CJC member Anastasia Chamberlen wrote a short piece for The Conversation on prisoner wellbeing last week. Anastasia's article is entitled 'The real prison crisis is the damage the system does to its prisoners' and refers to her own ongoing research with women prisoners.

It will also be published in the Inside Time newspaper (prisoners’ national newspaper) in January.

On 19^th October 2016, the Academy of Social Sciences announced that it had conferred the award of Fellow on 84 leading social scientists, and Vanessa Munro was amongst them!

Fellows are recognised by the Academy after an extensive process of peer review for the excellence and impact of their work through the use of social science for public benefit.

Vanessa, who was nominated for the award by the Socio-Legal Studies Association, was described by the Academy as “the leading scholar of her generation in the socio-legal study of sexual offences.”

The Criminal Justice Centre's Professor Jackie Hodgson and Juliet Horne have submitted written evidence to the joint investigation by the Howard League for Penal Reform and the Centre for Mental Health into preventing prisoner suicide. The submission is based on their research report ‘Imagining more than just a prisoner: The work of Prisoners’ Penfriends’ which was launched at the House of Lords in June last year. The report is available here.

On Tuesday 26 April 2016, CJC members Prof Jackie Hodgson and doctoral student Juliet Horne attended by invitation the Diocese of Worcester Criminal Justice Affairs Group Workshop. Juliet was part of a panel of experts alongside experienced practitioners from the CPS, the Court Service, the National Probation Service, West Mercia Police and the criminal defence profession. Chaired by His Honour Toby Hooper, the panel discussed the theme of ’Securing Criminal Justice in Times of Austerity’ with an audience of policy-makers, practitioners and representatives of faith communities. The discussion will form the basis of a paper to be presented by members of the Criminal Justice Affairs Group at the University of Worcester and William Temple Foundation’s “Social Justice: building a fairer, more equal society” Conference in June 2016.

Next week, Jackie Hodgson - with the assistance of her PhD student, Divya Sukumar - will be training over 80 officers from Greater Manchester Police on safeguards for young suspects during police interrogation. This training session flows from Jackie's participation in a large-scale, EU-funded research project in collaboration with colleagues from four other jurisdictions.

More information on the research project is available on the Criminal Justice Centre website.