Whenever a miscarriage of justice case hits the headlines, it is tempting to dismiss it as a shocking aberration. A mistake in a system that otherwise functions in a perfectly satisfactory fashion. This important book shows how the lack of an effective watchdog, failures in policing, poor legal defence in the wake of the legal aid pay freeze, an over-reliance on expert evidence and reluctance in the media to cover miscarriage cases has led to a growing crisis in the criminal justice system. If you think there's a safety net, think again. In 2017, the Criminal Cases Review Commission, the watchdog established to oversee and prevent miscarriages of justice, celebrated its twentieth anniversary. The release of the Birmingham Six in 1991 set in train a series of events: a Royal Commission was launched which ultimately led to major structural reform of the justice system and the creation of an independent body to investigate alleged miscarriages of justice. It didn't fix the problem. Journalist and campaigner Jon Robins explodes the complacency that exists around our criminal justice system by examining a series of shocking cases where there are serious concerns about the safety of each conviction.

This collection brings together international experts to present a comparative analysis of wrongful conviction and criminal procedure. The volume takes an interdisciplinary approach with authors drawn from a broad range of backgrounds including law, psychology, forensics and journalism. All are experts in their field with direct experience of the investigation of wrongful conviction in their own countries. Focusing on the main areas of concern in their own jurisdiction, each author discusses common themes including: the extent of the problem; the types of cases that feature in miscarriages of justice; the legal mechanism for the correction of a wrongful conviction; compensation for the wrongly convicted; public awareness and concern about the issue generally and in light of high-profile cases; and the extent to which wrongful conviction has driven criminal justice reform. The book will be essential reading for students, researchers and policy-makers interested in Comparative Law, Criminology and Psychology.

Full Length, Drama Characters: 3 male, 2 female 2 Interior Sets Isaac Geldhart, the imperious scion of a family owned publishing house, is under siege. A takeover is being engineered by his son Aaron, who sees the firm's profitability steadily declining and wants to publish a trashy novel to bring in the bucks. Isaac plans to go on publishing scholarly works such as a multi volume history of Nazi medical experiments. Aaron has the necessary yen from Japanese backers but he needs the votes of his brother and sister. Reluctantly, they side against the old man. The second act takes place in the library of Isaac's townhouse a few years after his forced retirement. He has become so irascible and eccentric that his children have asked the court to judge his competence. Isaac, who survived the Holocaust and transcended the death of his wife to build an important publishing company from scratch, faces his greatest challenge: persuading the psychiatric social worker that he is sane. "A deeply compassionate play." N.Y. Times "A remarkably intelligent drama." N.Y. Newsday.

How are poverty and social inequality entrenched through a failing justice system? In this important book, Jon Robins and Daniel Newman examine how the lives of people already struggling with problems with their welfare benefits, jobs, housing and immigration are made much harder by cuts to legal aid and the failings of our creaking justice system. Over the course of 12 months, interviews were carried out on the ground in a range of settings with people as they were caught up in the justice system, in a range of settings such as foodbanks in a church hall in a wealthy part of London; a community centre in a former mining town; a homeless shelter for rough sleepers in Birmingham; and a destitution service for asylum seekers in a city on the South coast, as well as in courts and advice agencies up and down the country. The authors argue that a failure to access justice all too often represents a catastrophic step in the life of the person concerned and their family. This powerful, yet moving, account humanises the hostile political debates that surround legal aid and reveals what access to justice really means in Austerity Britain.

Jon Robin Baitz has been praised as one of America's foremost playwrights on themes of conscience. Now from the author of The Substance of Fire comes an absorbing new play about power and money and the ruinous effects it can have on friendship, love, marriage, and ultimately oneself. In this modern tragedy set in urban New York City, Wall Street powerhouse Sandy Sonenberg finds his personal and professional life threatened by the unraveling secrets of his past. After burying his true sexual identity, a lethal affair with a young male associate forces Sonenberg to confront a lifetime of unrequited love and betrayal.

In 1890, Henrik Ibsen premiered Hedda Gabler, a play questioning the role of women in Victorian society. Some audiences have viewed Gabler as a woman driven to desperation simply because her world has turned out to be less charmed than she hoped. For others, she is a victim of her times, unwilling to devote herself, as was expected of her, to the duties of home.

Jon Robin Baitz has brushed away the cobwebs, and he serves as an ambassador from Ibsen's age to our own, preserving the intensity of the original but translating it into a spare, contemporary idiom. His adaptation provides an opportunity to understand the play through a lens shaped by feminism and a theatrical tradition beginning with Beckett. Trapped by the conventions of her age, Gabler is both a martyr and a female incarnation of Vladimir and Estragon, longing for a salvation that will likely never arrive.

Kenneth Lonergan is known for his trademark humor and genius for capturing the real heart and soul of human interactions. Time magazine raved that he is among our most gifted, unflinching and unpretentious new playwrights, and called his first play, This Is Our Youth, one of the ten best plays of 1998. With The Waverly Gallery, Lonergan has once again shown himself to have one of the keenest ears of any working playwright (Ben Brantley, The New York Times). A powerfully poignant and often hilarious play, The Waverly Gallery is about the final years of a generous, chatty, and feisty grandmother's final battle against Alzheimer's disease. Gladys is an old school lefty and social activist and longtime owner of a small art gallery in Greenwich Village. The play explores her fight to retain her independence and the subsequent effect of her decline on her family, especially her grandson. More than a memory play, The Waverly Gallery captures the humor and strength of a family in the face of crisis. You will be awed by Lonergan's writing. -- Christopher Isherwood, Variety; [Lonergan] has written a loving but brutal, commercial yet unflinching American family drama that knows about the simultaneous human systems of entertainment and agony. As anyone who cares about aging loved ones already knows, life on that particular edge is often so real you have to laugh. . . he is dead-on about family in all its simultaneous affection and irritation. -- Linda Winer, Newsday; A stirring and soulful, comic drama ... classically so, a la Glass Menagerie ... Waverly is often deeply funny. It is both painful and hilarious. -- Ben Brantley, The New York Times

'I would have been the firsta - a Then there [were] the Birmingham Six, the Bridgewater Four and the Cardiff Three. Eacha - a another nail in my coffin': Tony Stock, 2008. The story of Tony Stock is astonishing: deeply disturbing it sent out ripples of disquiet when he was sentenced to ten years for robbery at Leeds Assizes in 1970. Over the next 40 years the case went to the Court of Appeal four times and has the distinction of being the first to have been referred to that court twice by the Criminal Cases Review Commission. Tony Stock died in 2012 still fighting to clear his name: spending from his meagre savings to hire private investigators and hoping beyond hope to see justice. Jon Robins takes up where Stock left off undertaking new research with the support of Glyn Maddocks, Stock's lawyer, and Ralph Barrington, formerly the CCRC's investigations adviser. Previously head of Essex CID, Barrington was so shocked at how the Court of Appeal treated Stock that he pursued it after he retired. 'If anyone seriously believes the Court of Appeal has reformed itself since the dark days of the Birmingham Six and Guildford Four, they should study the unreported and amazing case of Tony Stock': Private Eye. 'One of the most outrageous miscarriages of justice of modern times': Barry Sheerman, Labour MP for Huddersfield. 'I would have thought that the injustice done to Tony [Stock] was fairly self-evident and yet his conviction still stands. I find this very difficult to accept': Ralph Barrington, investigations adviser at the Criminal Cases Review Commission. 'The fight for justice that will not die': Yorkshire Post.

In OTHER DESERT CITIES, Brooke Wyeth returns home to Palm Springs to visit her parents after a six-year absence. A once-promising novelist, she announces to her family the imminent publication of a memoir dredging up a pivotal and tragic event in the family's history - a wound that her parents don't want reopened. Brooke has come home to draw a line in the sand and is daring her family to cross it. Her brother won't play her game; her aunt knows way too much, and her parents fall into all their old routines as they plead with her to keep their story quiet. In this family, secrets are currency and everyone is rich. In simplest terms, the play is about a girl who comes home to the desert with a story about where she is from, who her people really are, what she thinks they really are. Her parents represent an Establishment that she feels has betrayed this country. She goes to war with them, and blood is spilled.