About The Griffins Society

The Griffins Society closed its doors in 2024, but was a national charity, dedicated to sponsoring indicative research into the treatment of women and girls in criminal justice. Why just women? Put simply, because equality of treatment does not ensure equality of outcomes. The society championed the importance of gender-specific responses in a system still predominantly designed for dealing with male offenders. They adopted a bottom-up approach, encouraging practitioners working with women to apply to the society for support to undertake small scale research projects on issues they had identified from the front-line. The research sponsored was also predominantly qualitative rather than quantitative, in order to give a voice to the women themselves - a voice that is still too often absent. Although small scale, these research findings were often timely and indicative - shining a light on practice and policy and serving as a catalyst for change.