Our History
For over 20 years, Natural Justice has been studying the link between nutrition and offending behaviour. Work began in 1984 under the former name of the charity, the South Cumbria Alternative Sentencing Options (SCASO) project, where Bernard Gesch pioneered the notion that nutrition could play a vital role in minimising a relapse into criminal behaviour. Between 1988 and 1991 nutrition was successfully included as part of community sentencing to reduce the use of custody for juveniles. In many cases the response of the young people appeared to be so positive that it began to attract the positive interest of the national press. Even so, there were no longer funds available to continue the programme or to take it to the next level.
However, in 1991, funds become available from private sources to pursue the dietary approach to behaviour on a more empirical basis, and Natural Justice came into being. Over the next few years, although the government did not take up the initial programme’s ideas, the Charity and its central thesis picked up momentum as well as new advocates, and in 1995 the Charity’s Director, Bernard Gesch, and Natural Justice became affiliated with Surrey University for the purposes of research.
A major piece of research was then undertaken: a two-year clinical trial was run at Aylesbury Young Offenders Institution. From 1995-97, the field work was conducted at the prison using food supplements as a proxy for a healthy diet. The double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomised trial, published in the British Journal of Psychiatry (2002) Vol. 181, pages 22-28 attracted an extremely favourable response from the academic community for the high standard of the methodology, as well as considerable press interest.
The results from the trials were startling. Those who received the micronutrients committed over 35% fewer offences, while the rate of disciplinary incidents remained substantially unchanged for those receiving placebos. In 2001, the Charity entered into a collaborative research programme with Oxford University, where the Charity’s Director, Bernard Gesch, was seconded to become Senior Research Scientist in the Department of Physiology, a position he continues to hold in the newly amalgamated Departments of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics.