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Clinks Members’ Policy Briefing | August 2016
In this month's edition...
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This month, we have begun engaging with the new ministers appointed at the Ministry of Justice - more details about this below. We are sending letters to each new minister, outlining the importance of the voluntary sector in the Criminal Justice System and offering the sector’s expertise to support their work.
We have also met with members of the Lammy Review team to follow up our response to the Lammy Review consultation. We discussed the ongoing work of the review and how Clinks can provide further support to this through representing the views and experiences of the voluntary sector.
Earlier this month, we submitted evidence to the Public Accounts Committee’s Inquiry into Transforming Rehabilitation, in partnership with the National Council for Voluntary Organisations and the Third Sector Research Centre. Currently available on the Public Accounts Committee webpage, it will be published on Clinks’ website in the near future.
This week we submitted our response to the Sentencing Council’s consultation on the sentencing of youths. Our response utilised the evidence gathered through consultations with Clinks members for the Taylor and Lammy reviews; it emphasised the importance of desistance and welfare in the sentencing of children.
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New ministerial appointments at the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) After the cabinet reshuffle on the 16th July Liz Truss MP replaced Michael Gove as the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice. Other ministers in the MoJ now include: Sir Oliver Heald QC MP, Minister of State for Courts and Justice; Sam Gyimah MP, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Prisons and Probation; Dr Phillip Lee MP, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Victims, Youth and Family Justice.
Statement from the new Prime Minister On 13th July the Prime Minister, Theresa May gave a speech in Downing Street. She stated her vision to make “Britain a country that works not for a privileged few, but for every one of us.” She highlighted that this means fighting against "burning injustices" and that “if you’re black, you’re treated more harshly by the criminal justice system than if you’re white.”
The Lords Select Committee on Charities call for evidence for its inquiry into the charitable sector The Lords Select Committee on Charities has been set up to investigate the sustainability of the charity sector and the challenges of charity governance. The areas in which the Committee are asking for submissions include: the main pressures currently faced by charities, and the impact these pressures have; the skills required to lead and manage a charity; the role trustees should play in the performance and effectiveness of a charity; and the role of national and local government in relation to the charitable sector. The submission deadline is 5th September. Clinks will be submitting a response; to contribute your views please email Nathan.Dick@clinks.org.
Justice Select Committee inquiry into the prison reform programme This inquiry has been launched on the assumption that, as indicated by Rt Hon Elizabeth Truss MP, there will be no substantial change to the programme of reforms to prisons already announced. This includes the £1.3bn estate modernisation programme, the creation of reform prisons to give prison governors greater autonomy and the implementation of Dame Sally Coates' education review. The committee initially seek overall views which will be followed up in greater detail with a series of sub-inquiries following the publication of a White Paper expected in October 2016. The deadline for submissions is 30th September.
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Clinks publications
Valuing volunteers in prison: The views of services users and ex-offenders This report was written by User Voice, and published by Clinks. It emerged from a peer-led consultation to explore perceptions of volunteering in prison from the perspective of service users. The report, part of the Valuing Volunteering in the Criminal Justice System project, shares service users' views on a range of topics including: volunteers and volunteering, including service provision, benefits of non-prison staff, and benefits to volunteers. It also covers: characteristics of volunteers including motivation and lived experience, and delivering voluntary services in prison, including access to prison and reception from prison.
Case study: Anawim Women’s Centre This is the second in our series of case studies highlighting the impact of current policy and funding arrangements on specialist voluntary sector organisations working to support women. This case study looks at the work of Anawim Women's Centre in Birmingham, discussing the needs of the women the centre works with, what kind of services the centre delivers, and the impact of Transforming Rehabilitation.
Unlocking potential: a review of education in prison This Clinks briefing summarises the main themes and recommendations from the Coates Review into prison education and includes a timeline for implementation. In September 2015, the then Secretary of State for Justice Michael Gove, asked Dame Sally Coates to conduct a review into prison education and to make recommendations for how it could be improved. The report, published on 18th May 2016, makes 31 recommendations, 17 of which are listed as key. The Government has accepted them all.
RR3 - Prison reform and the voluntary sector The Reducing Re-offending Third Sector Advisory Group (RR3) - an advisory group to the Ministry of Justice and National Offender Management Service - was asked in February 2016 by the then Minister for Prisons and Probation, Andrew Selous, to provide information on how the voluntary sector can be engaged in the government’s programme of prison reform and contribute to reducing reoffending. This paper sets out key issues and ideas that the RR3 believe will support the voluntary sector’s engagement with the prison reform programme. Peter Dawson, incoming chief executive of the Prison Reform Trust and a member of the RR3 group has written a blog about the paper and his views about some of the potential challenges and opportunities that lie ahead for the Criminal Justice System.
Opportunity knocks (August 2016) This briefing introduces devolution and how it is developing in England. It explains why it is relevant to people with multiple needs, who experience overlapping issues with homelessness, substance misuse, mental ill health and contact with the Criminal Justice System. It also explores the experience so far of devolution in local areas and suggests how devolution can be useful tool, though not a prerequisite, for joining up local services to better support people with multiple needs. The briefing is published by the Making Every Adult Matter Coalition, a coalition of Clinks, Homeless Link and Mind.
Criminal Justice System
HM Chief Inspector of Prison’s annual report 2015-16 This is Peter Clarkes’ first annual report since being appointed HM Chief Inspector of Prisons. Overall, the report finds that prisons have not improved in some key areas since last year and in some areas they have even declined. Peter Clarke says, “despite the sterling efforts of many who work in the Prison Service at all levels, there is a simple and unpalatable truth about far too many of our prisons. They have become unacceptably violent and dangerous. A large part of this violence is linked to the harm caused by new psychoactive substances (NPS) which are having a dramatic and destabilising effect in many of our prisons.”
Joint Enterprise: A right or wrong turn? The Institute of Criminal Policy Research of Birkbeck College undertook this study in partnership with the Prison Reform Trust. It reviews the law and Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) guidance surrounding joint enterprise and explores how these are used in practice. The paper makes a number of recommendations for enhancing clarity and transparency in the prosecution of joint enterprise cases including improvements to the recording of charging decisions and a review of the mandatory life sentence for murder. It also recommends the abandonment by the courts, CPS and other bodies of the term ‘joint enterprise, which the paper describes as ‘toxic’.
Referral orders - do they achieve their potential? This HM Inspectorate of Probation report finds that referral orders are consistently shown to be more effective than other sentences for young people but they are not always being delivered well and insufficient attention is given to ensuring they achieve their objectives. The report makes a number of recommendations including: national monitoring and oversight of their delivery by the Youth Justice Board and Ministry of Justice; Youth Offending Teams ensuring that they have good engagement with young people and their parents/carers in the period between sentence and youth offender panel; and objectives in referral order contracts focusing on outcomes that point to a prosocial future and give attention to reintegration into the community.
Youth justice
Keep On Caring: Supporting Young People from Care to Independence This strategy document, published by the Department for Education (DfE), is about improving services for care leavers and sets out a vision for the further reform of support for care leavers. It describes how the state will support care leavers to achieve five key outcomes: be better prepared and supported to live independently; improved access to education, employment and training; experience stability and feel safe and secure; improved access to health and support; and financial stability. In the document, the DfE commits to a new national care leaver advisory group, to be created and facilitated by the department. The role of family support in resettlement Beyond Youth Custody have published two documents on the subject of family support in resettlement: a practitioners' guide and a policy briefing. The practitioners guide this explores the family’s role in providing both personal and structural support for young people leaving custody, providing tips for successfully engaging with family members and overcoming barriers to engagement. The policy briefing highlights key themes from a policy roundtable chaired and hosted by Tim Loughton MP about the role of family support in the resettlement of young people. Key themes from the discussion include: the importance of investing in family approaches up-stream; the need to empower family members by ‘supporting the supporter’ through identifying and meeting wider family support needs; the crucial nature of information sharing and co-ordination of services/agencies involved in a young person’s journey through the youth justice system.Youth Justice Board Annual Report and Accounts, 2015 to 16 Published by the Youth Justice Board, this report summarises the YJB’s performance over the year 2015 to 2016. They measure their performance through a number of markers: the number of young people entering the criminal justice system for the first time; the number of young people reoffending; and the use of custody. The report shows that the number of young people entering the youth justice system has continued to fall, as has the use of custody. However, reoffending rates have continued to rise. This is explained in part by the fact that the cohort of young people in the justice system has changed considerably. While there are now fewer young people offending, these young people have committed more previous offences and may have more complex needs.
Mental health
Traumatic brain injury and offending Published by the Centre for Mental Health this report presents an analysis of the costs of traumatic brain injury, with particular reference to the links between head injury and crime. It highlights that head injuries double a person’s risk of later mental illness, dramatically increase the risk of earlier death, and can increase someone’s’ risk of future offending. The report also shows that an estimated 60% of adults who have been in contact with the criminal justice system in the UK have had a traumatic brain injury, six times higher than the rate among the wider population.
Black, Asian and minority ethnic people
The Young Review Submission to the Lammy Review Clinks' partner, the Young Review, has responded to the government review of Black, Asian and minority ethnic representation in the Criminal Justice System (CJS). Set up in partnership with Clinks in 2012, the Young Review focusses on improving outcomes for young Black and Muslim men in the CJS. This submission makes a number of recommendations including reviewing the process for downgrading a prisoner's status, further developing service user involvement and improving the ethnic representation of staff in the CJS.
Older people
Social care or systematic neglect? Older people on release from prison Published by the Prison Reform Trust and Restore Support Network, this report highlights the lack of adequate provision to meet the health and social care needs of older prisoners. The report states that there is limited and inconsistent support to help sort out housing, employment, personal finances and debt, drug and alcohol dependence, and to re-establish family relationships. The report maintains that this is undermining the effective resettlement of older prisoners and increases the risk of future offending. It calls for the creation of a cross-government national strategy for meeting the health, social and rehabilitative needs of older people in prison and on release in the community.
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Changes in criminal justice Clinks’ CEO Anne Fox has written a guest blog for NPC about her thoughts and reflections on the latest criminal justice announcements. Anne writes, 'The change and uncertainty that the country is now facing feels like an extension of what we in the criminal justice sector have been experiencing for many months now. Indeed, before Brexit and its political fall-out drew the press’s gaze to Whitehall, it felt to many as if there was news about our justice system, especially prisons, on our radios and in our newspapers every day. So where do things stand at present?'
Travellers prisoners: Not sympathy just suitable education In this Clinks guest blog Dr Conn Mac Gabhann, of The Irish Chaplaincy explores the challenges that Irish travellers and Gypsies faces in prison and how they engage with services. Conn writes, “Times have changed. Traveller prisoners are not the hard-to-reach, inscrutable and disengaged group as the popular perception of a few years ago would have you believe. They are the men and women who…are assisting other Travellers as Prisoner Reps; and they are the people who are becoming Samaritan Listeners and Reading Mentors.”
Are you a part of the bigger picture? Keele University’s Dr Kelly Prince and Dr Mary Corcoran have written a guest blog for Clinks, about their research tracking change in the voluntary sector in criminal justice: the Voluntary Sector Resilience Project. The include links to more information about the research and how you can be involved.
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