̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Amy Ludlow

Justice of the East: research on crime and rehabilitation in our region

fpjl2 — Tue, 12 Mar 2019 11:02:00 +0000

Every day, on the streets of cities, towns and even villages across the East of England, young people take decisions that can – in a moment – alter the course of their life and the lives of others.

These events do not occur in a vacuum: the wrong combinations of environment, timing, people and experience can result in decades lost to crime and addiction – damaging communities and draining the resources of criminal justice services under increasing pressure.

This year, the ̽��ֱ��’s Institute of Criminology celebrates its 60th anniversary. Researchers from the Institute have spent years in the local region engaging with people at different points of these adverse cycles – from police and prison officers to kids on street corners – to build an evidence base for effective ways to reduce harm caused by criminality.

While providing prevention lessons for the UK and indeed the world, research that was kick-started and, in many cases, continues to run in the eastern region means that local policymakers have an opportunity to build on projects and findings uniquely relevant to their patch.

Perhaps none more so than the Peterborough Adolescent and Young Adult Development Study (PADS+): a large longitudinal study that has followed more than 700 young residents of Peterborough from the age of 12 to now over 24, as they navigate school, work, family and the law.

Streets of Peterborough

Led by Professor Per-Olof Wikström, Director of the Centre for Analytic Criminology, the study uses waves of surveys conducted across 13 years that take a singular approach to data gathering. For a given day, the participants are asked to give hour-by-hour detail of where, when, how and with whom they have spent their time. This has been combined with psychological and genetic data, plus two huge surveys each of around 7,000 city residents, to create an extraordinary cross-section of young lives and communities in early 21st-century Britain.

“There is nothing else like this study,” says Wikström. “We have the kind of detail other studies simply don’t have. We can demonstrate not just where ‘hot spots’ of crime occur, but why – which can help us predict future crime-prone areas.”

In a major book, Breaking Rules, the research team showed how certain environments trigger crime, the central importance of personal morality and self-control in “crime-averse” youngsters, and how a third of teens never even consider breaking the law while just 16% commit more than 60% of all adolescent crime.

̽��ֱ��researchers are currently finishing off their next book, which will take the study findings up to the present day. “We still have a huge retention rate of 91% for our cohort, many of whom are now back in Peterborough after university and some are now becoming parents themselves,” says senior PADS+ researcher Dr Kyle Treiber. “This data has the potential to reach far beyond criminological contexts. There’s so much information on everything from education and lifestyle to social mobility,” she says.

For Wikström, Peterborough is an ideal city to research the role of people and environment in crime causation. “It’s a diverse place of manageable size, with neighbourhoods at both ends of the socioeconomic spectrum. Itʼs big enough but not too big, so we could cover the whole urban area – and the surrounding Fenland means people tend to live their lives within the city.”

He suggests that the research, now being replicated (and its findings supported) in countries from Sweden to China, could prove useful for city planners in the eastern region, as well as police and social services. “Peterborough is an expanding city, and our data could help developers understand what creates crime-prone people and criminogenic situations.”

Cops and 'hot spots'

Like all cities, Peterborough has its hot spots: streets or intersections where there is a concentration of theft, violence and criminal damage. These are the areas that some of Wikström’s young people know all too well – and policing them is a challenge for a force that works with tightening budgets. To find the most effective ways of reducing crime in neighbourhoods across Peterborough, ̽��ֱ�� criminologists partnered with Cambridgeshire Constabulary to conduct major experimental trials of police deployment.

By randomly allocating 21 extra minutes of daily foot patrol by Police Community Support Officers to some of the cities hottest hot spots, researchers showed an average drop in reported crime of 39%. They worked out that every £10 spent on patrols would ultimately save £56 in prison costs.

“In working with us to conduct experiments, Cambridgeshire Constabulary has set the standard for cost-effectiveness in policing,” says Professor Lawrence Sherman, Director of the Jerry Lee Centre for Experimental Criminology. “ ̽��ֱ��results from Peterborough provide an important benchmark for evaluating police time – challenging those who would rather see patrols in safer neighbourhoods or high traffic areas.”

Fen life

Outside Peterborough, those brought up in the fens can feel their opportunities are limited, and rural life presents its own challenges to those working in the justice system.

A new project led by Cambridge criminologist Dr Caroline Lanskey and King’s College London psychologist Dr Joel Harvey is exploring how the unique Fenland environment stretching east from Peterborough contributes to youth offending. “There are pockets of the fens where isolation, poor transport links and often high levels of deprivation feed into the types of crime young people commit,” she says.

Lanskey and Harvey, with the support of PhD student Hannah Marshall, are working to develop an “explanatory framework” for rural rule-breaking. They are currently conducting interviews, as well as analysing risk assessment data for hundreds of young people from across Cambridgeshire.

“ ̽��ֱ��fens can feel defined by distance: geographically, but also socially and culturally,” says Lanskey. “Youth justice workers struggle to gain the trust of secluded communities – and struggle to reach them. It can take a whole day to see two or three people.” ̽��ֱ��project is aiming to report back findings later this year.

Prison and beyond

When the decisions young people make end badly, it can result in imprisonment. Life inside can be harsh – many of the region’s prisons have suffered extensive funding cuts, as in the rest of Britain – and, once a sentence is completed, opportunities on the outside can be scant.

For Drs Ruth Armstrong and Amy Ludlow (who, like Lanskey, are in the Centre for Community, Gender and Social Justice), the secure estate holds a vast amount of talent and potential that risks being wasted. Four years ago, they started an initiative called Learning Together: partnering universities with prisons and probation organisations to build “transformative communities”, in which students from both inside and out are taught at the same time by some of the best lecturers in the UK.

̽��ֱ��Learning Together team has worked in several prisons in the eastern region, including Peterborough and Warren Hill near the Suffolk coast. It is with Whitemoor, the high security prison that sits just outside the Fenland town of March, that the team has one of their longest-standing partnerships.

“We started courses in Whitemoor three years ago, and the prison has bought into this work in really exciting ways,” says Ludlow. Bespoke courses on everything from philosophy to creative writing have been taught in Whitemoor; in most cases university students were taken into the prison to learn alongside students currently serving sentences.

“When we move ideas from the learning environment into criminal justice, we show people in prison that they are not defined by their offending, but that there are avenues for them to progress,” says Armstrong.

Learning Together has now instigated over 20 university–prison partnerships nationally. “ ̽��ֱ��relationships of trust built with prisons such as Whitemoor have allowed us to create models of working for partnerships across the country. By engaging locally with research, you can end up pushing national agendas.”

From Fenland delinquency to policing Peterborough’s streets and the power of prison education, researchers from the Institute of Criminology are engaged in the region to help reduce the harm crime can cause.

By engaging locally with research, you can end up pushing national agendas

Ruth Armstrong

UK police officer

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

Yes

Brexit: people are angry but looking for compromise, research finds

fpjl2 — Mon, 22 May 2017 03:15:11 +0000

A new report on public attitudes to the future EU-UK relationship reveals a “striking degree of consensus” that full Single Market access should be retained, while skilled EU migrants – those with a job to come to – should be given entry to the UK labour market in return.

Professor Catherine Barnard and Dr Amy Ludlow, from Cambridge’s Faculty of Law, spent early 2017 canvassing opinion from hundreds of people across the East of England through a series of debates and workshops in schools, community centres and even a prison, as well as gathering views in streets and town squares.

This fieldwork was conducted in locations ranging from the strongly pro-Brexit, including the Lincolnshire town of Boston where the highest Leave vote (75%) was recorded, to Remain strongholds such as the city of Cambridge itself, which voted 73.8% to stay.

̽��ֱ��researchers found that when the public were asked to indicate preferences on the big issues of Brexit, many participants wanted full Single Market access with no free movement or payment to the EU – the position commonly associated with Boris Johnson’s claim that the UK can ‘have its cake and eat it’, something which the EU rejects.

However, when people were presented with current viable options – EU membership, European Economic Area (EEA), Customs Union and ‘hard Brexit’ (i.e. non-membership of the Single Market) – they recognised the need for compromise, and reached an overall consensus that a deal closer to the EEA ‘Norway model’ might be best, at least in the short term.

“ ̽��ֱ��European Economic Area option was consistently seen by Leave and Remain voters alike to be an acceptable compromise that allows limits to freedom of movement and reduces the UK’s financial contribution to the EU. People wanted full access to trade in goods and services with the EU,” said Barnard.

“Remodelling the UK’s relationship along lines similar to the EEA was frequently described as a ‘rebalancing’ rather than pulling up the drawbridge to the world. There was an almost universal desire among the study’s participants for EU citizens who are economically active or want to study in the UK to be able to continue to come.”

̽��ֱ��report, produced as part of the UK in a Changing Europe (UKCE) programme, of which Barnard is a Senior Fellow, also highlights the anger and disappointment people still hold at the conduct of politicians and the media during the referendum campaign.

People on both sides of the debate expressed regret about the sense of division caused by Brexit. Some also reported feeling “embarrassed or awkward” in their relationships with EU nationals. There was also significant anxiety among participants about what might come next, with some describing an “eerie quietness… like the calm before the storm”.

“We found anxiety, but also resentment,” said Barnard. “Many young people, including those in prominent Leave-voting areas, expressed anger at the referendum, and a result they felt they would be living with for the rest of their lives.”

̽��ֱ��researchers also found a serious, often fundamental, lack of knowledge about the EU. Many people struggled to articulate specific examples of the EU’s impact on their lives beyond infamous ‘euromyths’ such as the banning of bendy bananas. Many said they didn’t understand what they were voting for.

̽��ֱ��most commonly cited example of a positive EU impact was no mobile phone roaming charges. Some young people also mentioned the arrival of high-street brands such as Spanish company Zara.

In general, however, Barnard and Ludlow found that it was easier for people who voted Leave to provide examples of how they felt the EU had interfered too much than it was for Remain voters to give concrete examples of the EU’s benefit.

Amy Ludlow said: “A key reason many people gave for voting Remain was inertia, that they saw no good reason to change the status quo. Leave voters could more often give a range of reasons for their vote: from immigration and a perceived erosion of British identity to the promise of additional healthcare funding.”

̽��ֱ��findings will be presented at a public event at Michaelhouse Café in Cambridge on 22 May, where Professor Anand Menon, Director of UKCE, and Dr Angus Armstrong of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, will join Barnard and Ludlow to talk about ‘Brexit, Boston and migration’

Unravelling and reimagining the UK’s relationship with the EU: Public engagement about Brexit in the East of England

Researchers engaged with people across the East of England and found anxiety and resentment, as well as a broad consensus that the UK should remain in the single market.

Remodelling the UK’s relationship along lines similar to the EEA was frequently described as a ‘rebalancing’ rather than pulling up the drawbridge to the world

Catherine Barnard

Unravelling and reimagining the UK’s relationship with the EU

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

Releasing a better version of me: the power of education in prison to change lives

amb206 — Mon, 16 Jan 2017 10:00:00 +0000

Handwritten letters, in a digital world, are increasingly rare. But, on 18 November 2016, John sat down to write to his friend Jakub. His message begins in capitals: “YES, JAKUB” and goes on to congratulate Jakub on the latest developments in his career. He writes: “I now consider myself your friend, who is so proud of you.”

John’s words are inscribed in biro on lined paper: the notepaper of Her Majesty’s Prison Service. Writer and recipient of this letter could hardly be more different. A former addict, John is serving a lengthy sentence at HM Prison Grendon in Buckinghamshire. Thousands of miles away, Jakub is starting a PhD in criminology in the Czech Republic while working for the Constitutional Court in Prague. With a Masters in criminology from Cambridge ̽��ֱ��, his future looks bright.

Jakub and John are just two of more than 100 people who have been brought together by an ambitious scheme run by academics at Cambridge’s Institute of Criminology. Taught in prisons, Learning Together gives university students and prisoners the chance to study alongside each other. They sit in the same classrooms, engage with the same topics, and carry out the same assignments.

Learning Together was piloted at HMP Grendon in 2015. An-eight week criminology course was taken by 24 learners, half of them graduate students and half of them prisoners. ̽��ֱ��programme is now expanding to other prisons and subject areas. Its remarkable success stems from the passionate belief of its creators – criminologists Drs Ruth Armstrong and Amy Ludlow – in the power of education to capacitate, unlock potential and transform society for the better.

This term, prisoners at Grendon have the opportunity to sign up for a course in literary criticism led by Dr Stacey McDowell from Cambridge’s Faculty of English. Meanwhile, prisoners at HM Prison Whitemoor in Cambridgeshire are offered a course on ‘ ̽��ֱ��Good Life and the Good Society’ run by Drs Ryan Williams (Centre of Islamic Studies) and Elizabeth Phillips (Divinity Faculty).

Religious, political and social differences are high on the public agenda, yet theological and religious education is often taught in a way that’s disconnected from the real world. Williams suggests that this gap between theoretic and real-life perspectives represents a valuable opportunity. “While carrying out my research, I observed that people are guided on a daily basis by ethical and theological questions of what constitutes the ‘good’,” he says.

“Our course finds a middle ground, and provides a chance for students to sharpen their own understanding of what is right and ‘good’ in their own life and in society by having meaningful contact with, and learning alongside, people from a diversity of backgrounds. Yes, we’re taking a risk in that we're exploring questions of difference often seen as sources of conflict, but we believe it’s a crucial one to take.”

Universities and prisons might seem poles apart but both communities set out to transform lives for the benefit of society. “While teaching on access-to-university courses, aimed at students from less advantaged backgrounds, we realised that the students we were meeting had a lot in common with the prisoners we’d encountered in the course of our research,” say Armstrong and Ludlow.

“Many came from similar backgrounds and had been brought up on similar streets. ̽��ֱ��access students tended to have punitive views of people who commit crime – while many prisoners thought they had nothing in common with ‘clever’ people who were destined for university. We saw the same potential brimming in many of them.”

Teaching in prisons is nothing new. However, Learning Together has a broader objective. It sets out to create enduring ‘communities of learning’ in which students from universities and prisons realise how much they have to learn from, and with, each other.

̽��ֱ��shared endeavour of structured learning forges friendships and shatters stereotypes. As a prison-based Learning Together student called Adam put it in an article about his experiences “I had my fears about the course. Will I be judged? Will I be up to it socially? Can I really learn with Cambridge students without looking stupid?”

Adam found the learning environment to be “inclusive and enabling” and wrote that “my confidence has soared and I come out of each session buzzing with new knowledge, new friendships and knowing that I’ve contributed way more than I thought I could". Since completing the course he has won a scholarship that will enable him to take a Masters in English Literature. He has also trained as a mentor for Learning Together students.

Many prisoners have negative experiences of school and gain few formal qualifications. For their part, many university students have relatively narrow life experiences. “Going into a prison, I expected to find immaturity,” said one Cambridge student in a film made by prisoners at HMP Springhill, another prison involved in the project. “Instead, I discovered that I was the immature one.”

At the heart of Learning Together is an approach described by Armstrong and Ludlow as ‘dialogical learning’ – learning through dialogue with fellow students and teachers in an environment of trust. In a blog for an online magazine, a prisoner at Grendon called Anthony shares his thoughts about the liberating nature of this approach.

Anthony writes: “Every session … gave me the feeling that I had been free for a few hours, although not free in the sense that I had been outside the prison, but free in a deeper sense. I could be a better version of myself, which my incarceration, past and fears did not dictate to and smother. It was warmth, compassion and the exchange of ideas – alongside the acceptance of others – that created this released version of me.”

If you are interested in learning more about how your university or department could get involved in working in partnership with a local prison, please contact Ruth Armstrong and Amy Ludlow on justis@crim.cam.ac.uk

A pioneering project to teach university students alongside prisoners, so that they learn from each other, has proved remarkably successful. ̽��ֱ��creators of Learning Together, Drs Ruth Armstrong and Amy Ludlow, are now expanding the scheme and seeking to widen participation across university departments.

They are not studying us; they are studying with us.

Adam (a prisoner talking about the Learning Together course)

Kip Loades

Face to face

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

Winners announced in the inaugural Vice-Chancellor’s Impact Awards and Public Engagement with Research Awards

jeh98 — Tue, 21 Jun 2016 09:58:54 +0000

On Monday 20 June, the Vice-Chancellor and Pro Vice-Chancellor for Research presented two sets of inaugural awards; the Impact Awards run by the Research Strategy Office, and the Public Engagement with Research Awards run by the Public Engagement team in the Office of External Affairs and Communications.

Research at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge has had profound effects on society – it is a formal part of the ̽��ֱ��’s mission.

̽��ֱ��Vice-Chancellor’s Impact Awards have been established to recognise and reward those whose research has led to excellent impact beyond academia, whether on the economy, society, culture, public policy or services, health, the environment or quality of life.

In this, its inaugural year, there were 71 nominations across all Schools. Nominations were initially judged by School, with one overall best entry selected by external advisor Schlumberger. A prize of £1,000 was awarded to the best impact in each School, with the prize for the overall winner increased to £2,000.

̽��ֱ��winners were announced at an award ceremony on 20 June 2016, hosted by Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz. These winners, although very diverse, illustrate only a small part of the wide range of impact that Cambridge's research has had.

This year’s winners were:

Dr Mari Jones (Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages)

Norman French has been spoken in Jersey for over 1,000 years. Today, however, this language (Jèrriais to its speakers) is obsolescent: spoken by some 1% of the population. ̽��ֱ��research of Mari Jones has sought to preserve Jèrriais and has helped raise the profile of the language within Jersey and beyond, with impacts on local and national media, language policy and education, and cultural identity and development.

Dr Gilly Carr (Department of Archaeology and Anthropology)

̽��ֱ��Channel Islands have long had great difficulty in coming to terms with the darker side of the German occupation. ̽��ֱ��aim of Gilly Carr’s research is to increase awareness of Channel Islander victims of Nazi persecution through creation of a plural ‘heritage landscape’ and via education. ̽��ֱ��creation of this heritage is a major achievement and will be of significant impact for the Channel Islands.

Professor Steve Jackson (Wellcome Trust/CRUK Gurdon Institute)

Olaparib is an innovative targeted therapy for cancer developed by Steve Jackson. In 2014 Olaparib was licensed for the treatment of advanced ovarian cancer by the US Food and Drug Administration and the European Medicines Agency. ̽��ֱ��following year, NICE made the drug available on the NHS in England for specific ovarian cancer patients. 2015 saw promising findings from a clinical trial in prostate cancer and Olaparib received Breakthrough Therapy Designation earlier this year. Olaparib is currently in clinical trials for a wide range of other cancer types.

Professor John Clarkson and Dr Nathan Crilly (Department of Engineering)

It is normal to be different. ̽��ֱ��demographics of the world are changing, with longer life expectancies and a reduced birth rate resulting in an increased proportion of older people. Yet with increasing age comes a general decline in capability, challenging the way people are able to interact with the ‘designed’ world around them. ̽��ֱ��Cambridge Engineering Design Centre has worked with the Royal College of Art to address this ‘design challenge’. They developed a design toolkit and realised what was by now obvious, that inclusive design was simply better design.

Dr Nita Forouhi and Dr Fumiaki Imamura (MRC Epidemiology Unit)

Identifying modifiable risk factors is an important step in helping reduce the health burden of poor diet. Forouhi and Imamura have advanced our understanding of the health impacts of sugars, fats and foods, through both scale and depth of investigation of self-reported information and nutritional biomarkers. They have engaged at an international level with policy and guidance bodies, and have used the media to improve public understanding with the potential for a direct impact on people’s health.

In 2015, the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge received a one-year £65k Catalyst Seed Fund grant from Research Councils UK to embed high quality public engagement with research and bring about culture change at an institutional level.

̽��ֱ��Public Engagement with Research Awards were set up to recognise and reward those who undertake quality engagement with research. 69 nominations were received from across all Schools.

This year’s winners were:

Dr Becky Inkster (Department of Psychiatry)

Dr Inkster’s work work explores the intersection of art and science through the prism of mental health research. Dr Inkster has successfully collaborated with ̽��ֱ��Scarabeus Theatre in a performance called Depths of My Mind and founded the website HipHopPsych, showcasing the latest psychiatry research through hip hop lyrics. Her approach has allowed her to engage with hard-to-reach teenage audiences, encouraging them to reflect on their own mental health. Beyond this work she has explored the use of social media to diagnose mental illness, and has gathered patient perspectives on ethics, privacy and data sharing in preparation for research publication.

Dr Paolo Bombelli (Department of Biochemistry)

Dr Bombelli’s research looks to utilise the photosynthetic chemistry of plants to create biophotovoltaic devices, a sustainable source of solar power. For over five years, he has been taking his research out of the lab to science festivals, schools and design fairs; tailoring his approach to a wider variety of audiences. Through his engagement, he has reached thousands of people, in multiple countries, and is currently developing an educational toolkit to further engage school students with advances in biophotovoltaic technology. Dr Bombelli’s public engagement work has also advanced his research, namely through a transition from using algae to moss in live demonstrations.

Dr Ruth Armstrong and Dr Amy Ludlow (Institute of Criminology and Faculty of Law)

Dr Armstrong and Dr Ludlow have collaborated on a research project addressing the delivery of education in the prison sector. Their project, Learning Together, pioneered a new approach to prison education where the end-users, the prisoners, are directly engaged with the design, delivery and evaluation of the research intervention. Adopting this shared dialogue approach has yielded positive results in terms of prisoners’ learning outcomes and has gathered praise from prison staff and government policy makers. Through continued engagement and partnership working, Armstrong and Ludlow have managed to expand their initiative across a broad range of sites and institutional contexts.

Dr Hazel Wilkinson (Department of English)

Dr Wilkinson is investigating the history of reading and writing habits in the eighteenth century. In collaboration with Dr Will Bowers at the ̽��ֱ�� of Oxford, she has developed an online public platform, journallists.org, which allows readers to engage with installments of periodicals, diaries, letters, and novels, on the anniversaries of the day on which they were originally published, written, or set. Her approach has allowed members of the public to actively participate in research. She has also inspired thousands of readers to engage with under-read eighteenth and nineteenth century texts, often for the very first time.

Dr Paul Coxon (Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy)

Over the last ten years Dr Coxon has endeavored to engage with audiences often overlooked by traditional public engagement channels. He has given talks in venues as varied as bingo halls, working men’s social clubs and steam fairs to showcase his passion for solar research, steering clear of the “flashes and bangs” approach often associated with Chemistry. He has also designed a Fruit Solar Cell Starter Kit, used in fifty low-income catchment schools across the UK.

Mr Ian Hosking and Mr Bill Nicholl (Department of Engineering and Faculty of Education)

Ian Hosking and Bill Nicholl are cofounders of Designing Our Tomorrow, a platform for transforming D&T education in schools. Their public engagement initiative began in 2009 and brought together research around inclusive design and creativity in education. Through production of their DOT box, Hosking and Nicholl have taken active research questions into the classroom and given students control of designing technological solutions. Engagement with teachers, students and policymakers is integral to the success of their initiative and has resulted in engineering design being included in the national curriculum and GCSE qualifications.

Researchers from across the ̽��ֱ�� have been recognised for the impact of their work on society, and engagement with research in the inaugural Vice-Chancellor’s Impact Awards and Public Engagement with Research Awards.

̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge

Dr Ruth Armstrong and Dr Amy Ludlow receive their award from the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

Inside information: Students and prisoners study together in course that reveals the power of collaborative education

tdk25 — Tue, 26 Apr 2016 07:00:06 +0000

̽��ֱ��wealth of untapped academic talent inside the criminal justice system has been illuminated by a ground-breaking project in which people in prison studied in equal partnership with Cambridge students.

To date, 22 prisoners have participated in the Learning Together initiative at HMP Grendon in Buckinghamshire, which completed its second term last week. Many students have described it as a life-changing experience, and one student who is currently in prison has already had a paper accepted by an academic journal.

̽��ֱ��project was funded by the British Academy and consists of carefully-structured, eight-week courses involving both graduates studying for the MPhil in Criminology at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and students from the prison itself. All of the participants co-operate on equal terms, sharing exactly the same study materials, and working together in small group sessions.

In a report due to be published in the next edition of ̽��ֱ��Prison Service Journal, the organisers, Dr Ruth Armstrong and Dr Amy Ludlow, argue that the course has dismantled stereotypes and prejudice in both directions. While it overturns the assumptions of many prisoners that a university education is something that they will never be able to achieve, it does so by highlighting their ability to handle complex subject matter on an equal footing with their Cambridge peers.

̽��ֱ��forthcoming report argues that more should be done to develop models of prison education which, rather than teaching prisoners in isolation, are built around active collaborations with organisations beyond their walls. In particular, it presents powerful evidence – drawn from interviews with the students who took part – that the experience of studying with others profoundly affected the ways in which all students viewed themselves and thought about the future.

One participant, Gareth, has already written a review of an academic book that he will publish alongside Ludlow and Armstrong in a peer reviewed journal next month. In his graduation speech, Gareth said: “For a large part of my sentence, who I am has been entirely synonymous with the reasons I ended up in prison. Reflecting on the initiative, it seems that the overwhelming product was that I was reminded of being someone other than the person who committed these offences.

“I am someone who has valid and useful opinions, I have an interest in how society works, and the connectedness we feel with the other people who we share this world with. I am developing a sense that not only do I want to help people – I am starting to believe I can.”

̽��ֱ��course organisers suggest that such experiences point to the capacity of projects like theirs to improve current prison-based learning and transform the learning cultures of both prisons and universities, in ways that help all students to realise and develop their skills and talents to support social progress.

They point out that a pathway out of crime relies on something called “Diachronic Self-Control” – the idea that a person can have ideas about what they want to achieve in life, but that these will remain unfulfilled unless they can also access the places and connections which make them achievable. “People have to be able to perceive a different future to be able to move towards that future,” the study observes.

̽��ֱ��Learning Together course involves weekly sessions, each lasting two and a half hours, and covers a series of topics such as the legitimacy of power, and the rebuilding of non-offending lives.

Each week’s reading list typically involves an academic paper and a more accessible piece of content. For example, for the session on Trust and Democratic Voice, students were also asked to read an article about how marginalised groups in Tunisia used hip-hop as a means of self-expression with which to confront state power during the Arab Spring.

Armstrong, who is a Research Associate in Criminology at St John’s College, Cambridge, said that much of the course drew on ideas from more general research into education. In particular, it applies the principles that students learn better when they absorb new information through dialogue and shape it in light of their experiences, rather than through instruction alone. When students realise they have potential, they adopt a “growth mindset” and are more able to capitalise on it.

“When we move some of those ideas from the learning environment into criminal justice, what we show people in prison is that they are not fixed and defined by their offending, but that there are avenues for them to progress,” she said. “That’s a very powerful message.”

Ludlow, a lecturer in Law and Criminology at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, added: “That message is just as powerful for the Cambridge students. Many of them talked to us about how, before Learning Together, their world views were small. Studying together, in dialogue, helped everyone to see how individual ideas and experiences interact with bigger institutions, histories and social forces.”

Their views are echoed by extensive feedback from the students themselves, much of which is reported in the forthcoming journal article. In one particularly moving graduation speech, a student called Zaheer reflected: “It gave me self-esteem and confidence in my own abilities… Being able to put our past behind us and do something positive like this has helped our confidence, transforming our lives.”

̽��ֱ��project has received praise from the Secretary of State for Justice, Michael Gove. “We must be more demanding of our prisons, and more demanding of offenders, which means giving prisoners new opportunities but expecting them to engage seriously and purposefully in education and work,” he said. “I have seen for myself that the Learning Together Initiative at HMP Grendon provides the chance for prisoners to work towards their full potential and gain qualifications as a result. It does great work and it is a testament to the scheme and the hard work of those involved that so many are able to attend the graduation ceremony.”

̽��ֱ��Governor of HMP Grendon, Jamie Bennett, said: “ ̽��ֱ��therapeutic work of Grendon helps to explore and manage some of the profound traumas and problems experienced by the men in our care. Whilst doing this, it is also important to offer opportunities in which they can discover and develop their talents. This course is an example of that.”

Rod Clark, Chief Executive of the Prisoners’ Education Trust, highlighted the value of Learning Together as an initiative with benefits both for the students within the prison and those at Cambridge.

“Problems within prisons – safety concerns, overcrowding, limited access to classes – can make creating a healthy learning environment incredibly difficult,” he added. “Projects like Learning Together help to achieve just that, offering tremendous benefits for people on both sides of the prison wall. They allow prisoners to recognise their ambitions and motivations, while giving the student population an understanding of prison life.”

Armstrong and Ludlow are supporting the creation of similar partnerships between other universities and prisons and other departments within the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge. They are also involved with further collaborative initiatives focused on different skills, such as cooking and making music.

Their report calls for the development of an approach to prison education that is “more porous” in terms of its creative engagement with the outside world, and its approach to prisoners as potential assets to society rather than people who merely require correction.

Further information about the Learning Together Programme can be found here.

Additional images reproduced by permission of the Ministry of Justice/Learning Together project.

A highly innovative project in which Cambridge students and prisoners studied together at a Category B prison in Buckinghamshire has broken down prejudices and created new possibilities for all of those who took part. ̽��ֱ��researchers behind it suggest that more such collaborative learning initiatives could help dismantle stereotypes and offer prisoners a meaningful vision for the future after release.

I am someone who has valid and useful opinions, I have an interest in how society works, and the connectedness we feel with the other people who we share this world with. I am developing a sense that not only do I want to help people - I am starting to believe I can.

Gareth, a student on the Learning Together course at HMP Grendon

Learning Together/Ministry of Justice

Prisoner and guard.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

Honeypot Britain? EU migrants’ benefits and the UK referendum

fpjl2 — Thu, 25 Feb 2016 12:04:03 +0000

A new Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� research project is gathering “robust empirical evidence” on the experience of EU migrant workers in the UK, exploring everything from hopes and expectations to how they find work and what use EU migrants make of benefits.

̽��ֱ��research is timely, as perceptions of EU migrants undercutting British workers or acting as ‘benefits tourists’ are fuelling much of the debate in the lead-up to June’s EU Referendum.

Some MPs are warning that Britain has become a “honeypot nation” with its social security system acting as a primary pull factor, leading to David Cameron’s negotiation of a so-called ‘emergency brake’ on benefits for EU migrants.

However, critics argue that the government have been consistently unable to provide any evidence that this is the case. For example, last week’s response to a Parliamentary question on the amount spent on benefits to EU migrants was simply: “the information is not available”.

̽��ֱ��EU Migrant Worker Project will aim to fill some of that knowledge gap. By combining interviews and focus groups with new methodologies for analysing available data, the research team hope to build an evidential base for EU migrants’ experiences of and attitudes toward Britain’s employment and social security systems.

̽��ֱ��project, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, is led by Professor Catherine Barnard and Dr Amy Ludlow from Cambridge’s Faculty of Law, and is launched today (Friday 26th February) with a roundtable discussion involving Labour former Home Secretary Charles Clarke and current Conservative MP Heidi Allen among others.

Professor Barnard said: “We hope to shed new light on the big question of how we adequately regulate migration within a socio-economically diverse EU and a post-financial crisis context. This question is central to Brexit and to the outcome of the UK's referendum on EU membership.”

Initial work has already been carried out, and a study published last October in the journal Industrial Law shows that EU migrants are using UK employment tribunals at much lower rates than would be expected relative to population size.

̽��ֱ��study, the only one of its kind, is based on analysis of three years of Employment Tribunal decisions alongside field interviews. It suggests that migrant workers from EU-8 nations use employment tribunals over 85% less than would be expected, given the size of the workforce they represent.

̽��ֱ��researchers identified various factors affecting migrants’ willingness and ability to use tribunals, including: lack of knowledge of their rights, reluctance to engage with the judicial system and, for those in the UK for a short time, a desire to maximise their earnings that is prioritised over complaints about mistreatment.

Under current EU law, EU migrants have rights to equal treatment in their terms and conditions of employment offered to domestic workers.

However, this initial study suggests that when it comes to employment conditions these may be rights that “exist more ‘on paper’ than in practice”, write the researchers.

“While we found good evidence to suggest that EU-8 workers were fairly treated by Employment Tribunal judges, navigating the system and accessing enough advice to understand the basic elements of the rights these workers are due is deeply problematic,” said Dr Ludlow.

“In interviews, we were told that largescale cuts to local authorities have had a negative impact on resources such as Citizen Advice Bureaus. These are important sources of guidance for workers who cannot afford legal advice, including workers from the EU.”

Professor Barnard said that the introduction of Employment Tribunal fees has meant that many workers are now priced out of claiming their employment rights. “If the Government is concerned about migrant workers’ undercutting employment terms and conditions and labour standards for domestic workers, our research suggests that resource needs to be directed to enabling migrant workers to enforce their rights, and to properly resourcing enforcement organisations such as the Gangmasters’ Licencing Authority.”

Unlike some other EU Member States, the UK did not impose restrictions on the admission of workers coming from the so-called EU-8 countries (such as Poland and the Czech Republic), apart from the requirement to register under the Workers’ Registration Scheme.

Over a million EU-8 workers, taking advantage of their free movement rights under Article 45 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), have arrived in the UK since 2004. They enjoy rights to equal treatment in any social and tax advantages offered to domestic workers – including the payment of child benefit and ‘in-work benefits’ such as tax credits.

Barnard and Ludlow plan to use the research design from their employment enforcement study and apply it to social security tribunals, to help give some sense of the number of EU migrants who claim benefits and the nature of the cases in which they are involved. They will also interview EU migrants and those that work closely with them, to explore migrants’ hopes, expectations and experiences.

I didn’t come to the UK just to work in any kind of job

Early interviews have highlighted the importance of online grass roots communities such as Facebook groups for migrant workers seeking advice, and that stopping child benefit for EU migrants may result in fewer family units making the transition to the UK, and an increase in younger, unattached men working in the UK, who are likely to integrate less permanently within their host community.

While some interviewees are preparing to leave Britain, citing a better quality of life in their home nation (“I'm not interested in staying in the UK just because it's possible”), the researchers also found migrant success stories.

One interviewee spoke of her determination to work in nursing: “I didn’t come to the UK just to work in any kind of job. Either I’m working my way towards nursing or, if that’s not possible, I’m going back.” After struggling through bar work and learning medical English on her days off, the woman is now a nurse in a local hospital.

“Many of the EU migrants we’ve talked to so far don’t understand our complex social security system; their only interest is in finding work,” said Dr Ludlow.

As well as one-to-one interviews and focus groups, the researchers will be making a documentary and providing migrant workers with disposable cameras. “It’s another way of trying to capture the migrant experience that offers an alternative insight to words on paper,” said Professor Barnard.

̽��ֱ��project is a two-way process, she says, with minute-long podcasts summarizing relevant aspects of the law, which will be available on EU Migrant Worker Project later this month.

“What we can offer the migrant community in return is quite detailed knowledge of the law and their rights and how to enforce those rights, both to claim employment rights but also social security benefits.”

Added Dr Ludlow: “Accusations that the UK has become a ‘honeypot nation’ has become a key issue in the debate about the UK’s membership of the EU.

“By gathering empirical evidence about EU migrants' experiences of navigating the labour market and social security system in the UK, we hope to increase our understanding of EU and domestic law as it works in practice and to inform public opinion in anticipation of the referendum on 23 June and beyond.”

If you are interested in learning more about Professor Barnard and Dr Ludlow’s work please email euworker@hermes.cam.ac.uk, tweet @eumigranworker, or contact them on their Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/eu.migrantworker/. Their project website is: www.eumigrantworker.law.cam.ac.uk.

Ahead of Britain’s EU referendum, research will explore the experiences of EU migrants working in the UK, and attitudes to employment and social security – for which there is little empirical evidence, despite intense political rhetoric. An initial study suggests workers from the EU are significantly under-represented in employment tribunals.

Accusations that the UK has become a ‘honeypot nation’ has become a key issue in the debate about the UK’s membership of the EU

Amy Ludlow

Kip Loades

EU migrant workers

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

Staff-prisoner relationships are key to managing suicide risk in prison, say researchers

fpjl2 — Fri, 03 Jul 2015 14:41:00 +0000

On 1 July 2015, the Government published the Labour peer Lord Toby Harris’ final report of the Independent Review into self-inflicted deaths in custody of 18-24 year olds, which was commissioned to make recommendations on actions that need to be taken to reduce the risk of future deaths in custody.

A team from Cambridge ̽��ֱ��’s Faculty of Law and Prison Research Centre (PRC), in partnership with RAND Europe, was commissioned by the Harris Review to undertake new research on the experience, knowledge and views of prison staff about the nature of suicide risk and its identification and management. Researchers conducted around 50 interviews and focus groups, and observed prisoner assessments across five prisons in England and Wales, including both private and public establishments.

̽��ֱ��researchers found that many prison staff use ‘jailcraft’ — the knowledge and expertise gained through their own experience — to identify and manage at risk prisoners, but staff felt that their capacity to build and exercise this expertise has been adversely affected by a lack of time and budget, and a reliance on blanket risk management procedures.

While some staff held fatalistic views of individual prisoners (‘those who really want to do it will do it anyway’), researchers say that staff who understood the impacts of prison environments, and attempted to proactively ameliorate those impacts upon prisoners, through their relationships with prisoners and practices, were more likely to be effective in preventing deaths.

Such staff placed individual prisoner care at the heart of their work. They used initiative by, for example, ‘creating’ jobs to occupy prisoners’ minds, such as additional cleaning or painting on the wing, or offering in cell ‘distraction packs’ that included Sudoku puzzles or crosswords.

“While some prison staff felt that suicide attempts could be described as acts of manipulation, many saw it as a cry of pain. ̽��ֱ��prison officers who recognised the complex interaction between prisoners’ imported vulnerabilities — such as addiction or illiteracy — and their environment and situations, felt more empowered to gauge the risks of self-harm or suicide and intervene to prevent situations from escalating,” said the PRC’s Dr Amy Ludlow, who led the research.

̽��ֱ��team say their findings highlight the importance of “high-quality relationships between prisoners and staff for identifying and managing suicide risks in an increasingly austere prison environment”.

However, many of the staff interviewed for the research felt that budget-reduction policies, including ‘Benchmarking’ and ‘New Ways of Working’, had adversely affected their capacity and expertise to manage suicide risk proactively, rather than reactively. Many staff expressed frustration at having too little time for personalised, integrated care.

Many of the study’s interviewees described staff losses from early redundancy packages being compounded by high staff sickness — often, they reported, because of work-related stress. In some prisons, researchers observed senior managers undertaking prison officer work such as serving meals to make up for the short fall.

One prison manager told researchers: “Benchmarking has put us between the devil and the deep blue sea. We’ve had to implement it even though we know it’s damaging the prison”.

Staff reported that there were currently too few staff on prison wings, and those staff present were often less effective than they could be because of inconsistent staff deployment, the use of agency staff, low morale and infrequent or inadequate training.

Many staff also reported that social and educational activities in prisons had been reduced as a result of budget cuts, with whole wings of prisoners routinely ‘banged up’ (confined to their cells) for almost all of the day.

“We know from this and other studies that there are a number of protective factors related to the prison environment that impact on the likelihood of suicide," said the PRC’s Professor Alison Liebling.

“Part of this story is how well a prison responds to prisoners’ needs during acute periods of distress. But it is also important that a prison provides an environment where prisoners have meaningful activities and human contact, both for prisoners who are and those who aren’t seen as at enhanced risk of self-harm,” she said.

Researchers found the Assessment, Care in Custody and Teamwork (ACCT) process that dominates the ways in which prisoners at risk are identified and managed — and was credited with contributing to the decline in suicide that began in the mid-2000s — was now often being approached as a ‘tick box’ exercise because staff felt that they ‘haven’t got time to deal with [risk] any other way’.

Staff described an over-reliance on ACCTs, with the result that support was not focused on prisoners most in need of it. Many cited a fear of blame for deaths in explaining their ‘defensive’ use of ACCT. Staff described feeling unfairly blamed when things go wrong, and unrecognised for their successes in preventing deaths by a system that does not understand the resource constraints within which prison work is carried out.

̽��ֱ��research also found that adequate support for staff in preparing for inquests was important in securing positive oriented learning experiences from deaths in custody. While some staff reported evidence of positive change to practice following inquests, some staff, particularly managers, expressed frustration that some ‘pretty straightforward lessons’ were not learned by all staff from inquests.

Some staff and managers were equally of the view that ‘self-inflicted deaths (SID) could act as catalysts for reflection and changes to practice that make SID prevention more effective’, and staff reported looking for an achievable model of effective practice. One member of prison staff reported that “listening to colleague’s stories and experiences would help you grow. Retrospective learning from such incidents would be great. We do too little of it now — we’re always in defensive mode”.

̽��ֱ��team’s findings have helped inform some of the Harris Review’s 108 recommendations about how more deaths in prisons can be prevented: through improved training for staff; recognition of the importance of — and investment in — caring, personalised and respectful staff-prisoner relationships; better information flows between relevant agencies; and a focus on lesson learning following all incidents of self-harm and suicide.

“ ̽��ֱ��Harris Review has raised important questions that demand the attention of policymakers,” said Ludlow.

“My hope is that our study will be a catalyst for further dialogue about suicide prevention, which will complement the Review’s thorough work. There are some dedicated prison staff whose knowledge and experience should inform next steps, as should the insights of the many excellent volunteer prisoner Listeners who support fellow prisoners at times of crisis. That sustained reductions in the rate of suicides in prison were achieved post 2005 suggest that systematic efforts to prevent them can work, given the right organisational context,” she said.

Ludlow points out that the Harris Review states that, by and large, the policies that National Offender Management Services promulgates through Prison Service Instructions are sound and, if implemented, would deliver good practice.

“While suicide risk is intense, multifaceted and dynamic, the protective potential impact of staff-prisoner relationships and the prison environment should give us hope that more deaths can be prevented given adequate resource and leadership, and genuine political commitment to some of the welcome fundamental critiques raised by the Harris Review about the size of our prison population, and experiences of imprisonment that too frequently inadequately support prisoners in their journeys towards non-offending lives,” Ludlow said.

̽��ֱ��full findings of this study are now available online.

̽��ֱ��research team will host a roundtable event to discuss this and related research at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge on 8 September 2015. For more information about the event, contact Dr Amy Ludlow.

In the wake of a recent increase in prisoner suicide, new research commissioned by the Harris Review on the views and experiences of prison staff suggests that identifying and managing vulnerable prisoners requires the building of staff-prisoner relationships, ‘knowing the prisoners and understanding what makes them tick’. However, prison staff say that this has been adversely affected by the need to deliver budgetary savings.

̽��ֱ��protective potential impact of staff-prisoner relationships and the prison environment should give us hope that more deaths can be prevented given adequate resource and leadership

Amy Ludlow

ESRC Prison Research Centre film

Staff who understood the impacts of prison environments, and attempted to proactively ameliorate those impacts upon prisoners, were more likely to be effective in preventing deaths.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes