Blog
Rayner my parade! The importance of specialist advice.
Jemma Brimblecombe
1 July 2021
Regressive approaches to sentencing will not help children or society
The head of the Youth Justice Board has rightly criticised the Government’s plans to raise child custodial sentences. At a time when England and Wales falls behind most European countries in protecting children with the lowest age of criminal responsibility (10), it is inexplicable that the Government is taking a further regressive step by seeking to increase the length of time that children must spend in prison.
19 March 2021
Youth Justice: Is reform on the way for young people who turn 18 while in the criminal justice system?
Children under 18 years old are afforded a number of special protections by virtue of the fact that they are children in the eyes of the law. These protections fall away when an individual turns 18 and they are legally considered an ‘adult’. For defendants who cross the threshold into adulthood during the criminal process, the impact of reaching this milestone can be profound.
25 February 2021
Tackling Racial Injustice: Children and the Youth Justice System
Today JUSTICE has published the latest working party report ‘Tackling Racial Injustice: Children and the Youth Justice System’. I am delighted to have had the opportunity to chair the working party that produced this report. The report makes practical recommendations to reduce BAME disproportionality in the Youth Justice System (YJS) of England and Wales.
19 November 2020
Outcome 22: are the police utilising this important diversionary tool or leaving it on the shelf?
David Lammy’s landmark review of racial bias in the Criminal Justice System (‘CJS’), made many key recommendations to help improve trust and fairness in the CJS when it was published in 2017. One of which was to expand the use of the deferred prosecution for adults and young offenders.
6 October 2020
Student misconduct allegations and the right to a fair hearing
The temptation to approach the adjudication of a student complaint as merely an ‘internal process’, is one of the most common errors made by some higher education institutions. The process adopted must be capable of examination by an independent and external eye to ensure that at each stage of the process, the rights of all individuals involved are protected.