"Look at the lessons of Youth Justice, which is about tackling the causes [of crime]. If you are going to use custody, make it a place where you are likely to be supported to change rather than just held" - Dame Anne Owers https://t.co/goZtPbYOs5

This @PrisonsWeek marks 50 years of church outreach projects, supporting prisoners to break the chains of their past and set out on a new path towards a better future https://t.co/23S0osqFoz

Lord Mance's (2013) reflections that "the objective of promoting civic responsibility and respect for the law might be undermined, rather than enhanced, by denying serving prisoners the right to vote" highlights the importance of universal franchise in a stable democracy

"It is a personal injustice to withhold from any one… the privilege of having his voice reckoned. There ought to be no pariahs in a full-grown and civilised nation" - John Stuart Mill @unlockcharity #UnlocktheVote

J. S. Mill argues political engagement is essential to fostering a sense of belonging: "Whoever has no vote will either be a permanent malcontent, or will feel as one whom the general affairs of society do not concern, for whom they are to be managed by others" #UnlocktheVote

"Why raise barriers to democracy for those who most need to re-join it? Successful reintroduction into society depends on civic engagement. While prisoners lose liberty, they shouldn't lose citizenship" @unlockcharity @paula_harriott Unlock the Vote:

New @ccrcupdate Chair @VeraBaird aims to inspire staff to “look at each application believing it is a miscarriage of justice… and not stop investigating until we are sure it is not. We must believe the applicant, look at the whole case and see it through”

The transcendental and transformative potential of music in prisons is remarkable. In these often bleak and insipid spaces where all might seem lost, music nourishes and heals, reconnecting us with our humanity @libertychoiruk @MusicMagazine

Currently defence teams are invited to submit a list of search terms which the Crown Prosecution Service then consider. Pick the wrong keywords & you may miss material salient to your case. The algorithm applied is purely lexical, not semantic, & cannot infer meaning or context

Enhancing the keyword search process with natural language queries would enable an AI Agent to infer intent, and identify patterns across the entirety of the evidence, reducing the risk that important confounding or corroborating information is missed

The way in which an exhibit is labelled is often determinative of decisions about whether or not to request access to undisclosed evidence. It is not uncommon for items to be given cursory labels that belie the true content or value of the exhibit

3756 prosecutions had to be dropped due to disclosure failings by the police or CPS between July 2023 and June 2024, accounting for just over 6% of all cases resulting in non-conviction across England and Wales, at a cost of roughly £2 million

“Being in prison is the punishment. Once there, the focus must be on reducing reoffending. The punishment is the deprivation of liberty. Beyond that, prisoners should be treated with dignity as human beings capable of change… to rebuild their lives” advise @LordsJHACom

“It is time for courts to embrace technology in their mainstream work… to help users traverse our justice systems. eDiscovery may help us address this problem by rapidly sifting through material & summarising relevant information” – CJ Sundaresh Menon

The emergence of Generative AI offers the promise of a meaningful solution to the problem of non-disclosure, building on the success of established tools for Technology Assisted Review that help reviewers rank the potential ‘relevance’ of unread documents

An Inspectorate Report from 2020 revealed that the Crown Prosecution Service “dealt properly with disclosable and non-disclosable unused material” in only 49% of cases at the point of a person being charged

“The obligations of disclosure by the prosecution, in a world... of data, are imposing unmanageable burdens on the criminal justice system… Generative AI has significant potential to be used as a tool for lawyers & litigants in person” – Lord Hodge

The discovery process, where those party to legal proceedings seek out evidence relevant to their case, has become increasingly work-intensive and complex in a digital age, increasing the risk that important, and potentially exculpatory evidence, may be overlooked

“Digital technology in prisons is no longer a ‘nice to have’. It is an essential ingredient in developing autonomy” for people otherwise disconnected and isolated from the world they are expected to return to, argues @PRTuk in its new report:

“Far too little attention is paid to sentence outcomes. I believe that the way forward is for sentencers to become more involved in sentence supervision” – HH John Samuels KC, in his powerful memoir, ‘Mentor & Monitor: a role for the Judge’