This essay, on how class is a missing category in discussions of the justice system, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 16 March 2025, under the headline “Amid all the noise about the UK’s ‘two-tier’ justice system, there is silence on class”. As so often in such debates, the controversy over new guidelines for courts from the Sentencing Council for England and Wales has obscured as much as it has illuminated. Critics have condemned them as presaging a “two-...
