Helen Mills

Is penal reform working? Community sentences and reform sector strategies: Helen Mills and Rebecca Roberts consider the opportunities and challenges for progressive penal reform followed by responses from George Mair, Jamie Bennett and Mick Ryan

One of three responses to article considering the opportunities and challenges for progressive penal reform - Mills, Helen and Roberts, Rebecca (2011) Is penal reform working? Community sentences and reform sector strategies, Volume 84, Issue 1, Criminal Justice Matters - Special Issue: Drugs. Includes responses from George Mair, Jamie Bennett and Mick Ryan.

Policy, purpose, and pragmatism: dilemmas for voluntary and community organisations working with black young people affected by crime

Abstract In 2007 the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies (CCJS) and the Institute for Criminal Policy Research held a roundtable seminar to discuss the implications of Home Affairs Committees (HAC) report Young Black People and the Criminal Justice System (2007) with a group including voluntary and community organisers, academics, and statutory body representatives. A point of consensus from this event was the perception that innovative and interesting work is taking place in the voluntary and community sector (VCS) with black young people affected by crime, but that these practices are not well documented. To address this ambiguity CCJS conducted research to explore the approaches of voluntary and community groups predominantly working with black young people affected by crime in England.

UK Justice Policy Review: a new resource about criminal justice in the UK

Last month the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies published the first volume in a new annual series about criminal justice. The UK Justice Policy Review series – as the title suggests – explores key developments in criminal justice policy in the UK. The series begins with the formation of the coalition government in May 2010. Hence this first volumes focus is on setting out the agenda for criminal justice that took shape in the first year of the coalition. By the end of this first year the following emerged as major areas of proposed criminal justice reform: • Reconfiguring police governance and accountability • Reforming the courts system and legal aid provision • Establishing new financial and delivery arrangements for interventions with convicted lawbreakers

The Olympics: 64 years on

In just over a months time London will be the centre of international focus as athletes from over 200 countries arrive for the Olympic Games. The last Olympic Games held in London was in 1948 – in the same month the National Health Service (NHS) was established. It is a tragic coincidence that the Olympics returns to London in the same year as the Health and Social Care Act was passed, legislation the chairman of the British Medical Association described as likely to be ‘irreversibly damaging to the NHS as a public service, converting it into a competitive marketplace that will widen health inequalities and be detrimental to patient care’ (Buckman, 2012).

Working together to cut numbers in the criminal justice system

Here at the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, we are not strictly speaking a campaigning organisation. However, we are interested in forming a coalition with academics, practitioners, our members and all those for whom the current rate of imprisonment and the governments concerted lack of commitment to the significant reduction of prison numbers, is of grave and ongoing concern; it is unacceptable.

Is penal reform working? Community sentences and reform sector strategies

One of three responses to article considering the opportunities and challenges for progressive penal reform - Mills, Helen and Roberts, Rebecca (2011) Is penal reform working? Community sentences and reform sector strategies, Volume 84, Issue 1, Criminal Justice Matters - Special Issue: Drugs. Includes responses from George Mair, Jamie Bennett and Mick Ryan.

An unsurprising disappointment

Abstract The introduction of the Community Order (CO) and Suspended Sentence Order (SSO) in the 2003 Criminal Justice Act, on paper at least, radically reconfigured community sentences in England and Wales. The CO replaced the range of community sentences previously available with a single sentence. The SSO brought in a custodial sentence to be served in the community unless breached. Both orders were to be made up of one or more requirements from a possible of 12 (including unpaid work, supervision, accredited programmes, curfew and drug treatment).