Louise Ridley provides an in-depth look at the issues and challenges of our ageing prison population and reviews the important role played by voluntary organisations, working collaboratively in prisons and improving the quality of life experienced by older people in prison.

The evidence review has been written by the team at the Centre for Justice Innovation. It evidences that point-of-arrest youth diversion is a better way of addressing low-level criminal behaviour. Moreover, in line with the Youth Justice Board’s ‘Child First’ strategy, point-of-arrest youth diversion is vital to the prioritisation of the child’s needs, enabling a fairer youth justice system.

This evidence review by Dr Lucy Baldwin, Senior Lecturer and researcher at De Montford University, reviews the current evidence base of maternal imprisonment and the impact of this imprisonment on the children affected.

This evidence review looks at the challenges and needs of the significant number of people already serving long life sentences from a young age in England and Wales. Written by the joint architects of a major research study into the experiences of people serving these sentences in England and Wales.

This evidence review by Dr. Gill Buck, Senior Lecturer in Social Work at the University of Chester, assesses the current evidence base of peer mentoring in the criminal justice system – to which she is an important contributor.

This evidence review by Tim McSweeney, Senior Lecturer at the University of Hertfordshire, provides an in-depth look at the issue of illicit drug use among people in contact with the criminal justice system.

In this evidence review, Kevin Wong, Reader in Community Justice and Associate Director, Criminal Justice, at the Policy Evaluation and Research Unit (PERU), Manchester Metropolitan University provides an in-depth look at the issue of engaging people with convictions.

In this evidence review, Dr Mary Corcoran, Reader and Director of Postgraduate programmes in Criminology at Keele University provides an in-depth look at the rationale and uses of cost benefit analysis (CBA).