By Kourtnie Rodgers, Thomas Strauss 

In response to a critical need of the clients they serve, Twin Falls County Adult Misdemeanor Probation began a program to offer vouchers for clients with financial need in 2007. Vouchers are paid for with funding from the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant Program and can be used for required pieces of probation including drug testing, substance abuse treatment, and assessments. The goal of providing these vouchers is to reduce the burden of fees for clients who cannot afford to pay for their required conditions and ultimately to reduce recidivism of drug- and/or alcohol-related offenses. Clients are also able to access treatment providers that they may otherwise not be able to afford. This evaluation presents the Idaho Statistical Analysis Center’s (ISAC) review of the program through data collected by Twin Falls County Adult Misdemeanor Probation between October 2018 and September 2021. 

Meridian, ID: Idaho Statistical Analysis Center, 2022. 19p.

By  Wendy Betts

This is a policy brief that outlines recommendations for how to hold perpetrators accountable for sexual violence in Ukraine. The recommendations include:

• Legal pathways: Outlining legal pathways for accountability

• Documentation: Best practices for documenting conflict-related sexual violence

• Coordination: How to coordinate cooperation between documenters, support services, and the Ukrainian government

• Qualified professionals: Expanding the number of qualified professionals who can conduct forensic medical evaluations

• Legislative reforms: Legislative reforms to empower survivors in the justice process

• Medico-legal documentation: Developing standardized medico-legal documentation tools

• Capacity-building: Implementing capacity-building initiatives to ensure trauma-informed, survivor-centered approaches 

• The brief also calls on Ukrainian officials to build on their progress and reform systems so that survivors can access care, support, and justice. 

  The international community must react swiftly and respond in a survivor-oriented way toward justice

Global Initiative for Justice, Truth and Reconciliations (GIJTR) 2024. 37p.

By Howard League for Penal Reform

The prison system in England and Wales is running out of space, reaching record highs of more than 88,000 in recent months. Not only that but the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has been flagging the likelihood of this happening in its prison population projections since 2021 (MoJ, 2021). Billions of pounds are being spent on new prison places but this will not be enough to match supply to demand. It is time for a new government to address the capacity problem head-on and determine a more positive future for the prison system. The problem is not going away, with the latest prison population projections estimating an increase by more than 30% within the next four years (MoJ, 2024c). The new Labour government has recognised that tackling the crisis must be an urgent priority, with the Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, commenting at his first Downing Street press conference that “we have too many prisoners” (BBC, 2024). During the election campaign the Prison Governors’ Association (PGA) took the unprecedented step of writing to all the main party leaders, warning that “it is a matter of days before prisons run out of space, and that the entire Criminal Justice System stands on the precipice of failure. Within a matter of weeks, it will put the public at risk” (PGA, 2024). The Police Federation has also expressed concerns that police officers are being asked to hold people unlawfully in police custody because prison cells are not available (Police Federation, 2024). It has been suggested that Operation Brinker, a ‘one-in-one-out’ system, would be deployed as prisons approach zero capacity (iNews, 2024). The main driver behind population growth is an increase in the determinate sentenced population due to greater levels of prosecutorial activity, the court backlog, and changes in sentencing policy. Examples include changes to the timing of release for those serving certain determinate sentences (from release at halfway to two-thirds of the sentence) and the introduction of mandatory starting points or whole-life orders for certain offences. Such reforms mean that more people will spend longer in prison. Legislative reforms such as Schedule 21 (introduced in 2003) and responses to single-issue campaigns have introduced mandatory minimum terms for custodial sentences for certain types of offences (and in some cases have resulted in the creation of new offences). These political interventions have distorted proportionality in sentencing and driven up sentence lengths.   

London: Howard League for Penal Reform, 2024. 19p