About us

Make Justice Work is the brainchild of penal reform campaigner Roma Hooper and brings together a coalition of leading experts from the criminal justice system – including former prison governors, charity directors, renowned academics – as well as key players and opinion formers from outside the sector. We are united in the belief that that our current penal and criminal justice system is broken and urgently needs fixing:

• It puts too many people in prison who are convicted of relatively minor offences – and for fruitlessly short and ineffective periods
• It is leading to prison overcrowding which reduces any possible scope prison has of rehabilitating offenders
• It has left us with re-offending rates of over 65%
• All this at a huge cost to the taxpayer

Against this backdrop Make Justice Work aims to raise public awareness of the costliness of locking up low-level offenders and the futility of short-term sentences while at the same time identifying better ways of reducing re-offending and improving public safety.

Ultimately, we hope to bring about a fundamental sea change in public attitudes to how Britain deals with the punishment and rehabilitation of offenders – one which results in a wholesale shift in government thinking away from very expensive prison places to much more realistic, workable and effective sanctions which can be delivered in the community.

Make Justice Work is supported by the Ruskin Foundation through the generosity of donors inspired by Ruskin’s commitment to social reform