Download Speech to the Police Superintendents - Association

CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY
Rt Hon Nick Herbert MP -Minister for Policing & Criminal Justice
Speech to the Police Superintendents - Association of England & Wales
14 September 2011
Justice should be swift and sure
The recent riots showed us what the criminal justice system can achieve.
Dedicated police, prosecutors, courts, probation and prisons staff worked
closely together around the clock. Over 1,600 cases have already been
brought before the courts; some were literally resolved in a matter of hours
and many within days of arrest.
Such sharp contrast with the usual pace of justice should make us ask
questions. The average time between an offence being committed and
disposal of a case in magistrates' courts is 140 days. Even relatively simple,
uncontested motoring cases take nearly this long.
Despite repeated promises to put victims at the heart of criminal justice, many
face cases that take weeks, if not months, to come to court, with frequent
interruptions in proceedings. Only four out of every ten cases in magistrates'
courts go ahead on the planned day. Too often cases never reach a
satisfactory conclusion. Unlike other public services, approval of the criminal
justice system goes down when it is experienced.
Delays occur in a system set up for trials when the majority of cases end with
a guilty plea. A long, drawn out process, with cases being passed back and
forth between agencies and players, is neither effective nor proportionate for
relatively minor offending.
But there is also basic inefficiency. While the rest of the world embraces
electronic technology, the criminal justice system likes to use paper - lots of it.
Multiple files are prepared by different agencies. Highly trained police officers
waste time photocopying documents. IT systems do not link to each other.
There is little accountability in the system, compounded by its lack of
transparency. Criminal justice is viewed as the most remote of our public
services - except that it's not a single service or system at all. Piecemeal
change is not the answer in an already fragmented organisation. The whole
operation of criminal justice needs fundamental reform.
First, we must bring justice into the 21st Century. By next April, we are
requiring the entire criminal justice system to go digital, with secure electronic
transfer of case files between the police, prosecutors and courts, and a
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reduction in the number of times that the same information has to be captured
or compiled.
We are extending the use of virtual courts, allowing defendants to appear in
court from police or prison cells by video link. Now the same technology is
being tried to allow police officers to give evidence from their stations, so that
officers need not waste hours hanging around court buildings.
Second, we want to reduce administrative duplication. Experience of the riots
highlighted this as one of the most critical aspects to speeding up justice. It
doesn't make sense for case files to be prepared by more than one agency.
London has already seen the successful integration of case management
between the police and the Crown Prosecution Service, saving time and
money. We aim to see streamlined case administration across almost all of
the country by April 2013.
Third, we are determined to reveal the performance of the criminal justice
system so that agencies can be held to account. Last week we announced an
ambitious transparency agenda. Our plans to begin televising court
proceedings attracted much attention. But there were other equally radical
commitments, for instance allowing the public for the first time to compare the
performance of their local courts, and to see how many trials were ineffective
and why.
Our crime mapping website, www.police.uk, has been a phenomenal success,
attracting over 430 million hits since its launch at the beginning of this year.
At one point during the riots visits to the site doubled, with some forces
showing the images of suspects. From next May, justice outcomes will be
added so that people can see not just the crimes, but how they are dealt with.
The protection of victims will always be paramount, but we will not let bogus
claims about the rights of offenders stand in the way of common sense
information.
This is not the limit of the transparency agenda: it is just the beginning. Public
confidence relies on justice being seen to be done, and visible justice is of our
system's longest-standing principles. Only when justice is opened up will we
have the information and power to demand better performance.
Fourth, we need to learn from the response to the riots and see where justice
could normally be done more effectively. We saw courts sit through the night,
and the Magistrates' Association have pointed out that many of their lay
members might prefer to work in evenings or at the weekends.
Straightforward cases were identified and prepared more quickly. We need to
see how effective triage could be applied so as to fast track cases in future,
and we need to consider ways to deter unnecessary delay. Swift justice is
currently the exception, but it should be the rule. We need to challenge the
idea that greater speed would necessarily require more resources. More
efficient systems should cost less. We already have one of the most
expensive criminal justice systems in the world.
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Some severe sentences were rightly handed down in response to mass acts
of looting and violence, where it is imperative that such behaviour is deterred.
Such sentences were exceptional. But the lesson is that sure justice, where
the consequences of offending are swiftly brought home to the criminal, is
effective justice.
So we are challenging community sentences which are too weak, insisting
that offenders on community payback work proper hours and undertake
demanding tasks. We are making prisons places of work. We are pioneering
payment by results in the penal system to break the cycle of re-offending.
We are also reviewing the effectiveness of out of court disposals, such as
cautions and penalty notices for disorder, which have seen a huge expansion,
accounting for a third of cases brought to justice. These can be useful tools to
deal with low level offending. But there have been real concerns about how
they are being used. If penalties and fines are wrongly used or go unpaid, a
mockery is made of justice.
For too long the aim has been to divert offenders from the criminal justice
system. Of course we want to divert people away from crime. But once
offences are committed, they must be dealt with properly. So we are
exploring a role for robust restorative approaches, where offenders make
amends to victims, in a new form of 'neighbourhood justice'.
The response to the riots showed us the power of community action when
people come together in a shared determination to look after their streets.
'Neighbourhood justice' could involve magistrates, returning them to a central
role in their local communities, and volunteers working with the police. This
would not be an alternative to the formal criminal justice system, but a
carefully guarded return of power and responsibility to communities to resolve
less serious crimes quickly and rigorously.
The riots saw local criminal justice agencies and people pull together as never
before. We must draw on that positive experience to transform justice. We
can be proud of the fundamental principles of fairness, independence and due
process that characterise our system. But that shouldn't excuse its
inefficiency or weaknesses. Justice should be swift, sure and seen to be
done, or it is not done at all.
ENDS