Humane Justice: What role do kindness, compassion and hope play in the criminal justice system?

Last year we had a new ‘first’ for Essence - we wrote a chapter for a book!

Curated by the fantastic charity Khulisa, Humane Justice is the latest book in the Monument Fellowship series of publications exploring themes relating to criminal justice.

We were selected to write a chapter answering the question ‘What role do kindness, compassion and hope play in the criminal justice system’ from our experience as practitioners within the criminal justice system. The book as a whole includes a wide range of perspectives from people with lived experience of the justice system, academics and practitioners.

It is a real honour to be a part of this project that aims to shine a light on the crucial role of these qualities, demonstrating the need for our criminal justice system to be more kind, more hopeful and more compassionate.

Our chapter, “The transformative power of recognising suffering”, focusses especially on the importance of compassion, and can be found in the Section 3 of the book.

Click here to download and read the book!