Introducing the Future Justice Project
The Future Justice Project is a new charity that focusses on the justice system and the wrongly convicted.
We also provide the Secretariat to the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Miscarriages of Justice.
The APPG was set up in November 2017 over concerns about miscarriages of justice in the context of falling numbers of referrals by the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC). The CCRC is a public body set up in 1997 to investigate and refer alleged miscarriages of justice to the Court of Appeal. In 2017, its referral rate crashed to 0.7%.
In 2021, the APPG produced the Westminster Commission on Miscarriages of Justice which looked at the role of the CCRC, as reported in the Guardian.
Realising that the criminal appeal system was not working as intended, the APPG aimed to examine the structural problems within the criminal justice system which result in miscarriages of justice and to provide a forum from which to improve access to justice for those who have been wrongly convicted. It is chaired by Barry Sheerman MP.
Under the auspice of the office of Mr Sheerman MP, we launched the Future Justice Project in February in the House of Commons. You can see our report here. We work with individuals and public bodies to drive change in the criminal justice system and address miscarriages of justice.
Our Committees
We divided our work into five main committees chaired by leading figures in the criminal justice system:
- Science and the courts committee, chaired by Professor Angela Gallop
- Legal profession committee, chaired by Dr Lucy Welsh
- Media committee, chaired by David James Smith
- Legal policy committee
- Appeals committee
