Chair Criminal Cases Review Commission. Member Women’s Justice Bd.
Ex Victims’ Commissioner, Solicitor Gen & PCC. Fellow St Hilda’s Oxford. Writer. Labour Party
Welcome and thank you for taking the time to look at my personal website. Here you will find a range of information on the work I do and my many other interests, such as VAWG, my role as Patron of Respect and Operation Encompass to name but a few.
Vera is a member of the Fabian Society
‘They are not violent people. They do small offences again and again…’
@VeraBaird argues that ‘non-violent women’ should be released from jail to free up prison spaces.
@TomSwarbrick1
Nine prisoners held on indefinite jail terms referred to Court of Appeal by miscarriage of … – #GoogleAlerts
NEWS: CCRC refers a man's murder conviction to the Court of Appeal as there are significant discrepancies between evidence given at trial and at a later retrial.
Read more 👉 https://ccrc.gov.uk/news/murder-conviction-referred-to-the-court-of-appeal-over-discrepancies-in-witness-testimony/
#CourtOfAppeal #LegalNews #AppealCase #LegalUpdate #CCRC
NEWS: The CCRC has referred to the Court of Appeal the indeterminate sentences of nine people convicted between 2005 and 2011, all but one of whom remain in custody despite none being given a minimum tariff over six years.
Read more ➡️https://ow.ly/3ACF50ZQVXb
#LegalNews
The cases include Carl Lamb, who cut off his own ear with a razor blade in front of a prison officer in protest at his sentence
Read in full: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/ipp-sentence-court-of-appeal-vera-baird-b3055766.html
More men have convictions quashed after falling victim to corrupt cop – Daily Mail – #GoogleAlerts
All today's rape court changes have been demanded for years & will work. Thank goodness for listening Labour!
Specialist rape courts to be rolled out across England and Wales, says Burnham https://trib.al/AyAiOA2
Government launches national taskforce to tackle misogyny
We recently welcomed members of the Japanese House of Representatives and Committee of Judicial Affairs to our office, so they could learn about the role of the CCRC and the work it does investigating potential miscarriages of justice. 👏
Thank you for coming 🙌
I know what the Crown Court backlog feels like from the inside.
I reported rape in 2017. My trial was postponed, relisted, then dropped 13 days before it was due to begin.
Court delays are not just statistics. They shape lives, confidence and whether victims believe justice is
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…
