After a career in criminal justice reform and international human rights, in 1999, Baroness Vivien Stern was appointed as an independent member of the House of Lords, the upper chamber of the UK parliament. She has served on a number of Parliamentary Committees including the EU Select Committee, the Joint Committee on Human Rights and the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. She was invited by the UK Government to review the current arrangements for dealing with cases of rape. Her report, The Stern Review, was published in March 2010. From 1997 to 2010, she was Senior Research Fellow at the International Centre for Prison Studies at Kings College London. In 1989, with others Baroness Stern founded Penal Reform International – a non-governmental organisation promoting penal reform throughout the world, of which she is nowthe Honorary President. She has honorary degrees from Bristol, Oxford Brookes, Stirling, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Kent Universities and is an Honorary Fellow of the London School of Economics.