Emerging from Lockdown

This project draws on empirical research and a large scale public photographic project to tell Coventry Stories of lockdown through a creative narrative account and a short film.

Since March 2020, the UK has been in some form of lockdown, restricting our movement and our ability to meet with others in our homes, in cafes, bars and clubs, and outside. This has been backed by police powers of dispersal, the use of temporary barriers to control public mobility, and the ability to issue fixed penalty notices of £100 where more than six people or two households have gathered outside. There were also fines of up to £10,000 for those holding or involved in prohibited gatherings indoors of more than 30 people.

Through interviews with 25 people in Coventry city centre in June 2021, the research asks how people have experienced this loss of freedom and what their new-found liberty looks like as they emerge out of lockdown and return to the city. This poses a further question about what ‘new normal’ spaces in the city may materialise, and the extent to which the extraordinary measures introduced in lockdown might be retained in a post-pandemic world. We ask how criminal justice powers to enforce public health restrictions have impacted individuals. How do people with young families, those working in front line services, retail, hospitality, the arts or at-home experience the city? How did they understand the legal restrictions on their freedom of movement, and how does the city feel now that they're free to move, meet and gather as they please?

These responses have been woven into a fictionalised story, written by Georgie Evans - "Blinking in the Light" - and then narrated by actor Bharti Patel in a short film alongside images from the Coventry Grid project, organised in collaboration with Dave Allen.

Policing, Culture and Community: WM Police as City of Culture Partners

The 15 month project Started in September 2021. It seeks to understand the potential for police partnerships around arts and culture to have a positive impact in reducing crime, protecting vulnerable people, increasing diversity in recruitment, and on police relationships with young people and seldom heard communities.

It poses a number of salient questions: To what extent has the model of partnership with the Trust ensured that WMP can contribute to Coventry City of Culture in order to make positive impacts in the city? What are the benefits to the police in investing in a partnership in the delivery of cultural mega events, and how does this compare with other forms of collaboration e.g. sporting mega events? What benefits has the police partnership with City of Culture brought to young people, areas of deprivation, those most fearful of crime and those suffering health and economic disadvantage? What is the legacy of the Police-Trust partnership in terms of robust, tested strategies and practices.

PI: Jackie Hodgson (Law, co-director of COPR); Co-i: Neil Stewart (WBS); Research Fellow: Dr Rachel Lewis (Law)

This project is funded by the City of Culture Trust, WM Police and ESRC Impact Acceleration Account

For more information:https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/copr/our-research/police/

ESRC Impact Studies

Jackie has recently carried out two impact studies funded by the ESRC Impact Acceleration Account.

The first, conducted with West Mercia police and colleagues in the Centre for Operational Police Research (COPR), explores the impact on public confidence in policing of a variety of preventive interventions. Residents across five sites were surveyed before and after different burglary prevention interventions took place, and then again six months later. They were asked about their experience of criminal behaviour in their area and their levels of confidence in, and satisfaction with, policing. Police officers organising the interventions were also interviewed, along with Police and Community Support Officers in the areas and some recent burglary offenders. The findings were published in a final report in 2019 available on the COPR website:Public Confidence and Crime Reduction: The Impact of Forensic Property Marking.

The second study evaluates the Criminal Cases Review Commission's treatment of applications where no appeal has been brought. This new research (co-authored with Juliet Horne and Laurène Soubise) is available on the Law School's Criminal Justice Centre website: <a href="https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/law/research/centres/cjc/news/?newsItem=8a1785d8669b2d230166aa84d9b41d1e">The Criminal Cases Review Commission: Last resort or first appeal? </a> The research looks at the impact on practice of earlier research by Warwick Criminal Justice Centre researchers, including a study commissioned by the Legal Services Commission, 'The extent and impact of legal representation on applications to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC)' published with Dr Juliet Horne (2009) and Juliet's further work in her doctoral thesis (2017).

Access to Justice and Legal Aid: Comparative Perspectives on Unmet Legal Need

In collaboration with Dr Asher Flynn from Monash University, Jackie organised conference workshops in Warwick and Melbourne comparing legal aid cuts and access to justice in the two jurisdictions, resulting in the edited collection (2017) 'Access to Justice and Legal Aid: Comparative Perspectives on Unmet Legal Need' (Hart Publishing) and with Monash colleagues Asher Flynn, Jude McCulloch & Bronwyn Naylor (2016) 'Legal Aid and the Right to a Fair Trial: A Question of Human Rights' 40 (1) Melbourne University Law Review.

https://ssrn.com/abstract=2980337">https://ssrn.com/abstract=2980337

More than Just a Prisoner

Working with Dr Juliet Horne and Natalie Kyneswood though the Criminal Justice Centre, Jackie launched in the House of Lords (in 2015) a study of the Prisoners Penfriends' scheme 'More than Just a Prisoner'.

Shaping EU Directives on Procedural Safeguards for Suspects

Jackie Hodgson’s research on English and French criminal justice has provided evidence to inform the development of EU legislation.

Consultant in EU Impact Study on possible Directive on preventive Detention 2015-16.

Consultant for the EU Impact study on Directive (EU) 2016/343 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 9 March 2016 on the strengthening of certain aspects of the presumption of innocence and of the right to be present at the trial in criminal proceedings

Drawing on Custodial Legal Advice (1993) and Standing Accused (1994), as well as the early findings from Inside Police Custody (2013), she has advised those in the EU preparing Directive 2013/48/EU — right of access to a lawyer, to contact with third parties and consular authorities in the event of custody, as well as the Ministry of Justice. Her body of work on criminal defence lawyers reinforces the importance of lawyers receiving appropriate training in order to provide effective custodial legal advice; being able to consult privately with their client; being present during the police questioning of their client; and the importance of lawyers in ensuring suspects understand and can exercise their legal rights, such as the right to silence. training in order to achieve effective custodial legal advice.

Drawing on Custodial Legal Advice & the Right to Silence (1993) and Standing Accused (1994), as well as the findings from Inside Police Custody (2013), all of which reinforce the importance of training in order to achieve effective custodial legal advice, Jackie has advised those preparing the impact assessment for the Directive (EU) 2016/1919 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 26 October 2016 on legal aid for suspects and accused persons in criminal proceedings and for requested persons in European arrest warrant proceedings. Her work helped to embed adversarial and competent legal assistance within the administration of legal aid.

House of Commons Justice Committee

Gave oral Evidence to House of Commons Justice Committee Inquiry into the Effectiveness of the CCRC, following earlier submission of written evidence, published: House of Commons Justice Committee Criminal Cases Review Commission 12th Report of Session 2014-15, 17 March 2015, HC 850

Ministry of Justice

Submission to Ministry of Justice Triennial Review of the Criminal Cases Review Commission, Hodgson, J and Horne, J (2012)

Justice Parliamentary Select Committee

Consulted by Justice Parliamentary Select Committee enquiry into the Crown Prosecution Service in November 2008.

Home Office

Commissioned by the Home Office to prepare a Report on French counter-terrorism investigations in 2006 as part of a wider legislative review around the admission of intercept evidence into criminal proceedings.

House of Commons Select Committee on the Home Affairs

Consulted by the Select Committee in 2005 on the Terrorism Bill.

House of Lords Select Committee on the European Union

Submitted written evidence on request to Select Committee in 2004.

Working through the arts to build trust in policing

Jackie's research with Dr Rachel Lewis was cited in the UK Parliament Report on Trust in the Police (POSTnote 693, R Brown & A Hobbs) in April 2023.

Prison suicides

Submission of Written Evidence to the Howard League for Penal Reform and the Centre for Mental Health investigation of suicide prevention in prisons (with Juliet Horne) in 2016

Improving prison rehabilitation

With Juliet Horne, Jackie has demonstrated the impact and value of prisoner penfriends through their work, which was launched at a symposium at the House of Lords with contributions from prison governors and reformers and attended by the Ministry of Justice: Hodgson, J. and Horne, J. (2015) Imagining more than just a prisoner: the work of prisoners’ penfriends University of Warwick

EU Policy Briefings

With Jodie Blackstock of JUSTICE, she organised and delivered a policy briefing to some 30 lawyers and EU officials in Brussels in 2012; feedback from the event demonstrated that this successfully raised awareness of the importance of linking legal aid funding to mechanisms to ensure the quality of legal advice to suspects in police custody throughout the EU.

Comparative criminal justice: media work

Jackie was interviewed by Vulture magazine New York in March 2024, to discuss the trial process in France as depicted in the film Anatomy of a Fall, and how this differed from the trial process in England and Wales and the US.

Jackie has appeared frequently on BBC Radio 4 and the world service as well as giving TV and press interviews, mainly on issues of French Criminal Justice and extradition eg the European Arrest Warrant sought for the extradition of the former Catalan leader Puigdemont in 2017. She was also consulted extensively by Brennan Leffler, investigative journalist with 16x9, a national Canadian news & current affairs programme, on the Hassan Diab cases (extradition from Canada to France on terrorism charges).

Building trust in policing through arts-led public engagement

As part of Jackie's Policing, Culture & Community project, undertaken with Dr Rachel Lewis, she worked closely with Coventry's Belgrade Theatre to commission a play, After Preston, drawing on themes from her research. This was preceded by 6 workshops with young people, exploring themes from the research and the play. Belgrade Theatre Collaboration - workshops and performance, November and December 2023

In March 2023, we took the research to a local community of 40 police, councillors and arts practitioners for a webinar as part of the Resonate Festival, followed by a Q&A session Policing, culture & community: West Midlands Police as City of Culture partners Webinar

In February 2023, we presented in one of the panel discussions as part of The UK Cities of Culture Project: Connecting place, culture, research and impact - stories from Coventry
This brought our work to an audience of 100 people from across the region.

In November 2022 we organised a roundtable event to discuss our work as part of the ESRC Festival of Social Sciences Public engagement with the police through arts and culture

Building trust in policing through the arts

In May 2023, Jackie presented (with Dr Rachel Lewis) Engaging with Seldom Heard Communities through Arts and Culture at the National Police Chiefs' Council, Violence against Women and Girls Practice Sharing Event.

With Dr Rachel Lewis, Jackie delivered a keynote to the National Police Chiefs Council and College of Policing & Association of Police and Crime Commissioner's Diversity, Equality & Inclusion Conference, attended by 180 delegates (Nov 2022), setting out the potential for building trust and confidence in policing through arts-led public engagement.

Policing resources & policy

Through a project co-created with West Mercia police, Hodgson demonstrated the impact on public confidence in, and victim satisfaction with, policing of a variety of forensic property marking interventions. Hodgson, J., Wade, K., Stewart, N., Hearty, K., Kyneswood, N., QuispeTorreblanca, E. and Mullett, T. (2019) Public Confidence and Crime Reduction: The Impact of Forensic Property Marking (Warwick University: COPR)

Research & Training with Legal Practitioners

Jackie has delivered numerous training and consultancy roles with Chinese and Japanese judges - In Beijing with the Great Britain China Centre; through hosting delegations at Warwick; and most recently, by participating in a three-day programme in London in 2020.

Jackie's work has helped to inform professional practice through delivering training to practitioners in the UK and Brussels, including to Appropriate Adults; lawyers preparing applications to the Criminal Cases Review Commission; EU policy-makers; police officers involved in interviewing young suspects; and lawyers providing custodial legal advice i ireland following legislative reform.

Through the establishment of the Centre for Operational Police Research (COPR), Jackie Hodgson, together with colleagues from Warwick Business School (WBS) and Psychology, has built a network of police forces across England and Wales . Centre members are drawn from across the university and projects are co-created with police as partners.

New Legal Standards for Criminal Justice

Jackie Hodgson’s empirical criminal justice research has resulted in the creation of new legal professional standards enforced through a mandatory scheme of accreditation for lawyers providing legal advice to those in custody.

At present the 10,000 individuals currently providing police station advice are all accredited under this scheme and around 3.3 million of the 8.2 million suspects arrested since 2008 have received legal advice by an accredited adviser under this scheme. The research has also had an impact at a conceptual level, reframing understandings of the role of lawyers and influencing policy in Scotland. Collaborative training with lawyers, NGOs and the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) has developed the skills of those providing advice and has thus contributed to capacity-building across the UK.

Her work has also had an impact on the implementation of policy in Scotland. The Criminal Procedure (Legal Assistance, Detention and Appeals) (Scotland) Act 2010 having made new provision for the right of a detained suspect to access to a lawyer, Hodgson, together with JUSTICE, provided training to more than 60 Scottish lawyers in 2011, to alert lawyers to the crucial importance of their newly established role at the police station and the need for personal attendance rather than telephone advice. The findings from her research and the impact of the reforms on practice were distilled into a short guide for those attending (Police Station Advice: Promoting Best Practice). Subsequently, in 2012, Lord Carloway’s Review of new arrangements allowing lawyers into the police station in Scotland, drew on this briefing and her earlier research in Custodial Legal Advice (1993) to highlight the importance of training in ensuring high quality provision of advice, as well as the importance of retaining the right to silence. Her study of the impact of legal representation The Extent and Impact of Legal Representation on Applications to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (J Hodgson and J Horne, 2009) has also had an impact on the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC), stimulating it to carry out its own assessment of the impact of legal representation, explicitly mirroring the study carried out by Hodgson.

 

Research as an integral part of UK Cities of Culture

Commissioned by the AHRC, Jackie has worked with a team of researchers to demonstrate the impacts of UK City of Culture and the importance of research in the planning, delivery and legacy of the UK City of Culture programme. The first release from the Warwick Cities of Culture Project is the Review: The UK Cities of Culture Project: Towards a Research-Informed Approach. This was followed by a Future Trends series of papers on measuring and understanding the value of Cities of Culture. Paper 7, Building Trust in Policing through Arts Collaboration was authored by Jackie and Warwick researcher collaborator Dr Rachel Lewis. Finally, the project held several round table events with policy-makers and practitioners in Coventry, London and Bradford - the next UK City of Culture in 2025. The Coventry event was a one-day programme featuring a wide range of local artists and creative practitioners, researchers, funders and local organisations. The findings of the Review are also pitched specifically to a practitioner audience through a publication in Arts Professional.

Researcher-Artist collaborations

As an individual researcher, and in her role as Deputy Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research, Jackie has fostered strong links between artists and researchers. As PI in the Coventry Creates project (2020, 2021) she commissioned 30 artists to produce digital artworks in response to academic research. The impact of this was explored through a research evaluation (Dunford, E and Hodgson, J. (2021) Coventry Creates: developing impact through artist-researcher collaboration resulting in a practical toolkit for future collaborations (Dunford, E and Hodgson, J. (2021) Artist-Researcher Collaborations with Coventry Creates: sharing knowledge and inspiring innovation (Toolkit based on learning from Coventry Creates evaluation).

Her project Emerging from Lockdown, translated the data from research interviews into a fictionalised narrative story, as well as setting the theme for a major public photographic project - The Coventry Grid Project - organised in the summer of 2021 in Coventry city centre. She produced a short film that narrated the fictionalised story and included the Grid Project images. As part of City of Culture, this was screened at the Feelings of Freedom Festival in 2021 at Warwick Arts Centre, together with an exhibition of the Coventry Grid photographs, as well as at Holy Trinity Church in Coventry Centre in 2022, as reported by the BBC and by local press.

Hodgson chaired a discussion panel following a play about Criminal Women at the Birmingham Rep theatre in 2017. She delivered a pre-performance public lecture on the law’s response to terrorism before the Scottish National Theatre’s production of Black Watch at the Arts Centre in 2008.