Clinks Members’ Policy Briefing | April 2016
In this month's edition...[[{"fid":"348","view_mode":"default","fields":{"format":"default","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":"","field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":""},"type":"media","link_text":null,"attributes":{"class":"media-element file-default"}}]]
Lammy Review of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) representation in the Criminal Justice System: call for evidence The Ministry of Justice has issued a call for evidence for the Lammy Review of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) representation in the Criminal Justice System (CJS). The review will look at the way the CJS deals with young people and adults from BAME backgrounds. It will address issues arising from the Crown Prosecution Service onwards, including the court system, prisons and young offender institutions and rehabilitation in the community. The findings should be published in spring 2017. The call for evidence provides the main way for organisations and individuals to share views, evidence and insights. Clinks will work with our partners, including the Young Review and the Black Training and Enterprise Group, to respond to the consultation. The deadline for submission is 30th June 2016.
Prison reform examined with the Secretary of State for Justice Michael Gove attended a one-off evidence session with the Justice Select Committee on 16th March, answering questions on the government’s planned programme of prison reform. The session covered existing problems in the prison system (including suicides and overcrowding), plans to build new prisons and plans to increase prison governor autonomy. Russell Webster has provided a summary of the session on his blog.
Independent review of deaths and serious incidents in police custody The Home Office is seeking submissions to its independent review of deaths and serious incidents in police custody from stakeholder groups, interested parties and members of the public. The deadline for submission is 6th May, and the review is scheduled to be published in the summer.
Devolution to the Greater Manchester Combined Authority and transition to a directly elected mayor The fourth Greater Manchester ‘devolution deal’ includes the devolution of certain criminal justice powers and budgets, as well as merging the role of the Police and Crime Commissioner into the duties of the Mayor. The agreement will give the Greater Manchester Combined Authority greater involvement in education in prisons and offender management; it also commits to exploring the possibility of devolving custody budgets for women offenders and those on short term sentences. The Budget 2016 documents also include information about the devolution deals for Greater Lincolnshire, West of England, East Anglia and Liverpool.
Government launches new strategy to help ensure the arts, culture and heritage are open to all This is the first strategy for arts and culture in more than 50 years, and includes a new expectation from Government that all publicly-funded arts organisations should reach out to everyone, regardless of their background. The Paper specifically mentions the importance of arts interventions within the Criminal Justice System: "There are also many good examples of how cultural interventions can benefit prisoners, ex-offenders and people at risk of becoming involved in crime. Culture can help to improve self-esteem, social skills and wellbeing: all of which helps to reduce the risk of offending and re-offending and make our communities safer. We will work with Arts Council England, the Heritage Lottery Fund and other partners to ensure that offenders and those at risk continue to benefit from cultural opportunities."
Publications
Clinks publications
The state of the sector 2016 Clinks has published this report showing the key trends for voluntary sector organisations working with offenders and their families. Responding to our most recent state of the sector survey, organisations told us they are having to spend more time fundraising, giving them less time to focus on supporting people with increasingly complex needs. However, during another year of considerable change, the voluntary sector continues to be innovative, flexible and resilient; organisations have developed and delivered new services to respond to changing service user need and to fill gaps in existing provision. Clinks Policy Officer, Nicola Drinkwater, has summarised the findings of the report in a blog.
Guide to service user involvement and co-production This new Clinks guide, produced in partnership with Revolving Doors Agency, is designed to give you the practical tools you need to develop an involvement programme and approach that places your service users at the heart of your organisation. It provides a structured and accessible introduction to involving people with lived experience of criminal justice in your work, including examples of good practice, checklists, top tips and signposting to further information and support. To accompany the publication, Revolving Doors’ National Service User Forum members Richard Tillman and Joe Martin have written guest blogs about the importance of service user involvement. You can read Richard’s blog here and Joe’s here.
National Alliance for Arts in Criminal Justice Annual Review 2015-16 This publication rounds up the work of the National Alliance for Arts in Criminal Justice (NAACJ) and its members over the past year. It provides an overview of work done in research, raising the profile of the arts in criminal justice, and encouraging and promoting good practice. This year, NAACJ’s membership has increased by 14% to 791; the alliance has also set up a new Arts Practice Development Group in collaboration with the National Offender Management Service (NOMS), and held events at high profile arts venues including the National Theatre and the Southbank Centre.
Police and Crime Commissioners Generation 2.0: How you can work with the voluntary sector to reduce crime This briefing for Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) and PCC candidates outlines some key areas and activities which we believe PCC candidates should prioritise, including taking the lead in engaging the voluntary sector, recognising the specific needs of women, BAME people and young adults, and listening to those with lived experience. The briefing provides information about how PCCs can work with the voluntary sector to address these and gives examples of good practice by current PCCs.
Criminal Justice System
UK Justice Policy Review: Volume 5 The Centre for Crime and Justice Studies has published its annual review of UK justice policy. The review analyses the main developments in the Criminal Justice System and provides data on key issues such as spending, staffing and prison population. The review points to ‘a perfect storm of growing demand and shrinking budgets’, and suggests that the size and scale of criminal justice agencies should be reduced and refocused to reflect this.
Probation Institute Position Paper: Penal Reform This position paper by the Probation Institute argues that prisoner numbers are currently unsustainably high, that governor autonomy will not do enough to reduce re-offending rates, and that investment in community-based programmes is the most effective method for reducing re-offending. The Institute predicts that any reductions in re-offending achieved under prison governor autonomy are likely to be unsustainable without a wider strategy of re-investment in community-based sanctions and prevention.
Faint Hope: What to do about long sentences This briefing, published by the Howard League for Penal Reform, looks at the approach to prisoners serving indeterminate sentences in England and Wales, compared with a number of international examples. The briefing finds that more people are serving indeterminate prison sentences in England and Wales than in the other 46 countries in the Council of Europe combined; it calls for an overhaul of recall policy, the reversal of sentence inflation and an independent review of recommended tariff lengths for life sentences. It also recommends the introduction of ‘faint hope’ law that would enable people sentenced to an indeterminate term to apply for earlier parole eligibility.
Prisons
Transforming Rehabilitation? Prison education: analysis and options This report, published by CentreForum, provides an analysis of available data on prison education. The key findings of the report are that prisoners are spending too much time locked in their cells, that achievement in English and Maths has fallen and that inspections by the Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills and Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons point to a decline in the quality of education in prisons. Along with outlining some options for the reform of prison education, the report makes several recommendations, including an emphasis on highly qualified education and careers staff in prisons, through the gate management of education, employment and training, and clear outcome measures for education in prison.
The cost of prison suicide This research briefing, published by the Howard League for Penal Reform, investigates the financial cost of suicide in prison. It details the pressure that a death in custody places on numerous services and estimates the financial cost of each suicide in prison to be between £160 million and £300 million. The briefing identifies protective factors which reduce the risk of suicide and recommends increased investment in suicide prevention and the promotion of mental wellbeing.
Embedding Patient Voice in the West Yorkshire Prisons Procurement Project The Spring 2016 Academy for Justice Commissioning newsletter includes a case of the work done by NHS England to embed patient voice in the West Yorkshire Prisons Procurement Project. The case study describes the process of involving service users in the commissioning of healthcare services in prisons and the lessons learnt for the future. It also emphasises the importance of understanding and adapting to the needs of the service users, as well as training professionals to work with service users as experts.
Youth justice
Resettlement of young people leaving custody: lessons from the literature This Beyond Youth Custody briefing considers trends in imprisonment, challenges for the resettlement of children and young people, and explores policy developments and research findings since their last update in October 2015. It focuses particularly on the interim findings from the current Taylor Review of youth justice and also looks at the implications of the reducing custodial population for children and young adults, the importance of considering diversity for resettlement, and vulnerability and trauma experienced by those in custody.
Criminal care: Children's homes and criminalising children This report, published by the Howard League for Penal Reform, finds that children living in care homes are being criminalised at significantly higher rates than other groups of children, and that this involvement with the Criminal Justice System has a negative impact on children’s life chances. The report gives examples of staff at children’s homes across England and Wales resorting to police intervention - often over minor incidents that would never come to officers’ attention if they happened in family homes - as well as some private contractors using police cells as respite to cover staff shortages and refusing to take arrested children back until the following afternoon, leaving children in police cells overnight.
Proving ‘effectiveness’ in resettlement Beyond Youth Custody has published its most recent report in a series of publications meant to describe, support and encourage good practice in resettlement services for young people in England and Wales. This report looks at how organisations describe and demonstrate their success in providing resettlement for young people, in order to develop a clearer picture of good practice in supporting young people’s desistance from crime. It provides an overview of key approaches to assessing effectiveness and recommends that both providers and commissioners consider the importance of the context surrounding outcomes and move towards developing understandings of effectiveness through ‘practice-based evidence’.
Resettlement work with young people: using individual case studies to assess costs and benefits This Beyond Youth Custody briefing focuses on how individual case studies can be used to help us understand and demonstrate the costs and benefits of resettlement work with young custody-leavers. It explores specific areas that should be considered as part of a cost-benefit assessment and provides examples of costed individual case studies. The briefing ends with some comments on cost-benefit trajectories, and on the scope for using costed case studies to draw conclusions about wider groups of young offenders.
i-HOP Quality Statements and Toolkit i-HOP have produced this toolkit, comprising eight quality statements, for all professionals in universal, targeted, specialist and criminal justice services to assess and develop their practice with the children of offenders. Produced by Research in Practice, the toolkit was informed by research, policy and practice as well as practitioners and children and young people who have had a loved one involved in the Criminal Justice System.
Black, Asian and minority ethnic
Young Muslims on Trial This report, published by Maslaha and T2A, focuses on the disproportionate number of young adult Muslims in the Criminal Justice System compared to their proportion in the general population. The report examines how perceived prejudice and discrimination against young Muslim men can impact on criminal justice decision making, particularly in sentencing, probation supervision and management in prison. Based on interviews with groups of young Muslim ex-offenders in London and Leicester, as well as criminal justice professionals, this scoping study has found that young Muslim men who found faith in prison faced suspicion and negativity.Women
Strategy to end violence against women and girls: 2016 to 2020 On International Women’s Day (8th March), the government published its new strategy to prevent violence against women and girls. The strategy emphasises earlier intervention from a range of agencies and a change across services to move towards prevention rather than crisis response. The strategy includes a commitment to produce a National Statement of Expectations for local commissioning and services, as well as pledging £80 million over the spending review period for refuges and accommodation-based women’s services.
Police and Crime Commissioners
Candidate briefing 2016: working with others within your force area The Home Office has published a number of guidance documents for candidates in upcoming Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) elections on 5th May 2016. This includes guidance for working in partnership with the voluntary sector, directing candidates towards contacts for voluntary sector umbrella organisations and providing information on how the voluntary sector can support PCCs to achieve their objectives.
Substance misuse
State of the community drug and alcohol treatment sector This Adfam report evaluates the experiences of community drug and alcohol treatment services in England. The findings include a continued trend of reduced funding reported by both community and residential services across the last three years, with a significant negative impact on the delivery of core services and caseloads. The report also highlights high levels of involvement of those with lived experience of drug and alcohol addiction, with 86% of organisations employing people with lived experience and 94% recruiting former service users as volunteers.
Transition arrangements, transformation and what might prudently be left alone In this latest Clinks guest blog, Helen Attewell, Chief Executive of NEPACS and Clinks trustee talks about a recent roundtable event on transitions to adulthood for young people in the Criminal Justice System. The blog discusses the effects of changes in the probation system on joined-up work between juvenile and adult systems and the importance of ensuring that the needs of young adults are not ignored under future changes to both the juvenile and adult Criminal Justice Systems.
Visiting a supported housing service for ex-offenders and people on bail Clinks’ Policy Intern, Oonagh Ryder, describes meeting service users from Homegroup’s Norman House in Islington. She says, “Working on the Clinks policy team, the expertise of our members and their service users is invaluable to fully understanding the current situation of the voluntary sector in criminal justice. Service users are a vital source of intelligence for our ongoing work and their feedback allows us to lobby more effectively on behalf of our members.”
Celebrating volunteers in the Criminal Justice System across Europe Andy Curtis, Senior Research Officer at NCVO, has written a blog about the Justice Involving Volunteers in Europe (JIVE) project, which brought together eight voluntary organisations across Europe to share ideas and good practice in this field. The blog discusses the similarities and differences between volunteering in different European countries and emphasises the importance of peer learning between those working with volunteers in the Criminal Justice System.
Don’t abandon voluntary and community sector grants: use them John Tizard, a strategic advisor and commentator on public policy and public services, has written a blog for the Local Government Procurement Network exploring how public sector commissioners and procurement officials can use grants to compliment contracting. John suggests that, “there is a very strong (and too commonly unappreciated) strategic case for not abandoning grant funding, and indeed for using it more often to secure public outcomes and to support effective civil society organisations.”
Wife, teacher, prisoner: shining a light on women 'in' prison Nina Champion, Head of Policy at the Prisoners’ Education Trust, has written about the women she has met while working in prisons; women who are either serving sentences or supporting others in prison. She writes, “At this time of significant policy interest in prison education, we need to focus on all these groups of women; the families, the women prisoners and the staff, to improve its impact and to reduce re-offending, meaning fewer victims and safer communities for all.”
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