on migration issues with migrant organisations. We are committed to tackling racism in all its forms and believe that the best way to do this is by building alliances. There is still so much to do, we welcome this renewed focus on such vital issues and are by no means complacent about what it will take to move the dial.
Erica Cadbury
July 2020
Over the last eight years, our Economic Justice programme has been on a journey. In the early days of working with others to reduce the growing gap between rich and poor, we looked at economic inequality through both ends of the telescope. Macro level research on the characteristics of fairer financial systems sat in a portfolio alongside local work on implementing the Social Value Act in Birmingham. We went wide as well as deep, exploring the ways in which people end up with problem debt, how the demographics of urban poverty are changing, and how local authorities and communities were working creatively to minimise the impacts of austerity. We supported colleagues at Scope, to look at the extra costs experienced by disabled people, the Women’s Budget Group and Runnymede Trust to look at the disproportionate impact of government cuts on women and BAME communities; and Fawcett on how gender had been considered (spoiler alert – hardly at all) within devolution policy.
Looking at our back catalogue for this blog has been immensely rewarding. We were asking the right questions – where does power lie; why do some people fall through the gaps; how do you challenge financial systems wired for risk and short term profit; why is it so hard for those in work to build up savings; who needs the most help; what is our impact? But, we were also asking a lot of questions.
Our relationship with Birmingham and the Black Country has, over the last 100 years, provided local connections and networks through which to listen, test, adapt and respond. When, back in 2016, we were considering how to tighten up and progress the programme, we talked with partners in the city and considered how our local grant-making had reduced poverty in communities and influenced those with power.
Although in its early stages at that time, the Birmingham Poverty Truth Commission, convened by Thrive Together Birmingham, was already building a reputation. A listening model designed to create safe connections between those with lived experience of poverty and/or lack of voice, with those in positions of influence and power in city institutions, was immediately valued both by those sharing experience and those with the sway.
Another project, led by the Birmingham & Solihull Social Economy Consortium (BSSEC), was achieving steady progress in assisting Birmingham City Council to implement the principles of a welcome, but rather nebulous Social Value Act. Commissioning as a tool for social good was picking up momentum in the city. An earlier piece of research delivered by the Centre for Local Economic Strategies (CLES), sought to measure the resilience of the public, social and commercial sectors in North Walsall, and how the strength of the relationships between these contributed to the resilience of the place. The local authority embraced the findings, using them to strengthen sectors and partnerships and allocate resources more collaboratively.
What could we take away from these three initiatives? Accountability feels different if you shorten the distance. Residents’ voices convey gravitas to policy makers if they are local ones and if those listening have a connection with them through locality. Contractors, however large and often isolated from the geography in which they work, always have a local impact – and it is not always positive. There is social, economic and environmental benefit to be had beyond the bottom line. Places becomes more resilient if services and sectors work together with a shared goal of improving the lives of everyone, and crucially, of listening to everyone.
The principles of thinking and being local, of sharing wealth, of co-design and partnership, and using all your assets for the public good, are ones the Trust has embraced within the Economic Justice programme and where we are seeing real leadership and change in Birmingham and the Black Country.
We were thrilled when CLES and senior leaders at Birmingham City Council established an anchor institution network in the city, now in its fourth year, and when the West Midlands Combined Authority in 2018, announced its commitment to growing the social economy sector. And earlier this year we learned that Birmingham City Council will be setting up its own Birmingham Truth Commission, focusing in its first year on housing. It will use the methodology of the Birmingham Poverty Truth Commission to ensure that the process has integrity and is open, safe and accountable. This is a real testament to the city’s desire to hear and learn from the experiences of all its citizens.
With local authorities and many households now crushed financially by COVID-19, and structural inequalities laid bare for all to see, the adoption of such principles – local partnership, listening and involving all communities, and ensuring that investment and money flows benefit all those in an area will be vital for recovery. The salami slicing of budgets is long gone and public services will need to be resourced and delivered in completely new ways. In the coming years, the Trust will be focusing on supporting the principles and practice of ‘community wealth building’, inclusive economies, sustainable local economies – call it what you will – to flourish and grow.
In the last three months we’ve seen the vital importance of community and of local support networks, and the dire consequences of the low wage, low value “just in time” model of building an economy. Community wealth building and inclusive economic approaches provide a structured alternative to those approaches. By supporting the development and spread of new ideas we can help ensure that together we #buildbackbetter.
Public understanding of social care is low. Many people are unsure what it is – never mind how to get it, or who pays – until they or someone close to them comes to need support beyond what friends and family can provide. A lot of care work goes on behind the closed doors of people’s homes, hidden from view. When it happens in public places, it’s unlikely to have a social care hat on: a dance workshop inclusive of disabled people or an arts club for isolated older people are not ‘social care’ to those involved – they are just a dance workshop and an arts club.
Because of this, the sheer scale of social care can be a surprising fact. The workforce is made up of 1.5 million people, bigger than the NHS. It is a major sector of the economy and a foundational sector too, essential to millions of people. By supporting them in diverse ways, social care provides the ‘invisible scaffolding’ they need to live the life they want, regardless of age or disability.
It is, nonetheless, overlooked by economic policy makers. An obsession with GDP does not favour social care: it’s hard to measure productivity in a sector where outcomes, not outputs, are what counts. The purpose and value of the service gets lost, and it’s treated as a cost rather than an investment. More fundamentally, the people who stand to benefit from public investment in social care are not wealthy. The means test restricts access to those on low incomes, while care workers themselves are generally paid close to the minimum wage. Inequalities in power are central to the undervaluing of care.
The oversight by policy makers is huge, not least because there is vast scope for improvement in social care. The system is failing on many fronts. A market approach incentivises providers to compete to win business, scrambling to undercut each other. Chain companies, whose business models are suited to short-termist, cost-driven, competitive tendering, gain market share. Care worker jobs become more precarious and care itself can resemble a ‘factory production line’, with people needing support having little say or control.
Locally, there are glimmers of hope. A small but growing number of social care commissioners are trying to shift away from the status quo. Other policymakers in local government are developing strategies to build more inclusive local economies. They should join the dots. As a sector rooted in the everyday lives of millions of people, social care has the potential to drive creative new approaches to economic development. The objective of meeting care needs is connected to a lot of other objectives: building local wealth, lifting up job quality, reducing unemployment, improving health and wellbeing, and supporting more connected, resourceful and powerful communities, to name a few.
Our report, published today, explores the benefits to local economies of one particular approach to care. Community micro-enterprises are small social businesses that provide support in diverse ways. In places like Somerset, where they have been promoted by the local authority, they have proliferated – with numbers jumping from around 50 to more than 450 over five years. We find that micro-enterprises can enable personalised care, by devolving decision making to people at the frontline. They also spread an accessible form of entrepreneurship, create roles that offer more autonomy and control than a typical care job, and build resilience, creativity and diversity in social care. In doing so they help to draw people into the sector and encourage them to stay. A third of the micro-entrepreneurs we surveyed doubt they would be working in social care if they hadn’t set up their micro-enterprise. Two thirds expect to continue running their micro-enterprise for five years or longer.
Local authorities have a crucial role to play in supporting the development of ventures like these. They can encourage the spread of micro-enterprises as part of a family of care models that promote inclusive economic development, such as co-operatives, social enterprises and user-led organisations. These models are often locally rooted, they are driven by social purpose, and they generally seek to be accountable to the people they support. Policymakers should not see this as a marginal endeavour: the goal should be a bottom-up rejuvenation of communities and the economies that serve them. This will require long-term public investment, along with willingness to collaborate, experiment and learn.
There comes a point in any crisis where critics on the side-line weigh in to point out all the things that are being done wrong.
To those in the eye of the storm, this can seem like an unnecessary distraction. But I do not think we should wait until the end of the pandemic before seeking constructive feedback, learning from our mistakes or altering our behaviour. It is very possible that our ‘new normal’ will be years of swinging between socially distanced public activity and lockdown. We all need to accept and respond to feedback while the work of responding to the pandemic continues.
But if we are to reflect on where civil society has done well and where it hasn’t, let’s not start by rehashing stale conversations about how ‘professional’ the charity sector is and whether we need to be more ‘business like’. Especially when being business-like hasn’t made the lives of businesses any easier in the last two months.
Instead the conversation should take as a starting point the core purpose of civil society: public benefit delivered for public good, not private gain. Throughout this crisis I have seen the true value of civil society in the volunteers delivering food to people unable to get to the supermarket, in the digitisation of befriending services to support lonely people, in the hospice workers and domestic abuse support staff going to work, risking their health so others can be safe, receive love and feel dignity.
Many civil society staff who have been furloughed have been keen to volunteer their expertise to other not for profit organisations. The generosity I have seen from colleagues across the sector, whether furloughed or not, volunteers or paid staff has continually and repeatedly inspired me.
Lockdown has also thrown a light on the things we value most, things that are too often dismissed as luxuries but are instead the mark of a well, healthy, happy society. Theatres, dance, access to green spaces, museums, community choirs, the local Scout, Woodcraft folk or Girlguiding troop, are all part of civil society. Civil society is already valued, it’s just that most people have no idea what ‘civil society’ means.
Our sector does not need to ape business or the public sector because we are not business or the public sector. In the past some of us umbrella and membership bodies whose role is to champion our distinct identity have been too reluctant to do so because of concern about the complexity of the sector, or fear of being seen as too ‘argumentative’, ‘unreasonable’ or ‘demanding’ by politicians. These are terms that are most often used to put people in their place, they are used by people in positions of power to remind those with less power to be grateful for what they are given, even when it isn’t what they need. All three terms are also highly gendered, classed and racialised.
The lack of knowledge and understanding about the role of civil society in central government has been thrown into sharp relief by the pandemic. But we cannot expect politicians to understand the distinct nature of civil society if we do not shout about it. Similarly, we cannot complain that government expects solutions for businesses to fit charities if we are always talking publicly about trying to be more ‘business-like.’
By centring people and the environment in discussions about how the sector can improve we will build back better.
Some, but by no means all, of the questions I think are important for the sector to be reflecting and acting on now are:
- Who is at highest risk of experiencing harm and are civil society organisations reaching them? If not, why not?
- Who are the voices with access to power and are they representative of the people we serve?
- Is funding distributed by civil society being distributed equitably?
- Why doesn’t government understand civil society and how can we change that?
- How do we build on the strengths of the sector’s response to Covid-19 and learn from our failures?
It is also important to remember that many of the problems we are lamenting now existed before Covid-19. Civil society has seen its political influence gradually decrease for at least 10 years. Ways of working that were effective in the past will not work now. Part of being a good leader is a commitment to continuous learning.
So come and talk to us about how we build on the amazing strengths of the sector and address the weaknesses and the challenges. Wouldn’t it be something if in the future the government pointed at the voluntary sector and told businesses they need to be more like us?
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.
At Fawcett we have a long history of involvement in the women’s movement, beginning in 1866 with Millicent Fawcett at the age of 19 collecting signatures on a petition for votes for women. Over the past 150 years women have had to fight for every step of progress that has been made. That progress has been considerable. Property rights, access to the professions, access to higher education, the right to vote, equal pay, all women shortlists, outlawing rape within marriage, up-skirting legislation … the list goes on. But despite this progress equality still feels like a distant prospect. This is because structural barriers to women’s equality remain. The focus on individual rights rather than those all-powerful systems and structures means we have at times sat back and thought, ‘we’ve outlawed that, job done’. Job only just begun would be more accurate. So we need interventions which remove or overcome those barriers and we need attitudinal change to embed them.
Structural inequality is when discriminatory practices, attitudes and behaviours are baked into an organisation or system. The way it operates day to day discriminates against women and perpetuates gender inequality. So in the workplace, how this works in practice is that women are undervalued across the economy. As a result, the jobs they do are valued less and they earn less than men. Women cannot know if they are being paid equally at work because they do not know what their male colleagues are earning. So we want to see a new, enforceable ‘Right to Know’, so that women can find out about pay discrimination and resolve it with their employer without having to go to court.
Senior roles in particular, but also certain professions, are designed to be long-hours jobs. But we could design work differently if we chose to. At Fawcett we have called for all jobs to be flexible by default unless there is a good business reason for them not to be, including opening up senior roles to part-time work. This would normalise flexible working and move us from it being something a minority of workers have, to something for the majority.
Creating a parental leave and childcare system that presumes equal responsibility in caring for children would represent a big systemic change. At the moment the system presumes the mother is the main carer and dads have just 2 weeks paid paternity leave plus shared parental leave but only if the woman chooses to give up some of her maternity leave. We want to see a longer, better paid, period of leave reserved for dads, and a more generous, supportive system for all parents and carers, underpinned by investment in our childcare infrastructure.
Ending violence against women and girls is critical for women to achieve gender equality. The fear of male violence and its impact distorts our society and is a huge cost to women, children and to the economy. There is still a prevailing blame culture, objectification is rife throughout women’s and girls’ lives, and gender-based violence has become normalised rather than regarded as unacceptable. The importance of campaigns such as the #MeToo movement to raise consciousness and support survivors of abuse, and challenge and change attitudes, is a hugely important challenge to this cultural norm. It is about individual and organisational accountability. Harvey Weinstein has been found guilty, but so should the film and insurance industries which protected him. This is what systemic change would look like.
Finally, equal power is the key to unlocking the changes we still need. Evidence shows that where women are in decision-making positions they are more likely to make decisions which have a positive impact on women’s lives, tackling issues such as childcare or domestic abuse. So we have to get more women into politics at local and national level. Interventions such as ‘all women shortlists’ have been extremely effective in creating a step change in this. But we also have to address what is still a toxic culture in our politics and wider public debate. So reforming parliament and local government, online harms regulation, political party accountability and transparency, including collecting and publishing diversity data, are all critical if we are to see lasting societal rather than just personal change.
Sam Smethers, Chief Executive, the Fawcett Society
http://www.fawcettsociety.org.uk Twitter: @fawcettsociety
In 2015, Ireland became the first country in the world to bring in same-sex marriage by a popular vote. A referendum where 62.07% of the electorate voted in favour of the amendment to extend civil marriage to same sex couples. This achievement built on years of activism which had succeeded in persuading the political system of the need to change our constitution and why the question should be put to the Irish people. We learnt many things from the campaign and here are some of my take-aways.
Communicate across difference – we learnt that we had to answer the questions in the minds of the voters. We had to listen to what those concerns were and then answer them in a language that appealed to each particular audience. We learnt that people need to see the relevance of the issue within the context of their own experience, the need to connect the campaign goal to the lives of ordinary citizens. The job of the campaign was how to link the struggle with the concerns of regular Irish people. We took on a divisive issue, a minority issue, and made it everyone’s business – your child, your cousin, your friend and your colleague. The campaign gave a glimpse of the kind of nation we could have, connecting with that basic human desire to achieve one’s better self.
Understand how attitudes are shaped and who we had to target and how. Our communications strategies were grounded on solid research that reflected the concerns, values and priorities of those we were trying to influence, especially the middle ground, undecided voter. The research was crucial in shaping the campaign’s message, tone and shape, to appeal to these voters.
Story telling was at the core – the campaign put personal stories at its heart. Exit polls showed the individual stories of those excluded from marriage equality played a huge factor in many people voting in favour. In this age of digital democracy, we learnt that large numbers of facts can be overwhelming. With so much so-called “truth,” the influencing value of personal stories was key to cutting through the noise and distraction.
Messengers were picked for their ability to talk to the undecided. These were complemented with surprising messengers – those who people didn’t expect to hear – and they influenced and connected with the middle ground. We found “unlikely” messengers worked well. We put a spotlight on the voices of “permission givers” like athletes, celebrities, faith leaders, the conservative parent of a gay son or lesbian daughter, and other role models, including the a former President of Ireland as a mother of a gay son.
We learnt to use our feet – the issue was forced onto the political agenda by thousands of activists up and down the country. These activists ran stalls, marched, organised, leafletted, canvassed, shared their stories and made so much noise they could be ignored no longer. It was these individuals that built the power for the referendum result.
We learnt that smart social media mattered – a cutting-edge social media strategy and smart use of analytics also ensured our campaigns had advantage. We channelled a nationwide army of voluntary effort by implementing a technology-assisted and monitored canvassing operation. Crowd-funding paid for our work. Social media gave us opportunities to tell personal stories, promote messages, and communicate with our supporters. The strategy also allowed individuals to be involved at their own pace.
In conclusion: we can never take these wins for granted and there is of course so much work still to be done. But we have lived through great social justice change in recent years, which is certainly cause for celebration. And 20 years ago it would not have seemed conceivable that so many countries would embrace such change.
Denise Charlton (http://denisecharltonassociates.ie) is an activist and consultant working in the area of Social Change and was co-founder of Marriage Equality.
