Dear colleagues,
State of the Sector 2024 is live! Your voice has been heard, and Clinks has captured it for our 2024 report. This year we have taken a qualitative approach to our research, listening to the sector via a series of focus groups and interviews with voluntary organisations and funders. Check out our State of the State of the Sector webpage to read the report and find out more information below.
Clinks’ role is to lead, support, inform and collaborate within the criminal justice sector. Our annual State of the Sector research, produced in partnership with NCVO, is a free resource evidencing what our members and the sector are experiencing.
We have compiled this report so all organisations can better understand the current criminal justice voluntary sector climate. The information supplied to Clinks during our research phase provides us with extensive evidence which we present to a wide range of stakeholders, including key decision makers. The report covers:
- Increasing demand for services and complexity of need
- Financial pressures and the funding crisis
- Policy and systemic barriers
- Workforce challenges
- Regional disparities and the geography of need
- Public perception, media and criminal justice narratives
- Innovation and effective practice.
Alongside six, key recommendations!
We have summarised key findings relevant to organisations and individuals working within the arts in criminal justice.
Meeting needs
- Many organisations involved in our research delivered services or activities in prisons, including arts activities.
- These organisations described a challenging operating environment in prisons, noting high turnover in prison staff, prison staff reductions and shortages, prison staff inexperience, and a lack of person-centred trauma-informed communication with people in prison.
- After work in prison stopped during the pandemic, many organisations, including arts organisations, reported difficulties in securing new agreements from prisons to run their activities.
Staffing
- Many organisations reported problems with the vetting of staff and volunteers, particularly those with lived experience.
- These included the process taking months to complete, individuals going through the process finding it traumatising or intrusive, organisations losing staff of volunteers due to the length and nature of this process, and inconsistencies with who is cleared, to name a few.
- Organisations were frustrated that these difficulties came at the same time as the Government and funders were encouraging organisations to employ people with lived experience.
Funding
- Some organisations called for sustained funding for arts and education initiatives in prisons.
- Other organisations stressed the need for funding to involve people with lived experience in their activities.
- Several organisations called for more unrestricted funding and funding of core costs.
- Others wanted longer funding periods, and continuation funding for existing work.
Our pledge to you
The sector’s voice is one of its key strengths, and the NCJAA will continue working to make sure we support you. Over the coming year, Clinks and the NCJAA will continue to advocate for the sector. We will share learning and offer opportunities for connection, providing a platform for the sector to come together to highlight issues that matter to organisations and the people they work with.
View the 2024 report here
Download the executive summary here
Share State of the Sector on Twitter and LinkedIn
Best wishes,
Lou
Louise Clark
NCJAA Manager
Clinks
020 4502 6774
Pronouns: she/her
#MyNameIs Loo-eez
Working hours: Monday to Thursday 8.30am – 4.30pm
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The National Criminal Justice Arts Alliance is embedded in Clinks
Postal address: Clinks, 82A James Carter Road, Mildenhall, Suffolk, IP28 7DE
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