In this month's edition...
In January, Clinks’ Senior Development Officer for Wales, Bryn Hall, gave oral evidence to the Welsh Affairs Committee alongside Katie Fraser, Head of Prisons and Participation at Women in Prison. This was part of the Committee’s inquiry into Prisons in Wales. You can read the transcript of the oral evidence or watch the session here. Clinks also submitted written evidence to the Committee last year, which has been published and can be found here.
The Reducing Reoffending Third Sector Advisory Group (RR3) have recruited for several seats. The deadlines for applications have now closed for all the seats, and interviews are taking place with shortlisted candidates. We want to take this opportunity to thank everyone who applied.
Through our work as part of the Women in the Criminal Justice System Expert Group, we are developing a paper on early intervention and diversion for women. This work will be done in consultation with the Operational Policy and Strategy team within HM Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) Women’s Group. The paper aims to highlight best practice in this space. If you are interested in contributing to this work, please contact Clinks’ Head of Influence and Communications, Sam Julius, as soon as possible.
Clinks is delighted to have secured funding to develop a network of voluntary organisations supporting families of, and relationships for, people in the criminal justice system. The network, led by Clinks’ Senior Development Officer, Natalie Maidment, will provide advice, support, and information to voluntary organisations working with families and significant others in and around the criminal justice system. The network aims to bring together large and small organisations to identify challenges, share good practices, and influence policy and decision-making. If you would like to join our new Families Network, contact Natalie Maidment.
As an infrastructure organisation, providing information, advice, and resources is an integral part of our work. We have heard from many of our members about how difficult it is to identify, understand and navigate funding opportunities for the criminal justice voluntary sector. We know that this is becoming increasingly challenging. We have therefore published new information and guidance on our website, which explores this topic and includes guides to statutory and charitable funding, fundraising support, and information on securing alternative sources of income.
Government response to Public Accounts Committee (PAC) inquiry into resettlement support for people leaving prison | The government responded to the PAC inquiry into resettlement support for people leaving prison. The PAC concluded that HM Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) was not getting all the basics right when commissioning resettlement services and recommended that HMPPS set out how it will ensure good quality outcomes for people leaving prison under existing Commissioned Rehabilitative Services (CRS) contracts. The government accepted the recommendation and said HMPPS is reviewing its approach to ensuring good quality outcomes for people leaving prison and people on probation are both achieved and evidenced. The PAC also recommended that HMPPS set out how it will apply lessons learned from the procurement of CRSs to its future commissioning. The government agreed, saying steps had been taken to improve the CRS Dynamic Framework to facilitate greater voluntary sector involvement and to introduce a grant process for CRSs.
As Clinks continues to engage with the Ministry of Justice and HMPPS on the CRSs and commissioning more generally, we would welcome the sector’s views on the PAC’s recommendations. Please share these by contacting the Influence and Communications team.
Government response to Justice Committee inquiry into public opinion and understanding of sentencing | The government responded to the Justice Committee’s inquiry into public opinion and understanding of sentencing. In response, the government said it is continuing to rebuild public confidence in the justice system. It notes measures like the publication of judgements and accessibility of sentencing remarks to help build understanding and confidence in sentencing. It also sets out that public opinion plays a “pivotal role in shaping sentencing policy”. Responding to the recommendation that an independent advisory panel on sentencing should be set up, including voluntary sector representation, the government said the MoJ “currently uses a multi-faceted approach to policy development involving consultations with a broad range of experts, organisations, and individuals”, with the government also held to scrutiny via debates in Parliament.
Latest criminal justice statistics published | The Ministry of Justice published statistics covering people in the criminal justice system, safety in custody, the children and young people’s secure estate (CYPSE), and proven reoffending. There were 87,489 people in prison on 31 December 2023. There were 311 deaths in custody in the year to December 2023, a 3% increase from last year. The number of self-harm incidents in prison rose 24% in the year to September 2023, with the rate of self-harm incidents per 1,000 people increasing 38% in female establishments and increasing 11% in male establishments. The annualised rate of self-harm per 100 children in the CYPSE decreased by 5% in the quarter to September 2023 compared to the same quarter last year. The proven reoffending rate for the January to March 2022 cohort was 25.5%, an increase of 1.2 points from the same quarter in 2021.
Ethnicity and the criminal justice system 2022 | The Ministry of Justice published a compilation of statistics from data sources across the criminal justice system to give a combined perspective on the typical experience of different ethnic groups. In general, the figures find that racially minoritised people appear to be over-represented at many stages throughout the criminal justice system, compared to non-racially minoritised people. The most significant disparities appear at the point of stop and search, custodial remands, and the prison population. Amongst racially minoritised groups, excluding white minority groups, Black people were often the most over-represented. At various points across the criminal justice system, the disparity holds for racially minoritised children, excluding children from white minority groups. Differences in outcomes between racially minoritised groups over time present a mixed picture, with disparity decreasing in some areas and widening in others.
Youth justice statistics: 2022 to 2023 | The Youth Justice Board published statistics on youth justice for the year ending March 2023. They show an increase in the arrests of children for the second consecutive year and an increase in first-time entrants to the youth justice system for the first time in 10 years. Moreover, nearly two-thirds of children remanded to custody received a non-custodial sentence, with 28% of those not receiving a custodial sentence being acquitted or having their case dismissed. The sentencing of children at court increased for the first time in 10 years, with the number of sentencing occasions involving children rising 8% compared with the previous year. The reoffending rate also increased for the first time in eight years, rising 0.9 points. Despite this, the number of children in custody fell by 3% compared to the previous year.
Drone restricted airspace around prisons and young offender institutions in England and Wales | A new statutory instrument (SI 2023/1101) has come into effect as of 25 January 2024, restricting the flying of drones in the vicinity of closed prisons and young offender institutions in England and Wales. Anyone wishing to fly a drone within the restricted airspace will require an exemption, which should be requested via a form submitted to the Civil Aviation Authority. HM Prison and Probation Service will issue exemptions for approved requests and will detail the conditions under which flying can take place.
Clinks Publications
Prison Education: A review of the evidence | Clinks published the latest paper as part of its Evidence Library, which Russell Webster co-ordinates on behalf of Clinks. Written by Jon Collins, Chief Executive of Prisoners’ Education Trust, this new paper explores education for adults in prison, primarily in England and Wales. Noting the benefits of education in prison are widely recognised, the welcome focus on improving education from statutory agencies, and the next steps for the commissioning of new contracts for providing education in public sector prisons, the paper looks at the evidence in this context. Areas covered by the review include the educational needs of people in prison, the current state of prison education, the evidence base for the effectiveness of prison education, and critical success factors for high quality prison education.
Criminal justice legislation
Doing more with less? Criminal justice demand and the three bills | The Centre for Justice Innovation (CJI) published a briefing looking at the three criminal justice bills currently passing through Parliament: the Victims and Prisoners Bill, the Criminal Justice Bill, and the Sentencing Bill. The briefing focuses on the impact the proposed legislation will have on the demand placed on prisons and probation, assessing that, taken together, the bills are unlikely to adequately deal with the acute pressures on the adult male prison estate in the medium term. Whilst measures like the presumption against short sentences may delay the point at which demand outstrips supply, the CJI estimate that a capacity crunch point will be reached by December 2026. On probation, the CJI estimates the measures would lead to an additional 14,000 cases over the next four years.
Prisons
Food Matters in prisons: briefing paper | Food Matters published a paper exploring the role of food in shaping the identities and relationships of people serving custodial sentences and its potential to have positive impacts in prisons. The paper concludes food should move from being a functional aspect of prisons to a focal point for various activities and improvements to prison regimes. The report identifies three opportunities for moving forward: opportunities for building on existing initiatives related to food and nutrition, with a number of these initiatives undertaken by the voluntary sector; opportunities for greater transparency over food quality, standards, and sustainability; and opportunities for HM Prison and Probation Service to adopt a strategic approach to developing food-related initiatives, integrated with a range of policies and practices.
Monitoring places of detention: Annual report of the UK’s National Preventative Mechanism (NPM) | The UK NPM published its annual report for 2022-23, summarising and analysing the work of the 21 NPM members. It warns governments across the UK have repeatedly failed to take meaningful action to alleviate human rights concerns where people are deprived of their liberty. In her introduction, the UK NPM Chair, Wendy Sinclair-Gieben, notes a number of concerns about detention across all UK jurisdictions, including the “glacial return to a full rehabilitative regime” following the pandemic, staff shortages, a lack of rehabilitative activity, an increasing remand population, and issues of equality and discrimination. She notes the detention issues are entrenched, complex, and cross-cutting, arguing that “a paradigm shift is required where detention is used as a last resort and the system takes account of enlightened understanding”.
Justice Barred: The difficulties lawyers face in seeing clients in prison | The Association of Prison Lawyers (APL) published a report about challenges for lawyers in seeing clients in prison. Challenges include technological facilities not being equally and easily accessible to lawyers who need to see their clients, some prisons refusing to allow lawyers to use their video link facilities and others limiting their use to between Friday and Monday or offering appointments weeks or months in the future. In several prisons, in-person visits are extremely limited, with just one slot a week, sometimes only in a visiting hall with no privacy. Even when an in-person visit does take place, there can be complications on the day, including being denied authorised laptops or the person being brought to the visit late or not at all.
The Long Wait: A thematic review of delays in the transfer of mentally unwell prisoners | HM Inspectorate of Prisons published a thematic review scrutinising access to mental health care in prisons, carried out in partnership with the Care Quality Commission. The review involved fieldwork in 21 prisons to examine the conditions for people awaiting transfer to a secure hospital and a review of patients' case notes to understand when delays occurred and why. Noting that people should be transferred from prison to hospital within 28 days of the need for such a transfer being identified, the review found only 15% of people were transferred within this timeframe, with some waiting over a year. While waiting, patients are often in solitary confinement because of the risk of violence to others or themselves as a result of their illness.
Segregation of men with mental health needs: A thematic monitoring report | The Independent Monitoring Boards (IMBs) published a thematic monitoring report about the use of segregation to manage and care for people in prison with severe mental health needs. The report notes almost all IMBs monitoring in prisons holding adult men have repeatedly raised concerns over care and separation units (CSUs) not being a suitable place for people in prison with mental health needs, with these people often held for prolonged and long-term periods in CSUs. For men who were already struggling with their mental health, their wellbeing and behaviour often deteriorated further whilst being segregated for prolonged periods. IMBs also found people were often moved between different CSUs, healthcare units, or were returned to wings for short periods, making it harder to track the total time spent segregated.
Probation
HM Inspectorate of Probation thematic inspection into the role of the senior probation officer and the management of oversight in the Probation Service | HM Inspectorate of Probation published a thematic inspection report on the effectiveness of support arrangements for Senior Probation Officers (SPOs). The Inspectorate’s findings included that the current management structure and arrangements do not enable effective management and oversight, and a significant amount of SPO time is currently spent on tasks unrelated to service delivery, such as facilities management. It also found the SPO’s span of responsibilities is too great. The report makes six recommendations, including to design and implement a comprehensive induction and development programme for all SPOs, and to review business support functions in relation to facilities management and HR. The government has published its response to this inspection, in which it agrees with all six of the Inspectorate’s recommendations.
Youth justice
Bridging gaps and changing tracks | The Alliance for Youth Justice published the first in a series of briefings exploring issues faced by young people in contact with the criminal justice system transitioning to adulthood. It looks at how racially minoritised young people experiencing particularly destabilising transitions due to deficits in support before and after turning 18. The briefing notes the crucial role of organisations led by and for racially minoritised people in addressing these shortfalls and argues for reforms to better facilitate and fund the sector’s involvement in racially minoritised young people’s lives. The report calls for the government, funders, and commissioners to review their relationships with the voluntary sector and reform commissioning processes, including ensuring probation provides dedicated commissioned services for young people, simplifying application processes, and issuing longer contracts.
Role of the Youth Justice Service Police Officer | The Youth Justice Board published guidance to support the shared understanding of the role of the police officer within the Youth Justice Service (YJS). The guidance notes policing and the context in which it is delivered within the justice system for children has changed considerably since the previous guidance was written, with fewer children entering the system. However, it observes those who still have contact with the system often have multiple and complex needs, and there remains an over-representation of racially minoritised children. Some areas covered by the guidance include where the YJS police officers should be located, the tasks they should undertake, the YJS police officer’s role in prevention, diversion, and with victims of crime, and how the police and YJS should work in partnership.
How to keep children safe and reduce reoffending | The Youth Endowment Fund (YEF) published a report on how to keep children safe and reduce reoffending when arrested. The YEF set out five reasons for focussing on arrested children and how they are diverted away from the criminal justice system. These include that improving the way arrested children are supported means fewer victims and better lives for children, and how arrested children are treated matters for race equality. The report goes on to make seven recommendations for improving support for arrested children, including giving police incentives to use diversion by changing the crime outcome reporting framework, ensuring funding reflects needs to better support diversion where it can have the biggest impact, and gathering better data on the national picture around diversion.
Enhanced Case Management evaluation: Phase Two report | The Youth Justice Board published a second report evaluating Enhanced Case Management (ECM). ECM aims to ensure youth justice services’ practice and interventions are aligned with children’s developmental needs. The report found ECM had no statistically significant effects on reoffending relative to usual services. However, a key factor in this is the small sample size and the fact that the data on reoffending only ran for one year. Participation in the ECM approach was limited to children with complex needs, so these results can only indicate effects for this cohort. Consequently, the report concludes that there is insufficient evidence to confidently determine ECM is ineffective. This second report only considered reoffending, whereas the phase one report found qualitative evidence of improved outcomes such as children’s mental health or educational attainment.
Approved premises
Realising the rehabilitative potential of approved premises | HM Inspectorate of Probation published another report in its Academic Insight Series looking at the rehabilitative potential of approved premises (APs). The report concludes APs are under researched in general, and their impact in the desistance of residents even more so. In addition to speculations about practice directions, it outlines three principles to guide work in this area. These are that a greater focus is required on the individual and their story, precisely the meaning of this to them; APs must be resourced, structured, and empowered to work with local community groups to address stigma, provide more significant opportunities, and give greater agency to their residents; and further investment is needed in a greater diversity of accommodation choices, building on the work started by the Community Accommodation Service Tier 3 project.
Resettlement
Land of the free? Comparing England and Wales criminal records policy with five US states | Transform Justice published a report comparing criminal records disclosures in England and Wales and five US states. It found that in three out of five scenarios, the England and Wales system is more punitive than any of the five US states. Considering someone convicted of drug possession 12 years ago, in all five US states explored, the conviction can be deleted from someone’s record after a maximum of ten years, whereas in England and Wales, it will show forever on more detailed checks required for many roles. The report recommends a full review of the criminal records disclosure system in England and Wales. In the meantime, it suggests childhood offences should be wiped clean, cautions should be removed from criminal record checks, and short prison sentences should not be revealed forever.
Criminal records disclosure | The Conservative MP for Hendon, Matthew Offord, asked a written parliamentary question to the Ministry of Justice, about expunging criminal records for summary offences committed by people under the age of 18, more than ten years ago. In reply, the Minister said the government agrees with the conclusions reached by the Justice Committee in 2017, that whilst there may be some advantages to a mechanism where records could become “sealed”, this would lead to “unsustainable pressures” on the body responsible for making such decisions. As the Committee’s report recommended, the government is instead “focused on using and reforming the existing automatic filtering system”. The Minister said the government believes recent reforms continue to ensure the right balance is struck between public protection and ensuring people, particularly children, who committed minor offences can quickly move on with their lives.
Policing
Police use of voluntary interviews and the appropriate adult safeguard | The National Appropriate Adult Network published a report on the appropriate adult safeguard and voluntary police interviews in 2022-23. The report found around one in five voluntary interviews were of children (estimated at 27,000 a year), and only half of police forces reported the, legally mandatory, need for an appropriate adult in all of their voluntary interviews with children. The availability of data on use with adults and children and recorded need for appropriate adults is significantly worse for voluntary interviews than police custody. A third of police forces were unable to provide any data on the number of voluntary interviews conducted in 2022-23. Recommendations include the Ministry of Justice supporting “opt out” legal advice, or mandatory attendance of a legal advisor, for children and voluntary adults attending voluntary interview.
Charities
Public trust in charities and the role and experience of trustees | The Charity Commission brought together its research into public trust in charities and how trustees undertake their roles and responsibilities to help understand what has been working well and the lessons that can be learned. It notes that, encouragingly, public trust in charities has been recovering and stabilising when trust in other institutions, such as the police and the government, decreased. Public trust in charities is nuanced and complex, driven by good regulation but also the actions and behaviours of individual charities. On trustees, the Commission identifies they have views largely aligned with the public, but there are some areas where a significant minority of trustees need to refresh their understanding. For example, there is less confidence around financial oversight, including the charity’s annual accounts.
What is going wrong in the Welsh criminal justice system? | Clinks Senior Development Officer for Wales, Bryn Hall, has written a blog exploring the latest research from Dr Robert Jones at the Wales Governance Centre about prisons in Wales. Bryn highlights some key figures Dr Jones sets out in his paper.
Making race and justice everybody’s business | Following Clinks’ Annual Conference, “Making race and justice everybody’s business”, in December 2023, Clinks published a blog post looking back at the event. This highlights key messages from the workshops and discussions throughout the day and calls for race and justice to be not just everybody’s business but everyday business.
Muslims, prisons and mental health | Maslaha, an organisation seeking to change and challenge the conditions that create inequalities for Muslim communities in areas like education, gender, criminal justice, health, negative media coverage, and a continued climate of Islamophobia, published a guest blog for Russell Webster. This explores the specific mental health challenges Muslims in prison face and their new Coming Home service, which provides free, confidential counselling from Muslim therapists for Muslims and their families harmed by the prison system.
“A youth justice system that cares” | The Youth Justice Board published a news story about a recent visit to the Youth Offending Service at Blaenau Gwent and Caerphilly, to see what is happening locally as part of the increased oversight and focus on the performance of youth justice services.
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This month's edition was written by...
Clinks Policy and Communications Officer, Franklin Barrington
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