System Shift
As regular readers will know, I’ve just my series of posts summarising the manifesto pledges on criminal justice made by the main political parties. Manifesto documents typically focus more on aspirations than on the practicalities of achieving them. So today, I am featuring a different sort of manifesto, a new report from the Centre of Justice Innovation entitled “Systems Shift: A ten-point plan for criminal justice reform”.
The report lays bare the acute crises facing the criminal justice system and the urgent decisions a new Justice Secretary will have to make, whoever wins the next General Election. It exposes the scale and severity of the problems the criminal justice system is facing— not least, rising serious crime, a Crown Court backlog at record levels and prisons close to bursting.
A two-stage process
The report sets out a two-stage plan; first, stop the system from overloading, and then fundamentally shifting how our criminal justice system operates, putting it on a path toward long-term recovery. Given the urgency of the issues facing both the prison system and the Crown Courts, the Centre for Justice Innovation (CJI) urges that a new Government consider:
- Shortening the amount of time people sentenced to four years or less serve in prison, excluding those who are assessed as posing a high risk of serious harm to the public, using secondary legislation as soon as possible.
- Legislating to reduce the flow of people into prison on short sentences and remand while also tackling the long standing injustice of Imprisonment for Public Protection sentenced prisoners.
- Once the acute crisis has abated, taking immediate action to reduce the Crown Court backlog, setting a clear ambition to speed up Crown Court cases, creating streamlined processes to siphon off the least serious not guilty cases, and fast-tracking rape cases.
Once the system is stabilised, the CJI recommends that the Government shifts the system to focus its limited resources on the highest harm crime. This includes working towards to a future in which every victim of sexual violence or domestic abuse has their case heard in a specialist court, whether that be in criminal, private family law or public family law courts. The report argues that such a shift can occur by implementing smarter ways of tackling ‘quality of life’ crime and anti-social behaviour, not least in strengthening our community justice services and investing in earlier intervention.
It calls for some incremental reforms building on existing evidence of what we know works, and more radical changes, not least in reforming our courts and opening up public discussion on drugs policy.
Lastly, the CJI argues that we need to build a more strategic centre within national Government. This should include an independent Institute for Justice to provide annual, independent forecasts of criminal justice capacity and demand (like an Office for Budget Responsibility for justice). These forecasts would help open up the public debate to help us make long term choices about what kind of prison system we want, what type of prisons we need and where those prisons need to be.
The scale of the court backlog can be seen from my chart below.
The Ten-point plan
I reproduce the full ten-point plan from the report below:
First three months
1. Emergency measures to reduce prison population pressures, including considering re-setting the automatic release point for most prisoners sentenced to four years or less, releasing them after they have served 40% of their sentence in prison, rather than 50%; and
2. Once adequate prison capacity is realised, immediate action to reduce the Crown Court backlog, setting a clear ambition in partnership with the senior judiciary to speed up Crown Court cases to pre-pandemic averages by the end of the Parliament, in part by introducing temporary measures to start eating into outstanding cases.
Tackle the highest harms
3. Improve our end to end response to sexual violence and domestic abuse, by rolling out effective police and prosecutor joint working, expanding the use of specialist sexual violence and domestic abuse specialisation across our courts, and fast-tracking Crown Court rape cases;
4. Drive down violent crime, including by deploying proven ‘precision’ policing strategies like hot-spots policing, investing in evidence-led prevention and diversion to keep children away from crime and gang involvement, and legislating to tackle the sale of zombie knives, machetes and swords;
5. Slow the revolving door of prolific offending by investing in high-quality drug treatment, spreading intensive community supervision for prolific offenders including repeat shoplifters, and diverting women away from short prison sentences.
Act smarter
6.Prioritise early intervention, including swiftly resolving more ‘quality of life’ and anti-social behaviour cases out of court, providing improved alternatives to remand, and by piloting intensive supervision courts for children;
7. Rethink our courts, keeping more serious cases in our magistrates’ courts in line with other common lawc ountries and deploying magistrates to hear quality of life cases in their communities, all to help reserve Crown Courts for the most serious cases;
8. Strengthen community justice, by commissioning the voluntary sector to deliver rapid, standalone unpaid work for ‘quality of life’ crimes, expanding and professionalising the probation workforce and, once the probation system is stable, working towards its devolution;
9. Set up an independent commission into drugs policy, using insights from citizens’ juries to make recommendations to Government by the middle of the next Parliament.
National focus
10. Build a new strategic centre, including by creating an independent Institute for Justice to provide annual, independent forecasts of criminal justice capacity and demand (like an Office for Budget Responsibility for justice), and open up the public debate on long-term prison population and capacity options.
Thanks to Jose Antonio Gallego Vázquez for kind permission to use the header image in this post which was previously published on Unsplash.
