Annual report & financial statements for the year ended 31 March 2022

Our annual report details our achievements and progress towards our goals in the third year of our three-year strategy, plus our plans for the future, set out across our five strategic objectives, followed by a financial review.

On behalf of voluntary organisations working in the criminal justice system, and our 600+ members, our activities included:

Improved our knowledge of the role and value of voluntary organisations

• Provided one-to-one support and information to over 250 voluntary sector organisations.
• Recruited 13 voluntary sector representatives to establish the Clinks member advisory forum.
• Undertook our largest-ever survey of practitioners working in the voluntary sector, with over 400 responses.
• Developed a new guide, Navigating the Criminal Justice System, to help practitioners understand how the criminal justice system is organised and how it works.

Further established thematic and location-based networks for voluntary organisations and practitioners

• Utilising digital technologies to provide support and opportunities for voluntary organisations to come together regularly through region-specific criminal justice forums in the North East, Wales and London.
• Providing representation at regional and sub-regional strategic boards and meetings in the North East, North West, London and Wales. These included reducing reoffending boards, local criminal justice boards and cross-sector thematic groups to influence and ensure sector involvement and engagement in regional policy and strategy development.
• There are now 70 organisations in our race and justice network where we ran a national programme of free consultancy support for organisations led by and supporting racially minoritised people. 46 organisations received 112 days free consultancy.

Built on our established reputation as a trusted advocate

• Publishing blogs on Regional Reducing Reoffending Plans, pre-sentence reports and Richard Oldfield’s independent review of the commissioning of day one probation services.
• Researching and publishing findings on the impact of probation unification on the voluntary sector with a particular focus on organisations’ experience of the commissioning of initial services delivered from 1 June alongside the unified probation service.
• Worked with a range of UK and Welsh government departments and national & local agencies.

Identifying emerging issues and provide effective responses

• Holding a series of consultation events in response to the prison strategy white paper with over 130 organisations in the sector, to inform our response.

Catered to the specific needs of organisations

• Published our report on the sector’s experience of probation reform and a final paper from the Reducing Reoffending Third Sector Advisory Board’s Special Interest Group on Probation highlighting key concerns and recommendations.
• Our Stronger Voice training programme targeted voluntary organisations working in the criminal justice system with limited experience of using their voice in policy or campaigns. This benefited 142 attendees from 91 different organisations. 82% reported improved confidence in using their voice to influence change after each event.
• We delivered three expert seminars to share and disseminate examples of impactful campaigning and influencing across the wider voluntary sector. Overall, we had 63 attendees across all three events. This included 40 different organisations.
• The National Criminal Justice Arts Alliance (NCJAA) published: Creativity in a restricted regime: a guide for prison staff.

Our communications programme

• Hosted 63 events, totalling 2,891 attendees.
• Our social media following grew further in this year by 1,672 followers to a total of 27,255 followers across the Clinks and National Criminal Justice Arts Alliance (NCJAA) Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook accounts.
• Clinks sent regular ebulletins, ensuring we delivered vital information to the sector and promoted its work to a wide range of criminal justice stakeholders. We delivered 146 ebulletins and newsflashes over the year to 21,601 subscribers.
• 11 editions of the National Criminal Justice Arts Alliance newsletter and 14 newsflashes with information specific to arts organisations and practitioners in the criminal justice system to 6,738 subscribers.
• Clinks produced and published 34 publications during the 2021-22 financial year, including major reports and guides for the sector, briefings, consultation responses and meeting notes.
• Maintained our popular job board. There were 2,632 vacancies posted during the 2021-22 financial year, and that section of the website had over 170,000 views across the year. The Directory of Services had over 31,000 views and the Partnership Finder had over 12,400 views.

Furthering our delivery plan

During the year we developed a further two-year delivery plan, for 2022-2024. This will enable us to continue to flex to meet the emerging and evolving needs of the criminal justice voluntary sector as it adapts to and experiences the world around it, following the pandemic and during major programmes of policy and commissioning reform.

Download the report to learn more about what we did in 2021-22 and our plans for the future.