Policy Insights
Welcome to the Howard League’s new blog, Policy Insights.
Policy Insights will provide space for contributors to the Howard Journal of Crime and Justice to write about their research and its relevance to public policy and criminal justice debates. The posts will be aimed at a broad audience from academic researchers to opinion formers, parliamentarians and the wider public.
The Policy Insights blog will seek to bring academic research out from the journal and to the attention of a more diverse audience.
The views expressed in the blogs are those of the author and do not reflect Howard League for Penal Reform policy unless explicitly stated.
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Growing pains? Penal reform and the challenge of prison building programmes
Prison remains the lynchpin of criminal justice policy in England and Wales. The Queen’s speech signalled the government’s intentions to curtail early release for people imprisoned for serious crimes thereby increasing the need for prison places. In this Policy Insight blog Thomas Guiney, Oxford Brookes University, explains why prison building has moved from the margins to the mainstream of penal policy in England and Wales. Read more
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‘Seeing What is Invisible in Plain Sight’: How Effective Is the New Law on Coercive Control?
The Domestic Abuse Bill 2019 is being debated in parliament. Cassandra Wiener, a doctoral researcher in the School of Law at the University of Sussex, draws on her research to look back at to changes made in 2015 when England and Wales became the first jurisdiction in history to make ‘controlling or coercive behaviour’ a criminal offence. She suggests rhetorical intent in the context of domestic abuse is a good start. Compulsory training in coercive control for all key criminal justice agents would help make this intent an operational success story. Read more
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“Soldiering On”? What difference do ex-military personnel make to the prison service?
At a time when the recruitment and retention of prison staff is a regular topic for political debate, Dominique Moran, professor of carceral geography at Birmingham University, discusses the potential role for ex-military staff in the prison service. Read more
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