Executive Board

Moderator 
Peter Sedgwick, Churches Together in Britian and Ireland
Peter Sedgwick is Moderator of Church and Society for Churches Together in Britain and Ireland. With Mary Gandy, the Church and Society officer for CTBI, he forms the link between CCJF and CTBI. He became Principal of St.Michael’s Llandaff in Easter 2004. This college trains men and women for ministry, both lay and ordained, in the Church of England, Church in Wales and the Methodist Church.   Students from the college are placed in parishes, but also in Cardiff Prison; the Amber Project for self harming young people; the Cardiff Youth Offending Team; and the Amelia Trust Farm, for young people excluded from school.  The college has a particular focus on chaplains, including prison chaplains, with one prison chaplain doing an M Th and one former prison chaplain studying for a PhD at the moment. He became a priest in the Church of England in 1974. In his 30 years of ministry he has been a parish priest for ten years in East London, Co. Durham, and Birmingham; taught at the Universities of Birmingham and Hull for nine years; been the missioner for the churches in North East England from 1982-88; and was Policy Officer for the Church of England in Home Affairs from 1996-2004, He helped to set up CCJF in 2000, and is a former chair. He is married to Jan Gould who is an Anglican priest at the Church of the Resurrection, Ely. He has written or edited about a dozen books, including two on criminal justice: The Future of Criminal Justice (with Christopher Jones) and Rethinking Sentencing

Chair
Paula Harvey, Quaker Peace & Social Witness

Executive Committee
Rev. Christopher Jones, National Policy Advisor to the Church of England on criminal justice
Since 2004 the Revd Christopher Jones has been the Church of England’s national policy adviser for Home Affairs, dealing particularly with criminal justice and mental health issues.  An ordained priest of the Church of England, he was chaplain to a young people’s remand centre and has been involved with work in prisons for nearly thirty years.  He also served as a university chaplain and lecturer in Durham and Oxford.  From 2005 to 2009 he was Chair of CCJF.  He is a Senior Research Fellow of St Peter’s College, Oxford and a Trustee of the National Spirituality and Mental Health Forum.  He is married with two adult children.

Wilma Frew, United Reformed Church
Wilma is an elder and lay preacher in the United Reformed Church. An Arts graduate of Glasgow university but marriage, four children in six years and several geographical moves in a short period of time interfered with the development of a normal career pattern. Instead many years of voluntary service in a number of areas gradually found its focus in the church and the magistracy. Wilma has served the United Reformed Church in a number of ways over the years and following a year as its Assembly Moderator in 1998/9 she was appointed to the Church Representatives Meeting of CTBI. As a result of hearing a talk to that body by the then Director of CCJF, Stuart Dew, she volunteered to join the Executive of CCJF as the United Reformed Church representative in 2003. At that time she brought nineteen years experience of the Bench, chairing Youth, Family and Adult courts. Concern for the victims of crime and the distress caused to local communities by persistent law-breaking, tempered with Christian compassion, has informed her twenty five years a magistrate and her contributions to discussions within CCJF.

Andy Keen Downs, PACT
Andy is the Director of pact, the Prison Advice & Care Trust, a charity formerly known as the Bourne Trust and which was originally founded by Catholic lay people in 1898.  Andy studied English & Theology at Kent before qualifying as a teacher at the Roehampton Institute.  After a stint with Reuters, Andy moved into the voluntary sector, and has worked in charities for the past 20 years. He previously held posts at the National Council for One Parent Families, National Childbirth Trust, Centrepoint, and The Gatehouse project, a community literacy project in Manchester.  Andy is married with two children and lives in West London.

Philippa Gitlin, Caritas Social Action Network
Philippa was previously Chief Executive of FSU (Family Service Units), a national charity providing family support services to children and families who are socially excluded, from 1999 to May 2006 when it was taken over by FWA (Family Welfare Association).  Previously Philippa was Director of Fundraising for five years at Depaul Trust, a national charity supporting homeless young people.   Prior to her appointment as Director of Caritas Social Action Network, Philippa was Interim Director at Caritas-social action from June 2006. She is also a trustee of the National Council of Voluntary Child Care Organisations (NCVCCO); Chair of Governors of Swiss Cottage School, a local authority Beacon Special Needs school in Camden, London; Vice Chair of the Council of Queen’s College, London (an independent day school for girls); trustee of a St Vincent’s Family Centre in Victoria, London, and a member of the steering group of Groundbreakers, a network of women chief executives in the voluntary sector.

Major Lawrie Brown, Salvation Army
Lawrie has been a Salvation Army Officer for 38 years, the first 29 as a  leader with his wife Angie in 9 SA churches from Glasgow to Exeter and several towns and cities in betweenIn 2001 they were seconded from the Army to the Churches Criminal Justice Forum with a remit to promote and evangelise Community Chaplaincy in the UK, based on a model successfully working in Canada for the past 27 years.Now, and for the past four years Lawrie serves  as The Salvation Army’s Prison Ministries Officer responsible for co-ordinating SA chaplains in HM Prisons and other prison related work.

Bruce Chilton, Unitarian Penal Affairs Panel
Bruce Chilton is a retired solicitor who qualified and worked with local authorities before specialising in Mental Health and Criminal Law practice.  He is now Chair of the Unitarian's Penal Affairs Panel and editor of several newsletters.

Rev. Sheila Foreman, Methodist Church Sheila worked as a part- time Methodist Prison Chaplain for thirteen year, three at HMP Canterbury and ten at HMP Belmarsh (1989-2002). She is a member of CCJF since its beginnings in the Women in Prison group. Sheila is about to retire from Circuit Ministry after 25 years but continuing as Assistant Chair of South East District of the Methodist Church.   

Mary Gandy, Secretary for Church and Society, Churches Together in Britain and Ireland – ex officio

Administration
Lesley Versprille, Caritas Social Action Network