By Gillian Buck, Philippa Tomczak

 Prison regulators across scales hold potential to illuminate harms of imprisonment and influence alternatives, yet criminologists rarely engage with these mechanisms. We analyse prisoners’ participatory roles in the ‘transformative’ Corston Report (2007) and The Corston Report 10 Years On, using actor-network-theory to guide document analysis. Corston called for a radically different, woman-centred approach to criminal justice, but women’s voices were often peripheral, or they were constructed as ‘pathetic’. There is unrealised potential for regulatory efforts to network imprisoned women and their families with other regulators, deepening understanding of problems connected to prisons, for broader social benefit.

The Howard Journal of Crime and Justice, 64(3), 405-414.

By Talitha Brown, Maria Adams, Daniel McCarthy, Erin Power, Vicki Harman, Jon Garland

This paper aims to explore how staff members in women’s prisons understand their role in relation to the food practices. Given the budgetary restrictions, staff shortages and overall concerns around the quality of food in prison, there is a critical gap in engaging with these staff perspectives which urgently needs addressing. Drawing on a qualitative study conducted in four women’s prisons in England, this paper will explore the food practices in prison from a range of staff (n = 10). The paper focuses on the following themes: (i) understanding the different ways in which staff navigate structural issues in serving food practices; (ii) examining how staff manage the expectations of women in prison around food; (iii) analysing how they link food practices to notion of normality; and (iv) exploring the ways in which staff navigate the debates on whether food should be seen as a form of punishment or rehabilitation.

The Howard Journal of Crime and Justice. 

By Mia Bird, Omair Gill, Johanna Lacoe, Molly Pickard, Steven Raphael and Alissa Skog

Criminal sentences resulting in admission to a California state prison are determined by both the nature of the criminal incident as well as the criminal history of the person convicted of the offense. Cases with convictions for multiple offenses may lead to multiple sentences that are either served concurrently or consecutively. Characteristics of the offense (such as the use of a firearm) or aspects of the person’s criminal history (such as a prior conviction for a serious or violent offense) may add to the length of the base sentence through what are commonly referred to as offense or case enhancements, respectively. California’s Three-Strikes law presents a unique form of sentence enhancement that lengthens sentences based on an individual’s criminal history. Consider an individual with one prior serious or violent felony conviction (one “strike”) who is subsequently convicted of another felony. Under Three Strikes, the sentence for the subsequent felony will be double the length specified for the crime regardless of whether the new conviction is for a serious or violent offense. For an individual with two prior violent or serious felony convictions, a third conviction for a serious or violent felony would receive an indeterminate prison term of at least 25 years to life, with the exact date of release determined by the Parole Board.   

Los Angeles: California Policy Lab,Committee on Revision of the Penal Code, 2022.  45p.