Want a real prison revolution? Then set the women free

Vincent McAviney is a Political Producer at Sky News. He was previously a member of Gender and Law at Durham (GLAD) based in the Law School at Durham University where he completed a LLB and MJur on the reform of partial defences in 2011. The following post was originally posted on the Huffington Post.

In early November, Gordon Brown’s former special advisor wrote a terrific advice blog for David Cameron. In it he recommended against doing exactly what the prime minister has gone out and done today with his criminal justice announcement.

If this were the Great British Bake Off Mary Barry would be making that disapproving face at this half-baked policy.

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PECANS workshop 2012 REGISTRATION OPEN Bodies of Law/Law and the Body

Bodies of Law / Law and the Body

An interdisciplinary conference for postgraduate and early-career academics in the area of law, gender and sexuality

Friday 30 March 2012

School of Law, University of Westminster, London, UK

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Law mediates various power structures and is interwoven with numerous other knowledges that participate in the construction, normalization and regulation of bodies, such as medicine, social media, religion and the nation-state. Numerous feminist legal scholars have commented on law’s intimate relationship to, for example, medical discourses, arguing that the shape of legal power has changed to more regulatory and disciplinary forms. Inevitably law’s relationship to bodies/states of embodiment alters as it takes on these increasingly pervasive roles. One might conclude that the notion of a space where the law will not intervene is a liberal fantasy, out of step with the reality of law’s operations. How, then, should law be evaluated and/or harnessed?

Our interdisciplinary one-day workshop aims to cover these and other issues pertaining to law and the body.

Venue – Room CLG.09, New Cavendish Site, 115 New Cavendish St, University of Westminster http://www.westminster.ac.uk/about-us/visit-us/directions/cavendish

Conference fees – £15; includes lunch and refreshments

Registration– registration closes 20/03/12.  Places are limited. Please click link and follow on screen payment instructions https://epayments.westminster.ac.uk/webpublicecs/newpay.asp

Further information – please see our website at http://clgs-pecans.org.uk/ or contact Nikki Godden at n.m.godden@durham.ac.uk

Download the programme here: PECANS 2012 Provisional programme

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Inherently Brief: volume 11

Louise McGolpin

Marriage, Same-sex Marriage and Civil  Partnerships

“We may as well allow marriage for animals”

Following these insulting comments regarding the potential legalization of same-sex marriage, Christian Tory councilor, James Malliff, has been suspended. Stonewall said that they “warmly welcome the decision”. Nevertheless,  at the very least one might have expect such a claimed-to-be-reverend Christian to be better versed in the principle that you reflect on yourself before you casting stones at others.

Human Rights and Forced Marriage

This week, the Supreme Court handed down judgment in the case of R (Quila & Anor) v SSHD and R (Bibi & Anor) v SSHD. The case considered whether the ban on the entry for settlement of foreign spouses or civil partners unless both parties were aged 21 or over was a lawful way of deterring or preventing forced marriages, or whether it constituted a human rights breach.

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Inherently Brief: volume 10

Equality & Sex Discrimination

Sheffield City Council has settled an equal pay case shortly before it was due to be heard by the Supreme Court. Around 900 women claimed that they were paid less than men doing comparable work. Last year the Court of Appeal agreed, holding that productivity bonuses granted to male employees resulted in unequal pay of men and women that was discriminatory (Gibson v Sheffield City Council [2010] EWCA Civ 63). Dave Prentis, the general secretary of Unison, said: ‘This is great news for thousands of women working at Sheffield council …. This decision also has implications for around 400,000 other women’s cases across the country. We hope these councils now stop wasting money on lawyers’ fees and face up to their responsibilities to pay women fairly’.

Cris McCurley, partner and head of international family law at north-east firm Ben Hoare Bell, said that the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill contravenes the UK’s obligations under the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW).

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