Welcome

“Muddling through” – the 2025 Independent Sentencing Review

“Muddling through” Charles Lindblom’s (1959) description of policy makers’ approach to complex problems seems an apt description for both the recommendations from the Independent Sentencing Review (2025) and the Government’s response.

Responding to the pressure on prisons which reached a crisis in summer 2024, Gauke and colleagues’ review proffered their recommendations in nine chapters; Revisiting the statutory purposes of sentencing, Strengthening alternatives to custody in the community, Reducing reliance on custody, Incentivising progression from custody to community, Providing support to victims, Targeted approaches to different groups of people with convictions, The role of the Probation Service, The role of technology, and Longer-term considerations for a sustainable prison system.

This special issue co-curated and edited in collaboration with the Criminal Justice Alliance invited reactions to or implications of the review from stakeholders across the criminal justice firmament: people with lived experience, practitioners, policy makers, academics, post-graduate students and early career researchers.

“Do you agree, dislike, enthuse, demur, decry, some or all of the recommendations and the Government’s response?”

These are their views, presented as short articles and blogs, straddling the themes of: women; race, AI, probation, prison and “What’s missing from the review” – omissions and review blind spots.

Many thanks to all of our contributors for their ruminations, (righteous) indignation and finer grained considerations – than proffered by the Review and Government – all of which offer alternative versions of a more inclusive and progressive justice system than the one that currently befalls us.

If you’d like to comment on any of these publications, get in touch at: bjcj@mmu.ac.uk

Edited by: Kevin Wong, Oliver Glick, Stephanie Wallace, Benjamin Archer and Ben Hall

Journal Articles

1) Women, Sentencing, and Systematic change: Implementing the review in a gendered CJS

Phoebe Lil and Jessica Trick, Advance 

2) The introduction of earned release into prisons in England and Wales: A missed opportunity?

Jon Collins, Chief Executive, Prisoners’ Education Trust

3) Has Gauke done enough to solve the prison crisis?

Rob Allen, Independent Researcher, and former Director of the International Centre for Prison Studies, King’s College, London

4) SherlockAI and the Sentencing Review: AI Assisted Radical Help

Dave Nicholson, University of Central Lancashire Centre for Criminal Justice Research and Partnerships and Helen Codd, Professor
Emerita of Law & Social Justice, University of Lancashire and Director of Seahorse Criminal Justice.

5) Once in a generation opportunity – Implementing the independent sentencing review for women

Eliza Ogden Barnsley, Dr Tom McNeil and Lizzie Humphreys, The JABBS Foundation for Women and Girls

6) Towards AI?: “Imagined futures” For Probation and electronic monitoring in the Independent Sentencing Review

Mike Nellis, Emeritus Professor of Criminal and Community Justice, University of Strathclyde

 

Blogs

1) How we can realise the ambition of the Independent Sentencing Review by cementing the firm foundations needed to deliver transformative justice for women 

Abbi Ayers, Director of Strategic Development, National Women’s Justice Coalition  

2) What must be done to address racial disproportionality experienced by women in the criminal justice system.

Olivia Burgess, Hibiscus Initiatives

3) Managing offenders or managing expectations? The promises and pitfalls of ‘transforming’ community justice through technology 

Ashna Devaprasad, Cordis Bright 

4)  The Sentencing Review is indicative of failure to tackle institutional racism in the criminal legal system  

Meka Beresford, Head of Policy, Action for Race Equality 

5) Sentenced to earn: Community payback on the way back as financial payback?

Dave Nicholson, Practitioner Researcher in Penal Mutualism and Director of Nornir Ltd

6) Co-producing Solutions to Justice Problems

Simon Scott, User Voice

7) 1001 days in the CJS: Birth Companions’ Response to the Independent Sentencing Review and Sentencing Bill 

Kirsty Kitchen, Director of The Birth Companions Institute 

8) The role of Probation in the Third Sector

Holly Blakesley, MA Student, University of Manchester

9) Walking the line: maintaining a healthy distinction between state and voluntary sector provision to achieve the aims of the ISR

Robbie Cowbury, Back on Track

10) Putting practitioners and evidence at the heart of justice reform The Sentencing Bill: A Start, But Not a Solution

Centre for Justice Innovation