Chair Criminal Cases Review Commission. Member Women’s Justice Bd.
Ex Victims’ Commissioner, Solicitor Gen & PCC. Fellow St Hilda’s Oxford. Writer. Labour Party
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Vera is a member of the Fabian Society
More IPP sentences referred to Court of Appeal as watchdog reviews 180 similar cases: 11 sentences have now been referred to the Court of Appeal by the CCRC. Dean Mullins was 24 when he imprisoned for attempted murder for 4.5 years – served almost 20 https://www.thejusticegap.com/further-ipp-sentences-referred-to-court-of-appeal-as-watchdog-reviews-180-similar-cases/
Record number of CCRC applications – as watchdog makes one of its highest number of referrals – https://goo.gl/alerts/iYJS5a #GoogleAlerts
New evidence sees 1972 Stevenage murder case reopened | The Comet – #GoogleAlerts
Very cool, entertaining and with high production values: if I were @Nigel_Farage, I’d consider dipping into that £5 million to try to get out a video that can compare to it.
New ASBO-style Respect Orders to be rolled out within months. This is a big step forward for victims!
Record number of applications to the Criminal Cases Review Commission – #GoogleAlerts
A win for Count Bin would not be unprecedented.
Stuart Drummond, the man who played H’Angus the Monkey (the official mascot for Hartlepool United Football), ran for the mayor of Hartlepool in 2002 as a joke/promotional stunt for the football club. Promoting himself with his
The #CCRC has referred to the Court of Appeal the indeterminate sentences of two men given minimum terms of four and a half and two and a half years, two decades ago, one of whom remains in custody today.
READ MORE: https://ow.ly/rFTC50ZncLk
Does the CCRC prioritise high-profile cases over others?
@KenMacdonaldKC and @TimOwenKC discuss this and other UK Law and Politics issues on this week’s episode of Double Jeopardy.
Listen here: https://link.podtrac.com/ydatd31r
Missing from the Courts’ sentencing in the Fordingbridge rapes is any reference to misogyny-having mates there to catcall the victims & film their degradation.
We have higher sentences for racially aggravated offending.
Time to legislate for misogyny-aggravated offending too?
Clumsy drafting of the Sentencing Bill may increase the number of women sent to prison Earlier this year, David Gauke’s Independent Sentencing Review was published making a range of recommendations aimed at reducing the size of the prison population, which has caused alarming overcrowding. However, there is a big problem for women with its interpretation in the Sentencing Bill, which has its Second Reading in the House of Lords today (12 November). The very first clause of that Bill presents a very real risk of increasing, rather than reducing, the number of women who are imprisoned for short sentences, despite…
Rianna Cleary, an 18-year-old care leaver, was pregnant when she was remanded to prison, on a charge of robbery. She went into labour when locked in her cell, and, though she rang desperately for help, nobody came. When she rang a second time, the officers turned her bell off. She gave birth to baby Aisha, and had to chew through their umbilical cord, losing copious blood and, eventually, passing out, with Aisha wrapped in a towel beside her. By the next morning when the cell was unlocked, Aisha’s lips were blue. The prison had no baby-sized resuscitation masks, and this…
Prosecuting perpetrators for manslaughter when domestic abuse leads to suicide In January, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) failed in the manslaughter prosecution of Ryan Wellings, a domestic abuser, whose victim, Kiena Dawes, killed herself. It was only thethird prosecution of this kind that the CPS had ever attempted, and they have lost two. That is a shocking record, given the abundant evidence that more women are driven to suicide bytheir abusers than are killed by them [1]. In 2022-23, for instance, a National Police Chief’sCouncil report showed that 80 abuse-related deaths were homicides and 93 were victim suicides. The three…
Our criminal justice system imprisons twice as many women now, as it did in the nineties. No increase in the quantity or gravity of female crime has happened, to justify this. Harsh penal policy, directed at tougher sentencing for men – who are 96% of the prison population – seems simply to have carried women along with it. Yet, it is almost two decades since Baroness Corston recommended, in her seminal Report, that there should be: “a distinct radically different, visibly led, strategic, proportionate, holistic, woman-centred, integrated approach” towards women in prison.” That need for a targeted approach to women…
