For press and media
Reporters, editors, bloggers, producers and documentary film-makers.
You are a press contact, not a volunteer
Every other kind of membership here exists to be matched to work. This one does not, and the site enforces that rather than relying on nobody making a mistake: press accounts are refused campaign roles in code.
The reason is yours, not ours. A byline on a campaign you are also reporting on is a conflict you would have to carry and your editor would want to know about. We would rather be useful to you as a source than cost you the story.
What you get
- A named contact who will actually answer.
- Releases and updates on the campaigns you say you want to follow.
- Background on the law — statutes, the figures we rely on, and the sources behind them. Everything we publish is sourced and we will point you at the primary documents.
What you do not get, and why
Case files. People write to us about their own cases, or their family's. They wrote to this organisation, not to the press, and they named people who have not been heard from. Whether to talk to a reporter is their decision and not ours to make for them.
If you want to speak to someone whose case we hold, ask us and we will ask them. If they say yes you will deal with them directly, and we will not sit in the middle of it.
How we verify you
Journalism is not licensed, so there is no roll to check. What is checkable is affiliation: a masthead or staff page, and a work address on your outlet's own domain.
If you are freelance, a blogger or working independently, give us two or three links to published work instead. That is a verification route, not a lesser one — some of the most sustained reporting on sentencing in this country is done by people with no masthead behind them.