Quakers in Criminal Justice

Spring 2017 Newsletter Download PDF

Editorial

The 2017 conference has been hailed as “the best ever” from Ann, a notable long-term member. It has much coverage in this edition with three articles: Conference Report, an Alternative View and Gathering the Threads. But I would also like to reiterate that it follows from the success of the Leeds Conference where local Friends were invited to participate for the very first time. Please take heed that next year's conference on the last weekend of February 2018 will be concerned with mental health and the criminal justice system.

It is thus opportune that this newsletter concludes with a short story to do with the care within mental health services. The story is symptomatic of service delivery in our age where the emphasis is on risk management, paperwork and following procedures. A book review of Among the Hoods gives another example of how the social care system is struggling to meet care needs irrespective of the resources expended. (Those that are aware of my recent skirmish with Social Work will no doubt suspect that perhaps I am lucky. – Carmel)

Otherwise this edition has a good mix of factual information on the recent Prison and Courts Bill, a report from Chelmsford about their seminar with the Phoenix Trust, a glimpse of a Quaker chaplains' role and another interesting perspective from a book review on Religion, Faith and Crime.

We would like to thank Alan Russell for his continued commitment to emendations for the newsletter as well of course as our much valued production printer, Greta Mitchell. This newsletter is a virtual team effort and in recognition of his success producing the electronic version, Jonathan Lamb is now co-editor.

Carmel Schmid & Jonathan Lamb
Newsletter editors

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