Partnership event with Southampton Football Club and Solent University inspires students into legal careers  

CPS Wessex delivers a partnership event to students

At the beginning of March, Prosecutors from CPS Wessex delivered a workshop with students from Solent University's Law School, to prepare for an interactive careers event to be delivered to The Southampton Football Club Works Programme. The Works Programme is a course aimed at 16-25 year olds who are not in education, employment or formal training and aims to break down the barriers to employment.

Together with the Solent University Law students, our Crown Prosecutors prepared a football related mock hate crime trial to be delivered to the Works Programme students. On the day of the trial the law students delivered a full mock trial, presenting both the prosecution and defence case to the students, who were invited to act as the Jury. At the close of the trial they discussed the evidence with our prosecutors and explained which pieces of evidence they felt were important when reaching their decision as to whether the defendant was guilty or not.

The "jury" returned a guilty verdict and our prosecutors spoke to them about the important role that Victim Impact Statements have and how an increased sentence, known as a sentence uplift, is awarded in Hate Crime cases to reflect the severity of the offence.

This event was an excellent way of bringing the law to life, whilst also educating the students about Hate Crime. The students were able to find out about the array of legal and non-legal roles we have available, and how they could access those career pathways via our apprenticeship schemes, whilst the law students were able to gain an insight into how rewarding a career in the CPS can be.

Emma Tebbutt, Wessex Area Business Manager came to the event to thank the University students for all the hard work they put in to preparing for and delivering the event.

Speaking at the event, Emma said, “It was wonderful to see the law students delivering the trial today. The CPS are proud to offer a wide variety of legal and non-legal pathways and I hope this event has inspired the young adults to pursue a career with us.”