These are arguments I'm trying to develop at the moment so feedback is welcome.

The central argument: the law currently obstructs accountability in several ways, and contains no mechanism to respond when people held accountable for so serious an offence as murder actually try to engage with that responsibility.

Average minimum terms for murder have risen 80% since 2003. When people must numb themselves just to endure these sentences, they suppress the very capacity for moral engagement that punishment supposedly fosters.

1) Extreme sentences requiring emotional numbing to survive (this point drawing on forthcoming work with @bencrewe.bsky.social); 2) joint enterprise murder convictions people can't square with what they actually did; and 3) invisible vulnerabilities that only emerge years into a sentence.

Drawing on interviews with 66 men serving life for murder, the submission shows three ways current law frustrates the accountability it supposedly requires:

The report received substantial media attention but as some coverage noted, it fell short of survivors' calls for a full public inquiry. An imperfect but important step toward accountability, and still a piece of work I'm proud of.

We contributed via a submission to the call for evidence based on our earlier research. Our contribution focused on helping investigators read historical documents "against the grain"—understanding what official records conceal as much as what they reveal about institutional abuse.

The aim of all this is to develop themes and refresh my thinking in preparation for a larger mixed-methods study on parole.

Further details + links to the paper available at the link above.

Themes identified in the interviews included temporal disruption, procedural expectations, and performativity. The paper highlights tensions between the system's risk assessment focus and some participants' expectations of a broader moral evaluation.

I re-examined some of my PhD interviews, thinking about the parole decision as some of my participants saw it: not as the product of a discrete decision-making event (the oral hearing) but of a longer administrative process, in which the sediment of past assessments and reports shape outcomes.

If this situation concerns you too, then please do the same. There are some resources linked from this page, if you would like to use your voice in solidarity with us:

www.quaker.org.uk/news-and-eve...

I feel compelled to use my voice to defend their (our, my) rights, which are under threat, and have written to my MP opposing the further expansion of the police's powers to suppress political activism.

A small number of Friends from the meeting, and more from other meetings around the country, have spent time in prison in connection with their exercise of the right to protest.

As Caroline's letter points out, this raid was part of a wider suppression of the right to peaceful protest. It threatens many groups more vulnerable than Quakers, but came to our home because we support and shelter those who act in sympathy with our principles.

Wood anemones!

Fairly safe to say, I'd think, that it's usually clear the measures don't capture all the harms.

"the vice of shallowness" is brilliant

What's the source for this, Jason? I remember reading De Profundis once, but don't remember this…