Redesigning Justice with Lady Edwina Grosvenor, Criminologist and Prison Philanthropist

Northumbria graduate Lady Edwina Grosvenor is committed to influencing prison reform through systemic change in the Justice System.  

Her work has taken her around the globe to study the best and worst prison practices, from children residing in Nepalese prisons to death row residents in high security institutions. This has informed her thinking and mission to make a difference by becoming a proactive catalyst for change.

About the lecture

Edwina is the Founder and Chair of the charity One Small Thing, whose ambition is to redesign the Justice System for women and their children. It seeks to educate criminal justice staff on the impact of trauma and the need for a more compassionate system-wide approach.

In her lecture, Edwina will outline how One Small Thing has inspired Hope Street, a pioneering trauma informed residential environment, allowing women and children to access specialist help and support. The aim is to create a blueprint that could be effectively replicated across the United Kingdom.

Edwina will highlight the importance of gender specific solutions to overcome challenges within the Justice System through intelligent solutions that can achieve better outcomes, for women, their children and society.

More about Edwina

Between 2007-2010 Edwina supported and advised the Bishop for Prisons, James Jones in the House of Lords. She advised the Government on the Women’s Advisory Board for Female Offenders under The Secretary of State for Justice. During this time, a progressive female offender strategy was published which emphasised the need to reduce the number of women in prison, to understand trauma in a gender specific sense and it also moved towards a recognition that a majority of women in prison should and could be better cared for in the community.

She is a founding investor and Ambassador of the Clink Restaurant chain, which trains prisoners for work in the catering industry. The four large fine dining restaurants, which are open to the general public, are built in prisons and staffed by men and women who are still serving time in order to train them in the necessary skills to secure a job in the catering industry upon release. The Clink has a 90% success rate with its graduates.  

Edwina is the former Sherriff of Hampshire and the sole funder of the critically needed PAS 5222. Launching in March 2024, it is a new child safeguarding standard that aims to raise the benchmark for child safeguarding in out-of-school settings. In 2023 she was presented with the International Corrections and Prisons Association (www.icpa.org) Presidents Award in Antwerp.

Edwina sits on the advisory board to the Centre for Criminology, University of Oxford. She became a founding member of the Global Philanthropic Advisory Board in January 2022. In January 2024 she joined Global Philanthropic as the first Chair of their Advisory Board, which brings together philanthropists from across the world. She is also Patron of Paladin, which is the country’s only national stalking advocacy service.