Issue 203  24th July 2021

Lord Chancellor Robert Buckland spoke at the Centre for Social Justice to outline how the government is rebuilding the criminal justice system and looking to its longer-term future.

The Crown court service intends to achieve at least 105,000 sitting days in 2021-22 and hopes to introduce extended operating hours as the criminal case backlog nears 60,000 cases. According to HM Courts & Tribunals Service’s annual report, the lord chancellor ‘wants to sit a record number of sitting days, alongside extending court hours, continuing the current Crown court Nightingales beyond June 2021 and potentially extending them further’. Extended court and tribunal operating hours will include evenings and weekends to 'make more use of the space'.

In 2020-21, the Crown court sat for 67,209 days. HMCTS is now looking to sit at least 105,000 days in 2021-22, subject to social distancing requirements. This would reverse the fall in seating allocations in recent years, from 97,400 in 2018/19 to 82,300 in 2019/20. The court service has also pledged to acquire new premises and replacement premises when leases expire. In Hull, Leeds, Dundee, Medway, and Watford, for example – where leases are due to end – it said it will find replacement space either by integration within the existing estate or re-provision.

The Court of Appeal has cleared 12 more former subpostmasters who were wrongly convicted of offences during the Post Office Horizon scandal. It brings the total of judgements overturned to 59, but hundreds more are hoping for similar decisions. Between 1999 and 2015, they were sacked or prosecuted after money appeared to vanish from accounts at their branches. The problems were caused by the Horizon computer system in Post Office branches which turned out to be flawed. Some subpostmasters were imprisoned after being convicted of stealing money. In April, 39 people had verdicts against them overturned, following on from the overturning of six other convictions in December. More people have been affected by this than in any other miscarriage of justice in the UK.

The government is to fund interim compensation of up to £100,000 for each postmaster who has had their Horizon-related conviction overturned. The measure, announced to Parliament today, will ensure that affected individuals are not left out of pocket as they and the Post Office work toward full settlements for the immense hardship postmasters have faced. The Post Office is contacting postmasters and will aim to make an offer for an interim payment within 28 days of receiving an application from those whose overturned convictions relied on Horizon evidence. If and when further such convictions are quashed, those postmasters will also be eligible for the payments.

The Prison Service prevented predicted large-scale deaths as a result of COVID-19 but severe and prolonged daily lock-up of prisoners harmed their physical and mental welfare, according to HM Chief Inspector of Prisons Charlie Taylor. Publishing his first annual report, for 2020–21, Mr Taylor warned that some longstanding problems remained as daily regimes eased in the post-COVID-19 period. These included not only violence, drugs and self-harm but also inconsistency in delivering purposeful activity and rehabilitation...

These are some of the key prisons-related findings in Mr Taylor’s report:

• The Prison Service and ministers should be commended for their initial swift action in preventing the sorts of outbreaks that we have seen in other jurisdictions.
• Inspectors found that prisoners were initially grateful for the steps taken to keep them safe. However, an HMI Prisons thematic review – What happens to prisoners in a pandemic? – showed that keeping the worst excesses of the virus at bay was achieved at significant cost to the welfare and progression of prisoners, most of whom have spent the pandemic locked in their cells for 22.5 hours a day. Prisoners felt drained, despondent, depleted, helpless and without hope. Inspectors found that most mental health services had ceased routine assessments or interventions and were focusing only on urgent and acute care.
• Too many prisoners were locked up with too little to do before the pandemic and the situation became much worse this year, even in training prisons. Visits have recently restarted in some establishments, but many prisoners have not seen family or friends for over a year.
• Classroom-based education stopped in March 2020 and did not restart in the summer, in most prisons when restrictions were being lifted. Generic cell packs were developed, but some of these did not arrive until months after the lockdown began...
• While self-harm in male prisons had generally fallen, it increased among women in prison, particularly in the early months of the pandemic...
• When restrictions were introduced last March 2020, children in custody were subjected to the same regime as adults, with a big reduction in time out of cell and, with the notable exception of Parc YOI, in South Wales, no face-to-face education.