There are some moments in life that no one should ever have to prepare for, and for the family of Olivia Pratt-Korbel, the ordinary rhythm of a September evening was shattered forever. The nine-year-old girl was at home in Liverpool when Thomas Cashman, a man pursuing another target, forced his way into her house and fired the shot that killed her. In the months that followed, her family did something remarkable: they turned their grief into a campaign. They argued that when convicted criminals refuse to appear at their own sentencing hearings, they are not just avoiding the judge—they are avoiding the people they have harmed. They are refusing to look into the eyes of a mother who lost her child, a father who lost his daughter, or a sister who lost her best friend. For Olivia’s family, this was an unbearable addition to their pain. They wanted the law to recognize that a prisoner who chooses not to face justice is making a deliberate choice to deepen the wound. Their campaign gained momentum after high-profile cases, including Cashman himself, who refused to come to court for his sentencing, and Kyle Clifford, a man who murdered the wife and daughters of BBC commentator John Hunt. These were not technical courtroom inconveniences. They were public refusals to show basic human respect at the most important moment of the legal process. And so, after years of pressure, the government responded with a plan that sounded tough on paper: prisoners who refuse to attend sentencing would face extra time behind bars, along with the loss of privileges that make prison life more bearable. But as the policy begins to take shape, a deeper question emerges—whether punishment alone can ever repair the harm caused by a killer who will not even look at the family he has destroyed.
Under the Ministry of Justice’s new plans, judges in Crown Courts will be able to impose a range of additional penalties on defendants who refuse to attend their sentencing hearings. These penalties include losing prison privileges for up to eighty-four days, being confined to a cell for as long as twenty-one days, losing social visits for twenty-seven days, and having visits restricted to just one every four weeks for almost three months. The intention is clear: to remove the idea that a prisoner can simply opt out of the most solemn part of the criminal justice process. Prisons Minister Catherine McKinnell framed the policy as a matter of respect and accountability. She said that criminals should not be able to pick and choose when they face justice, and that refusing to turn up to sentencing is an insult to victims and their families. For those who have campaigned for change, the announcement felt like a small but important victory. Claire Waxman, the Victims’ Commissioner for England and Wales, said that offenders who refuse to appear at sentencing compound trauma and rob families of accountability. She praised the campaigning of Olivia Pratt-Korbel’s family, saying their determined efforts helped ensure this harm could no longer be ignored. On the surface, the policy seems straightforward: if you choose to hide from justice, the system will find ways to make you feel the consequences. But there is a stubborn reality inside prisons that no press release can capture. The rules sound definitive, but their execution depends on a complex, overstretched, and often contradictory prison system—one where the people responsible for carrying out these punishments are already warning that they may not work.
The human story behind this policy is what gives it its emotional weight. Imagine Olivia’s mother, Cheryl Korbel, sitting in a courtroom, waiting for the man who killed her daughter to appear. She did not ask for pity or attention. She simply asked for the truth to be spoken aloud, for the person responsible to stand there and hear what he had done. Instead, she was told that Cashman had refused to come up from the cells. The courtroom felt empty, not because there were no people in it, but because the one person who mattered most was hiding below the surface. The family of John Hunt experienced something similar when Kyle Clifford, who had committed an unspeakable act of violence against three women, chose not to appear. For these families, the sentencing hearing is not just a legal formality. It is the closest they will ever come to a public acknowledgment of their loss. It is the moment when society says, through its laws, that what happened to their loved one mattered. When the defendant refuses to attend, that message is undermined. The family is left to perform their grief in front of a judge and a lawyer and a screen, but not in front of the person who caused it. This is why the campaign led by Olivia’s family was so powerful. They understood that accountability is not only about punishment behind closed doors. It is about confrontation, responsibility, and the simple act of being present. They wanted the law to send a message that a killer cannot hide from the consequences of his actions, even after a guilty verdict has been read. And in that sense, the new policy is a recognition of their pain—a statement that the justice system hears them and is trying to respond.
Yet inside the prison system, there is a deep skepticism about whether these new measures will actually change anything. A former prison worker at HMP Frankland, a high-security prison in County Durham, told reporters that the plan is a “waste of time” and will not happen in practice. The reason, he explained, is that prisoners are already subject to a system of privileges that rewards good behavior. Under that system, inmates on the lowest tier, known as “basic privileges,” receive weekly reviews. If they behave well, they are moved back up to a more comfortable level. But if the new rules prevent them from being moved off basic privileges for eighty-four days, or if they lose visits and time out of their cell, the incentive structure changes. A prisoner who knows that no amount of good behavior will improve his situation has very little reason to behave well at all. The former officer put it bluntly: “Prisons don’t want to keep people on that system called ‘basic privileges,’ because it simply doesn’t look good. Every week, prisoners who are on it get a weekly review, and if they have behaved well, they get moved off it.” In other words, the system is built on the idea that small rewards lead to cooperation. Remove those rewards, and you remove the only tool that prison staff have to manage difficult, dangerous individuals. The officer warned that if inmates cannot be rewarded for good behavior, they are going to be awful. He added, “If you are already in trouble, you might as well be in super trouble.” That is not the language of optimism. It is the voice of experience, telling us that harsh punishment, without a path back, can make dangerous people even more dangerous.
This is the uncomfortable paradox at the heart of the new policy. On the one hand, families like Olivia’s deserve every possible effort to make offenders face them. No one should be allowed to treat a sentencing hearing as a choice, especially after a jury has determined their guilt. On the other hand, prison is not a simple place. It is a world of hierarchies, tensions, and fragile agreements. The people who work there know that a prisoner who feels he has nothing to lose can become unpredictable, violent, or deeply withdrawn. Confining someone to a cell for three weeks might satisfy a public demand for retribution, but it also creates a person who spends twenty-one days alone with his own anger. Taking away visits might feel like a strong message, but it can also sever the only positive connection a prisoner has to the outside world—the very connection that might one day help him reintegrate into society. The former prison officer’s warning is not an excuse for criminals. It is a practical observation about how human beings respond to pressure. If the goal is merely to punish, the policy may succeed. If the goal is to create a safer, more accountable system, then the details matter more than the headlines. The justice system must find a way to hold offenders responsible without destroying the fragile mechanisms that keep prisons from descending into chaos. That is a difficult balance to strike, and it cannot be achieved by simply adding more punishment on paper.
In the end, this story is about more than prison rules or legal penalties. It is about the relationship between justice and humanity. Olivia Pratt-Korbel did not get to grow up. She did not get to fall in love, or start a career, or have children. She was nine years old, in her own home, when a bullet meant for someone else took her life. Her family has had to live with that loss every day, and they have had to do it while watching the man responsible refuse to show his face. That is a profound injustice, and any policy that tries to address it deserves to be taken seriously. But the deeper lesson is that accountability is not just about punishment. It is about presence, empathy, and the willingness to face the reality of what you have done. A killer who avoids the courtroom is not just a legal problem; he is a moral failure. The new rules are an attempt to answer that failure, but they will only work if they are implemented with care, wisdom, and an understanding of how prisons actually operate. The families of victims do not want vengeance in the simplest sense. They want recognition. They want the world to know that their loved one mattered, and that the person who took them is not above the law. Perhaps no policy can fully give them that. But the fact that their voice was heard, and that the law is changing because of their pain, is a small and fragile kind of justice. It cannot bring Olivia back. It cannot undo the violence that shattered so many lives. But it says something important: that hiding is not the same as justice, and that those who refuse to face the consequences of their actions will not be allowed to simply disappear.
