Fifty years playing the Justice endgame, but this is where I should have started - Summer 2021 Issue

The

PAGE BADGE

MAGAZINE Summer 2021

for women with conviction

NEWS, VIEWS AND TRUES BY WOMEN IN THE JUSTICE SYSTEM

Personality Disorder: THE LATEST VERDICT

COVID-19

The end of the pandemic but the beginning of a new kind of madness?

Sue Wheatcroft

Farah Naz

EXCLUSIVE

SENTENCING DECISIONS

embroidery design template

by Jess de Wahls

HHJ Jinder Singh Boora

Someone's Daughter ON THE CASE FOR JUSTICE REFORM

Bianca Jagger Baroness Hale Nicolette King Ivana Bacik Lady Edwina Grosvenor MM McCabe Kate Morrissey Jess de Wahls Gina Miller SUMMER 2021

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PRISON ABROAD

KNIFE CRIME

"We look beyond guilt or innocence and uphold people’s basic human rights even in the most remote corners of the world."

64 | The View Magazine |

"I was given a welcome pack with essentials for the first few days put together by Prisoners Abroad and told how to get into London. My resettlement officer called me and made sure I got to the hotel OK. I was crying because I didn’t know how to do anything, but she helped me get everything set up and she told me to rest and that she’d call me back the next day. Since then she has found me somewhere to live, arranged for access to healthcare and benefits, she’s helped get me back on my feet. I had been locked inside for eleven and a half years so being in lockdown was what I was used to in a way.

"Leaving my family and being away from them is so hard. I speak to them every day though. The last time I saw everyone was in November 2019, before immigration got shut down due to COVID and physical visits weren’t allowed anymore.

"I was not tech savvy, so my resettlement officer had to teach me how to do everything. I’d never used a mobile before and I felt very intimidated. I kept crying, but I’m trying to get used to it as you need it for so many things. I was more afraid back in June, but now I have calmed down a bit and don’t feel as scared anymore. Now that I am free, I reflect and try to make myself a better person.”

FOR WOMEN WITH CONVICTION

A positive future

Our work gives people the opportunity for a fresh start and to create a positive future for themselves. We work intensively with people on arrival in the UK, (delivered remotely since March 2020), finding secure accommodation to ensure that no one has to sleep on the streets, accessing immediate medical treatment, registering with a doctor, and in time, offering our Work Preparation Programme to learn the skills needed to gain employment such as interview skills and writing a CV. With the right support and encouragement, we hope that people will thrive in their new surroundings.

ZETA MACDONALD is Prisoners Abroad’s Deputy Chief Executive.

If you would like to find out how you can support us visit our website www.prisonersabroad.org.uk

Fifty years playing the Justice endgame, but this is where I should have started.

BY BRUCE HOULDER

F

ighting Knife Crime London is a project decades in the making, one that arose from lessons I started to learn nearly 50 years ago. I was employed to defend as Junior Counsel in a series of nasty armed robberies, where small hoteliers were targeted, tied up, beaten, and had their possessions stolen. In two cases, as I recall, women were raped.

My client, Janet, was the admitted girlfriend of the principal and most violent offender, and had been identified as present on two of these offences, and as someone clearly assisting these violent and merciless crimes. There were other suspicious circumstances –but none were determinative of her guilt on their own, but she was rightly charged. The defence she offered us was as ridiculous as it was evasive. I decided she was guilty, but as every lawyer knows, a barrister is employed to defend his client, not to judge her.

Then one day, a month or so into this trial, she broke down as we saw her in her cell after the court rose. “I’ll tell you”,

she said. “It was my sister who did this, not me. I couldn’t tell you two, or anyone else”. There was another problem now.

Could Janet be so bad as to falsely blame her sister? Surely not. Our client was now telling us the truth – or so she said. A certain cynicism about the police methods, and the way identity parades were conducted back in the early 70s leant some further plausibility to her account.

Eventually, we decided to take a risk with this information, with her consent.

We served this new account on the police and the prosecution the next day, after we all had time to think. The police had no choice but to investigate. The following morning our client was formally acquitted by the jury, released from custody, and her sister brought into custody, having by then made a full confession.

Our prejudgement of our client proved as unfair as it was wrong, and that lesson never left me.

In my work as a Recorder over 34 years in the Crown Court, I was able to participate in stimulating, and at the same ultimately very serious work which gives pause for thought and reflection

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KNIFE CRIME

KNIFE CRIME

"SPENDING ON YOUTH SERVICES IN ENGLAND HAS BEEN CUT BY 73% BETWEEN 2010/11 AND 2019/20, AND BY 38% IN WALES. DURING THE SAME PERIOD 760 YOUTH CLUBS CLOSED AND 4,500 YOUTH JOBS HAVE BEEN LOST THROUGH CUTS."

about how we could do better for many who came before these courts. Many of the cases I defended and prosecuted – save in murder cases, that I later dealt with as a judge – involved acts of terrible violence, some of it quite pointless and unprovoked, committed by and perpetrated against young people, many of them who should have been closing in on the prime of their

"Our pre-judgment of our client proved as unfair as it was wrong, and that lesson never left me."

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lives. It was these cases that affected me most. Many of them lost their lives, simply because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, had listened to the wrong voices, or simply had looked up, when they should have kept their heads down.

So having finally retired, I started a new venture, www.fightingknifecrime. london, trying to do something about what is the biggest modern scourge of our cities. I had some 18 months to think, plan and talk to people who really knew the work that was needed, raise some £50,000, and then started up in June of this year with a highend collaborative and informational online resource to combat knife crime in Greater London. To me, doing this seemed to me to be the most natural and obvious thing to do while I still

FOR WOMEN WITH CONVICTION

had energy and time to offer. Dare I say, knife and drug-related crime has a greater effect on the lives of many of the less advantaged in our society than even the pandemic has had? It dogs their lives every step of the way. The level of stabbings in London defies cliché as it continues to rise. It seemed a project of its time, and I now had that to lend to it.

It is my opinion that real and permanent public investment, as opposed to community investment, is simply not there in our young people. This is so despite the sizeable grants regularly donated to community groups in London, who are trying to do something. I felt we all needed be more connected and more resourceful, and together make our voice heard in high places. The press and the internet have a huge place in that.

Young people and children have been

"Over the course of a short generation, we have increasingly abandoned our children and our young, and removed the social supports they once had."

neglected for years. Over the course of Where do kids gain their selfa short generation, we have increasingly confidence, if none of this is really abandoned our children and our young, there for them? Every penny spent and removed the social supports they on such centres would save a fortune once had. We have deprived them for the NHS, the police and local of the means to gain self-respect government, and return pride to our and starved too many of real hope. communities. Why is it not being Spending on youth services in England done? It should be. So, please, shout has been cut by 73% between 2010/11 this message from your rooftops. And and 2019/20, and by 38% in Wales. look too at www.fightingknifecrime.

During the same period 760 youth london and please see how you too clubs closed and 4,500 youth jobs have can help. been lost through cuts.

Where can young people go?

Where is the support they deserve?

Where is the opportunity for healthy companionship, recreation and decent advice on jobs? Where is the mental health support, to take these through those difficult years of adolescence, when they are at their most impressionable and vulnerable? Where is the support to stop children in their early years being drawn in towards this damaged and hopeless future? Where is the underpinning at home for them, and where are the decent care and care leaver arrangements there should be?

Where are the great public state-ofthe-art centres where they deserve to play sport, to take part in arts projects, to train, gain IT skills, to receive mentoring, or employment assistance?

Most important of all, where are the places to laugh, sing, play and socialise BRUCE HOULDER in a way that is relevant to the young? www.fightingknifecrime.london

SUMMER 2021

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