Evidence for the UN Special Rapporteurs session on the Criminalisation of homelessness and poverty: John Middleton We are all concerned about policies which criminalise vulnerable people, women and children and people from minorities. Criminalisation is a negative approach to addressing societal problems which are better met by understanding individual problems, providing preventive measures, and enabling…
written as part of the Rethink and Reset campaign rub by Revolving Doors: https://revolving-doors.org.uk/a-new-chance-instead-of-prison-can-it-reduce-crime/
Realist research funded by the Nuffield Foundation has highlighted the importance of ‘child first’ environments and intervention design for achieving positive outcomes, particularly for marginalised children who are given community sentences in the Youth Justice System. The project was conducted by a multi-disciplinary team, led by Professor Steve Case, with Dr Mark Monaghan and Dr…
Dr Vicky Heap, Dr Alex Black and Dr Chris Devany Public Spaces Protection Orders (PSPOs) prompted concern and criticism from human rights organisations and criminologists when they were introduced by the Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act (2014). In short, a PSPO can place behavioural restrictions upon a designated area of public space. If those…
at the University of Birmingham (7 November 2022) as part of the ESRC Festival of Social Sciences We hosted a very lively and insightful event on The School to Prison Pipeline: A UK Perspectiveat the University of Birmingham campus on a rainy Monday evening (in November!). We were delighted to see so many attendees engaged…
Rona Epstein http://appeal.org.uk/news/2017/1/19/no-longer-in-prison-melanies-sentence-is-quashed First published by APPEAL https://appeal.org.uk/
Rona Epstein First published in the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies https://www.crimeandjustice.org.uk/resources/go-directly-jail-shouting-begging-and-rough-sleeping
Rona Epstein First published in The Justice Gap https://www.thejusticegap.com/women-in-prison-remand-in-custody/
Poverty causes crime. People can argue about what constitutes ‘poverty’ or what it means for something to be a ‘cause of crime’, but it takes a special form of denial to pretend this powerful link is not there. It helps, of course, to articulate the various ways in which poverty insidiously punishes those caught in…
Simply punishing people who commit crimes will not get to the root causes of crime, namely, poverty. The police are likely to encounter more and more of poverty-driven offences as the country battles through a cost-of-living crisis. As of mid-August 2022, inflation has hit a 40-year high, and energy and food bills are rapidly becoming…