A low down on urgent issues in criminal justice
Get familiar with the pressing issues present in the UK criminal justice system, and what can be done to fix them.
There are around half a million people serving life sentences around the world. This has near doubled in the past twenty years, with the US acting as the world’s largest life imprisoner. For every 100,000 individuals in the national population in the US, 50 will be serving formal life imprisonment.
Compared to the US, the UK system with its 8,854 life prisoners, or 13 per 100,000 capita head may seem progressive, but there’s still plenty to be concerned about. That’s more than France, Germany and Italy combined, and the highest numbers in Europe. In fact, there is an upward trend of people imprisoned in the UK. This is in the context of worsening conditions, paired with fewer crimes being solved, and high reoffending rates.
Like the majority of public services, the UK criminal justice system has also suffered underinvestment and cuts for the past decade. The Coronavirus pandemic has worsened these effects, creating a “logjam” of trials while the courts were shut, and according to many legal professionals and bodies, caused more injustice for the innocent.
The system doesn’t just affect lifers and their victims, but a whole myriad of systems and scenarios. From witnesses to accidental bike crashes, to unpaid TV Licenses or Council tax rates and victims of violent crime, the reality of court proceedings range from the tragic to the mundane, and these cases are all affected by cuts.
In the UK, 1.34 million individuals were dealt with by the Criminal Justice System (CJS) in the past 12 months alone. An Institute for Government Report states that within prisons, “levels of violence, poor prisoner behaviour and self-harm have increased rapidly.”
On top of this, “Prisons were placed under a severely restrictive regime in March, which reduced the time spent out of cells to about 30 minutes a day, suspended prison transfers, and forced new arrivals to quarantined for 14 days. The Guardian has called the effects of this Covid related move as causing ‘irreparable damage’ to prisoner mental health.
According to the Prison Reform Trust, the average minimum term served for murder in the UK has risen from 12.5 years in 2003 to 21.3 years in 2016. This meant that unplanned, or psychologically driven self-defence murders, for example, in Sally Challen’s case, were often put to life without probation.
Since 2003, there’s been a change to mandatory sentencing laws for murder — with no distinction between second or first degree. Life-sentenced prisoners in the UK also make up more than 10% of the total prison population — higher even than the US, where the proportion stands at 9.5 per cent.
Because of Sally’s case, the Domestic Abuse Bill is now in the process of being amended, alongside shocking research by The Disabilities Trust. The trust found that of 173 women screened at HMP Drake Hall, a closed women’s prison, 64% reported a history indicative of brain injury, mostly caused by domestic violence. There is thought to be a link between brain injury and violent offending.
The increased prevalence of Release Under Investigation is also a cause for concern. Think of it like bail, but with no time limit. In practice, this means defendants and victims are left in limbo, with no case updates for an unlimited amount of time.
With the 50,000 crown court cases waiting to be heard post-Covid, more RUIs are potentially being served. In 2019, the crown courts managed to complete only 12,000 trials, meaning tens of thousands of cases could be put on the back burner for serious offences like rape. Even with increased visibility of consent campaigns and activism, when these cases do reach trial, only 1.5% of reported rapes end in prosecution.
On the contrary, the Covid crisis has meant that those already in custody could spend far longer in prison as they await trial, with no compensation for loss of earnings of the trauma suffered if they’re eventually found innocent. We know by now how this adversely affects working-class, minority ethnic, and Black men and boys more so due to structural inequalities, and systemic racism peppered throughout the police force and CJS.
We wrote a blog recently on the racial bias of policing profiling being enabled in artificial intelligence. Disturbingly, deaths of Black people in custody have doubled than ever before since 1991, and not one police officer has been successfully prosecuted for the killing of a black person while in police custody.
What can we do? With internet activism enabling individuals to change bills single-handedly, and camera phone footage directing us to the most acute instances of injustice, there’s a shortage of research out there. With the right tools, and we need the next generation of social leaders to uphold their civic duties and enable a fair course of justice. Whether that’s campaigning for prisoner’s rights, penal reform, or taking a criminal justice pathway on Year Here, here are some resources and food for thought to start with.
- Read up on how systemic racism affects Black lives in the system, and what we can do to combat it.
- Raise awareness of the Law Society’s campaign to fix the broken criminal justice system. Write to the Lord Chancellor and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, highlighting your concerns.
- Make a donation to the Prison Reform Trust, to keep lobbying government for the humane treatment of prisoners.
