Criminal justice organisations to work with UCLan to address challenges facing sector

21 December 2016

UCLan establishes Criminal Justice Partnership

The UK’s criminal justice sector will benefit from the University of Central Lancashire’s (UCLan) expertise through a new scheme designed to deliver tailored research projects that address particular challenges faced by organisations in the field.

The University has established the Criminal Justice Partnership to bring together a wide-range of skills from across the institution to find new solutions to issues facing the criminal justice sector. Areas include counter terrorism, human trafficking, mental health and criminal justice, policing and sex offender related offences. Already UCLan has worked with the Cumbria Clinical Commissioning Group to evaluate a pilot program designed to tackle mental health challenges faced by the police and other agencies and with Lancashire Constabulary on a multi-agency sharing IT system.

The Cumbria and Lancashire Community Rehabilitation Company is one of the organisations that attended the official launch of the Partnership. Its Director Phil O’Donnell said: “Criminal justice agencies in Lancashire have a long history of working collaboratively to reduce crime in our communities. The Criminal Justice Partnership, drawing on expertise from a number of academic disciplines, provides real opportunities to strengthen this critical work by ensuring it is rooted in evidence of what is effective.”

Experts in law, mental health nursing, policing, psychology and social work are all involved in the Criminal Justice Partnership.   

"The Criminal Justice Partnership has created a vibrant community of academics and partners that can respond to the needs of the criminal justice sector."

Dr Allison Jones, Executive Lead for the project, said: “This is an exciting initiative for UCLan. We have a wide range of expertise in this area and the Criminal Justice Partnership has created a vibrant community of academics and partners that can respond, in innovate ways, to the needs of the criminal justice sector.”

The Criminal Justice Partnership broadly covers five key strands; mental health and criminal justice, policing, social and restorative justice, violence and aggression, and youth and justice.  It was officially launched at the University through a conference attended by representatives from across the sector.  For more information visit our Criminal Justice Partnership page or follow the Partnership on Twitter @uclancjp