Issue 123  4th January 2020

Prosecutors could be given the power to direct police investigations under plans for a “once in a generation” overhaul of the criminal justice system.

Boris Johnson has committed to establishing a royal commission on the criminal justice process, to be launched as soon as next month.

The Times has been told that the commission will examine the procurator fiscal model in Scotland, in which prosecutors have the power to direct police investigations into serious crimes. Prosecutors have similar powers in France.

Up to 40 per cent of crown courts in England and Wales are sitting idle as criminal cases have plunged to record lows despite rising crime, The Telegraph can reveal.

The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has cut the number of days on which it will fund judges to sit by more than 15 per cent this year because of a slump in cases coming before the courts. It has resulted in between 25 per cent and 40 per cent of courts sitting empty on any one day as police forces solve fewer cases and crown prosecutors bring fewer to trial, according to data seen by The Daily Telegraph.

A private police service is mounting the UK’s first private prosecutions for theft and other “minor” crimes because it claims the police have “given up” taking them to court. The private firm, which provides neighbourhood policing to residents, firms and shops, says it has set up a new prosecution unit after its teams have apprehended shoplifters, pickpockets and drug dealers only to be told by officers called to the scene to release them.

The company initially plans to fund the prosecution unit out of its own resources, effectively at a loss, until it can establish if it will be successful. Its 30 “bobbies”, who are uniformed with red vests and caps, provide cover 24/7 for up to 250 houses on each beat and the firm promises to have a response at the scene within five minutes, all for a fee of £100 to £200 a month per household.

The criminal exploitation of children is at its highest level in modern times as gangs capitalise on a lack of youth facilities and school exclusions to groom children, a police chief has revealed. Chief constable Shaun Sawyer said that as state provision for children receded in the last decade, driven in part by austerity, criminals had exploited the space between “the school gate and the front door”.

Sawyer said most of those youngsters subjected to modern slavery and human trafficking were British nationals, up 73.7% on the previous year, at about 726 people. He said that while in previous years, sexual exploitation or labour exploitation were the biggest reasons to class someone as a modern slave, it was now criminal exploitation driven by drug gangs, and including the county lines model of distributing and selling illegal narcotics.

According to a freedom of information request by the Gazette, five defendants prosecuted by the SFO were convicted in calendar 2019, compared with 17 in the year ended 31 March 2019 and 10 in the year ended 31 March 2018. The SFO’s caseload has also shrunk, with the number of active investigations falling by 20% from 75 in 2017/18 to around 60 today.