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Miscarriage of justice watchdog chief quits after public confidence ‘badly damaged’
Story by Alexandra Topping
Karen Kneller had been chief executive of the CCRC since 2013.
The chief executive of the miscarriage of justice watchdog for England, Wales and Northern Ireland has resigned after months of speculation after serious failings in the case of Andrew Malkinson.
Karen Kneller, who had held the position since 2013 and had been in senior roles at the organisation for two decades, has left the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) after one of the worst miscarriages of justice in British legal history, it was announced on Wednesday.
Malkinson, who spent 17 years in prison for a rape in Greater Manchester that he did not commit, was cleared in July 2023. His case was knocked back twice by the CCRC until his legal team carried out crucial DNA testing that was repeated by the commission and led to his release.
In February, the Guardian revealed that Kneller had spent thousands of pounds of public money on luxury French hotels while enrolled on courses at an elite business school at which the CCRC’s then chair held positions.
Kneller regularly attended Insead business school in Fontainebleau over the past five years. Her stays included a director’s course with fees advertised in February at more than £21,000 for 10 days’ teaching over three trips, as well as a week-long programme on “digital disruption and innovation”. She also took a three-day “leading from the chair” course in 2021, the fees for which are £7,500.
Helen Pitcher, the former chair of the CCRC, held multiple positions at Insead while Kneller attended these courses, including as president of the business school’s directors network board.
Pitcher’s spokesperson said at the time that the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) had approved the business case for Kneller to attend Insead and that she “fully declared” her interests with the business school. A government source said the spending on Kneller’s courses at the business school did “not reflect the new government’s expectations of the best use of the CCRC’s funding”.
Pitcher quit in January after an independent panel concluded she was no longer fit to be chair after the CCRC’s failings in Malkinson’s case. Pitcher said she had been scapegoated.
A report on the CCRC’s handling of the case in July last year found “a catalogue of failures”, including that Malkinson could have been exonerated almost a decade earlier. Thousands of cases are now being reviewed as a result of the botched process.
Kneller was accused of attempting to “sanitise” the independent review by Chris Henley KC. Sources said that after she saw a draft criticising the body, she pushed hard to make sure there was no suggestion that the problems in the handling of Malkinson’s case were systemic.
A month before Malkinson’s exoneration, Kneller was given a 7.5% pay rise, including a bonus of up to £10,000. In 2024 she was given a further pay rise and another bonus, taking her pay to about £130,000, while Malkinson was on benefits.
Writing in the Guardian after his release, Malkinson said he had left prison impoverished, “living on universal credit, homeless and in urgent need of mental health support from clinicians who would at last recognise what I had been through in the past 20 years”. The MoJ agreed to give Malkinson a payout, more than a year and a half after the court of appeal declared his innocence.
Kneller’s departure comes after another damning report on the leadership of the CCRC in May, in which the House of Commons justice committee said Kneller had provided it with unpersuasive evidence and her position was no longer tenable.
The CCRC had continually failed to learn from its mistakes and its chief executive should follow the organisation’s chair out the door, MPs said.
Sources inside the CCRC said there had been a rising frustration within the organisation in recent years that thinly stretched staff who cared about uncovering miscarriages of justice had been badly represented by its leaders, who they said “haven’t got a clue”.
Sources said Pitcher “would conduct Teams meetings from the balcony of her villa in the sunshine” in Montenegro and boast about her jetset life in weekly memos to staff.
Kneller was said to have been given the nickname “Karen Invisible” by staff. She was described by some of those working for her as “absent”, with her “finger off the pulse”.
Related: ‘Catalogue of failures’: watchdog missed chances to help Andrew Malkinson, report finds
Last month the former victims’ commissioner Dame Vera Baird became the interim chair of the CCRC, having been asked by the justice secretary to carry out a review of the organisation.
“The CCRC has a vital role to play in the criminal justice system, but confidence in the organisation has been badly damaged. Confidence in our work must be restored. I thank Karen for her work at the CCRC over many years,” said Baird.
