What We Do
“Certain dietary choices, including fish consumption, balanced intake of micronutrients and a good nutritional
status overall also have been associated with reduced rates of violent behaviour”
World Health Organisation:
Preventing Disease
Through Healthy Environments 2006.
Natural Justice investigates, and assists others to investigate, the critical link between improved nutrition and reduction in offending behaviour, with particular emphasis on young offenders and those most likely to become involved in criminal or anti-social activity.
- A major new research project began in January 2008 to investigate the relationship between nutrition and anti-social behaviour. Developed by Natural Justice, the project is titled: Nutrition as a modifiable cause of antisocial behaviour: replication of a double blind randomised controlled trial. The research follows on from earlier work which demonstrated that supplementing prisoners’ diets with vitamins, minerals and essential fatty acids led to a remarkable drop in anti-social and violent behaviour in the prison.
- Natural Justice is currently developing research projects to explore the impact of nutrition on anti-social behaviour in the community.
- In 2002 the Royal College of Psychiatry published our double blind study of 231 prisoners where the diets that prisoners consumed were improved using nutritional supplements. The prisoners who received active capsules committed on average 26% fewer disciplinary offences compared to those on placebos, while the reduction was 37% for the most serious offences. Click here for a copy of the journal article
- These findings have now been replicated by the Dutch Ministry of Justice who found a 47% reduction in disciplinary offending in a study of 221 prisoners (to be published shortly). The Dutch also noted the dietary approach seems to be highly cost-effective
- In the 1980s, Natural Justice developed a programme where nutrition was successfully used as part of community sentencing. Such a programme could be used to reduce pressure on prison places. See The Magistrate: May 2005 Volume 61: 5 p138-139 Food for Court: Diet and Crime (click here for the article or visit the Magistrates Association website at: http://www.magistrates-association.org.uk/documents/magistrate_archive/2005/mag_may_05.pdf)
Natural Justice seeks to communicate its findings to key decision makers and to the wider public, and to influence a rational approach to dealing with such issues. For example:
- Natural Justice was cited by Lord Rea, Chairman of the Associate Parliamentary Food and Health Forum, as the inspiration for their year-long inquiry into the links between diet and behaviour. Their groundbreaking report on diet, published in January 2008, recommended serious consideration of dietary interventions to improve the behaviour and mental well-being of offenders, urged the government to pay attention to the outcome of the prison study, and called for further research into the complex links between diet and behaviour.
- Natural Justice provided a submission to the Inquiry into Alternatives to Prisons chaired by Lord Coulsfield in 2003-2004. Click here for a copy of the Submission