Martin Partington: Spotlight on the Justice System

Although the results of the Government’s Comprehensive Spending Review are not officially published until 20 October 2010, the widely publicized leaks of the quangos that are likely to be axed suggest there could be some significant change in the legal landscape.

Many of the bodies considered in my book are under threat: they include the Administrative Justice and Tribunals Council, the Civil Justice Council, the Family Justice Council, the Legal Services Commission, many of the Boards that look after local courts, a number of tribunals – even the future of the Law Commission is, according to reports, not secure.

For the list as published in the Daily Telegraph see: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/8021780/Quango-cuts-full-list-of-bodies-under-review.html

The Coalition Government has published a consultation paper ‘Policing in the 21st Century: Reconnecting Police and the People’ The central features of the proposals are
* the first elections of police and crime commissioners to hold police forces to account and strengthen the bond between the police and the public in May 2012
* creation of a new National Crime Agency to lead the fight against organised crime and strengthen our border security;
* greater collaboration between police forces to increase public protection and drive savings
* phasing out the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA)
* cutting bureaucracy, removing restrictive health and safety procedures and freeing up officers’ time; and
* a clear role for everyone, including members of the public, in cutting crime through beat meetings, neighbourhood watch schemes and voluntary groups.
It is planned that the new Agency will lead the fight against organised crime, protect UK borders and ‘provide services best delivered at national level’. It is envisaged that the Agency will exploit the intelligence, analytical and enforcement capabilities of the existing Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) and the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre and better connect these capabilities to those within the police service, HM Revenue and Customs, the UK Border Agency and a range of other criminal justice bodies.
Many of these proposals will feature in the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill, to be published in autumn 2010.

The Coalition Government has developed the concept of the ‘structural reform’ plan as the key tool for making government departments accountable for the implementation of the reforms set out in the Coalition Agreement. They also set the context within which cuts to public expenditure are to be made. In the context of the English Legal System, those most relevant are those published by the Ministry of Justice and the Home Office.
The priorities of the Ministry of Justice are:
1.Reform of sentencing and penalties, ensuring that the justice system protects the public and reduces reoffending by introducing more effective sentencing policies and considering the use of restorative justice for adult and youth crimes
2.Rehabilitation revolution through the development of an offender management system that harnesses the innovation of the private and voluntary sectors, including options for using payment by results, to cut reoffending
3. Courts and legal aid with reform of the legal aid system to make it work more efficiently, whilst protecting the most vulnerable members of society; and developing court reforms to determine how disputes should be resolved, based on principles of transparency, decentralisation and accountability
4. Reform of the prison estate by reviewing the prison estate’s contribution to rehabilitation and reducing reoffending, developing a sustainable and cost-effective prison capacity strategy as part of the Spending Review
5. Civil liberties with a full programme of measures to reverse the erosion of civil liberties and to roll back state intrusion.
The Home Office’s plan also sets out its top five departmental priorities, which are to:
* enable the police and local communities to tackle crime and antisocial behaviour
* increase the accountability of the police to citizens
* secure our borders and control immigration
* protect people’s freedoms and civil liberties
* protect our citizens from terrorism.
Both of these plans were published on 13 July 2010

The newly appointed Secretary of State for Justice, Ken Clarke, has delivered an important speech which gives some clear hints at how justice policy is going to shape up in the coming months. The widely reported feature of the speech related to sentencing policy and Mr Clarke’s desire to prevent the prison population growing even more than it has done in recent years. But the speech contains equally clear hints that there are likely to be significant other developments as well. Three issues are singled out for attention: major restructuring of the court estate, with large numbers of court closures likely; further emphasis on reform of family procedure, with more diversion of cases from court (see also Mavis Maclean podcast); and more change to legal aid. There is little detail in the speech; this will begin to emerge in the autumn. But the speech is worth reading for what is likely to be announced in coming months.
The full speech may be read at http://www.justice.gov.uk/sp300610a.htm

At the end of March, the Government published a review of the work of the Youth Justice Board. See http://publications.dcsf.gov.uk/eOrderingDownload/Safeguarding-the-Future.pdf

While claiming a number of successes for the Board – including reduced numbers of young people coming into the criminal justice system – it also made recommendations for the future. These included more engagement by the Home Office and greater publicity by the YJB of its work. The Government has announced that it is considering these recommendations for future action.

In February 2010, the Ministry of Justice published a major research report on juries. The report, Are Juries Fair was written by Cheryl Thomas, Professor at the Centre for Empirical Legal Studies at University College London. It is the result of a two-year long survey of more than 1,000 jurors at Crown Courts and a separate study of over 68,000 jury verdicts.

The report reveals that:

• all-white juries do not discriminate against defendants from black and minority ethnic (BME) backgrounds
• juries almost always reach a verdict and convict two-thirds of the time
• there are no courts where juries acquit more often than convict.

It also shows that:

• jurors want more information about how to do their job
• written instructions improve jurors’ legal understanding of cases
• some jurors use the internet to look for information about their case
• some jurors find media reports of their case difficult to ignore.

At the moment the practical consequences that might flow from the research are not clear; there have been suggestions that judges may need to give more written instructions to jurors about how they should approach cases in which they are involved.

The Sentencing Council, whose creation is mentioned in Box 5.17, started work on 6 April 2010. Its chair is Lord Justice Levenson.

For more detail see http://www.justice.gov.uk/news/newsrelease290310a.htm

There have been two important developments relating to the treatment of victims in the criminal justice system in recent months.

First, in January the Government announced the creation of  the National Victims’ Service. According to the Government, this is designed to guarantee all victims of crime and anti-social behaviour referred by the police more comprehensive and dedicated support, giving victims a louder voice in court through the introduction of the victim personal statement, trebling the funding available for victims’ services in the voluntary sector and introducing special measures which make it easier for vulnerable witnesses to give evidence.

Second, in March 2010, the Government announced the appointment of  a Victims’ Commissioner, whose role will include:

• working across the criminal justice system to improve the support for victims and witnesses, including victims of anti-social behaviour
• chairing the new Victims Advisory Panel and working with local and national victims groups to make sure the voice of victims is fed-back to and impacts directly on Government policy
• reviewing the code of practice for victims of crime, which provides a guarantee to victims of crime of the level of service they are entitled to.

The first Commissioner is Louise Casey, already well known for her work relating to anti-social behaviour.

Sections 44 to 49 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 make provision for non-jury trial in cases where there is danger of jury tampering or where jury tampering has taken place. Although these provisions came into force on 24 July 2006 they were not used until 2010.

The case in question involved four men accused of armed robbery from a warehouse at London Airport. There had already been an earlier trial which had been halted on the grounds that there had been jury tampering. The Crown Prosecution Service argued that any further trial would equally be threatened by jury tampering. The Court of Appeal agreed and allowed the trial to proceed without a jury.

Initial indications are that these powers are going to be used only very rarely; of course, the potential danger is that, having been used once, their use becomes more common. My own view is that trials without jury will remain very much the exception

In a statement issued by the Lord Chancellor at the end of March 2010, shortly before Parliament rose for the General Election Campaign, the Government indicated that is was engaged in another major set of structural changes to the institutional framework of the English legal system – namely merger of the Courts and Tribunals Services. There was also mention of changing the institutional context within which the Parole Board operates.

The statement conceded that these changes would require a great deal of further work before they could be implemented. The details are unlikely to be available for some time. Underlying the proposals, however, is a clear intention within the Ministry of Justice that it should start to make its contribution to the substantial efficiency savings that all politicians agree must be achieved as part of the overall strategy of getting Britain’s public finances into better shape.