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We are delighted to announce the launch of a new project, Making Space for Radical Imagination, in our Department of Sociology, Social Policy and Criminology at the University of Liverpool, funded by Research England through a Policy Support Fund award.
The project will be co-led by Professor Shadd Maruna, Dr Ruth Armstrong and Dr Laura Naegler, working alongside a team of lived experience consultants, civil servants, policy makers and practitioners from the criminal justice system.
Across criminal justice policy, practice and research, it is recognised that evidence matters, but also acknowledged that by itself it rarely changes systems. Too often, evidence and the policy it speaks to is shaped in ways that ‘does to people’ rather than being developed with those closest to the systems we want to change.
This project takes a different approach. Together we will develop a research and policy agenda with those who have direct experience of our criminal legal system.
Between January and July 2026, we will bring together people with direct experience of criminal harm, criminalisation and criminal justice related employment, alongside policymakers, practitioners and researchers, to explore what genuinely co-produced evidence-based criminal justice policy might look like. Through a series of innovative Challenge Labs, a live podcast series produced by the Prison Radio Association, and a policy roundtable with the Ministry of Justice, the project will pilot participatory, trauma-informed spaces that place research at the heart of collective dialogue and system re-imagining.
The Challenge Labs will draw on existing research, including work on desistance from crime, social movements, systems design and co-production. They will support participants to reflect on how the criminal legal system might be reimagined - if we built it from co-produced evidence and experience. These conversations will be translated into insights that can fundamentally inform policy, professional learning and future research.
Crucially, this is not a project about participation, but one that is participatory at its heart in its actions and, with your help, in its impact. So, if you have direct experience of criminal harm, criminalisation or working in the criminal justice system and are interested in getting involved in the Challenge Labs, please contact Dr Ruth Armstrong at ruth.armstrong@liverpool.ac.uk.
We are grateful to Research England and to the University of Liverpool for their commitment to this work, and we look forward to getting the project underway.