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A free weekly collection of criminal law links - for practitioners, law students, and anyone with an interest in the criminal justice system of England and Wales.
Curated by Sam Willis, a barrister at 5 King's Bench Walk.
News
'New reforms to recover millions more from the proceeds of crime'
The Law Commission has published new reforms to overhaul the system for recovering the proceeds of criminal activities. The reforms, which are the culmination of a Home Office-commissioned review, would enhance enforcement powers and could lead to the recovery of millions of pounds of additional funds from offenders each year...
The Law Commission’s new reforms would bolster the current system, by giving courts more powers to enforce confiscation orders and seize offenders’ assets, limiting unrealistic orders that can never be paid back, and speeding up confiscation proceedings – allowing victims to receive compensation more quickly. The Commission estimates that reforming the current confiscation regime could lead to an extra £8 million in funds being retrieved from criminals in England and Wales every year, helping to return more money to the public...
CCDCS POCA Update
From Monday 7 November 2022 the existing Proceeds of Crime Act Section on the Crown Court Digital Case System (DCS) will be extended to allow the uploading of Enforcement Applications under Section 11 (Application to extend time), Section 22 (Applications for Reconsiderations) and Section 23 (Application to reduce confiscation order). The standard file structure has been updated to reflect this.
'Police wasting time recording crimes that aren’t crimes'
About 1,200 police officers are “wasting their time” on the bureaucracy of crime recording and could be freed up to get back on the beat, one of the country’s most senior police officers said today. Martin Hewitt, head of the National Police Chiefs Council, called for major reform and warned that forces were recording “crimes that are not crimes”. Hewitt’s comments came after The Times revealed last month that incivility and petty disputes are being routinely recorded as crime, distorting the public’s view.
According to official statistics, the rate of violence against the person was higher in Warwickshire, West Mercia, Norfolk and Cumbria than in London because the regional forces were abiding strictly by crime-recording rules. For the first time, the police are recording more crime and violence than the public have reported in the annual British Crime Survey...
'Judges to be trained on appropriate behaviour, LCJ reveals'
Judges will be trained on how to avoid inadvertent inappropriate behaviour with colleagues, the lord chief justice has revealed - after research that he commissioned uncovered examples of bullying, harassment or discrimination. Lord Burnett of Maldon told the House of Commons justice select committee yesterday that judges were asked in a welfare survey last year whether they felt they had been the subject of inappropriate comments or behaviour. ‘The answer suggested some people did,’ he said.
Qualitative research subsequently commissioned by the judicial office, which involved talking to solicitors, barristers and judges, found examples of inappropriate behaviour. Questions in this year’s Judicial Attitudes Survey, whose findings have yet to be published, also confirmed that some judges experienced inappropriate behaviour. To tackle the problem, Burnett told the committee that a ‘short statement of behaviour expected of judges’ will be issued. Bespoke training will be given to all leadership judges on how to avoid inadvertent inappropriate behaviour and they will be expected to disseminate good practice, he said. ‘Then our plan is to weave into induction and continuation training for all judges the essentials of good behaviour and avoiding inappropriate behaviour, particularly inadvertent inappropriate behaviour.’
'MoJ conducting light touch review of Common Platform'
The government is reviewing a controversial digital system that prompted dozens of magistrates’ court staff to strike last month, the lord chief justice has told MPs. Lord Burnett of Maldon told the House of Commons justice select committee that the purpose of Common Platform was to replace ‘antiquated systems that at any moment could fall over and if they did we would be in real trouble’. However, Common Platform had run into ‘lots of technical problems, more than it should have done’.
Burnett said HM Courts & Tribunals Service was working hard to fix the problems. The Ministry of Justice has also instigated a ‘light touch review’ of the technical aspects of the system, which the judiciary is contributing to. The Common Platform, which is currently live in 101 courts, is intended to enable parties in a criminal case to access relevant information on one system. Rollout of the system which has been beset with problems, was paused last year. The committee heard that the aspect causing the most trouble was ‘resulting’, where legal advisers in the magistrates’ court and clerks in the Crown court input the result of a hearing. The system is designed to enable ‘contemporaneous resulting’, the committee heard. However, that ‘resulting’ was proving difficult in many cases, slowed the process down in some cases, and put staff ‘under a great deal of strain’.
'SFO director Lisa Osofsky to depart role next summer'
The head of the Serious Fraud Office is stepping down next summer after five years, drawing an end to a tenure that featured some successes but has also been marked by two high-profile failures. Staff were told on Wednesday afternoon that Lisa Osofsky, a dual US-UK citizen and former FBI lawyer, would leave the fraud agency at the end of her five-year contract in August 2023...
Cases
R v Walker [2022] EWCA Crim 1488
... Ms Grahame KC identifies the common ground of appeal to comprise different strands representing the asserted errors of the prosecution in witness engagement and the consequent applications they were forced to make to secure AC's attendance to give evidence before the court. She adopts the single judge's expressed view that "[w]hilst each of the separate strands of this ground of appeal individually may not have been sufficient to show an arguable case, collectively they may". Understandably, she repeats many of the defence submissions we have identified to have been made in the court below in response to the several prosecution applications regarding AC. The overriding submission is that the appellants were irrevocably prejudiced by what amounted to a deliberate tactical decision made by the prosecution not to seek to obtain a witness statement from AC before seeking a witness summons...
... Despite the breach of the CPR 17.3 in terms of timing the application the judge was entitled in the exercise of his discretion to issue a witness summons. There was evidence that AC was a witness, whether or not he had made a written witness statement. The judge was satisfied that the prosecution had established good reason to delay the application and was entitled to take at face value the indication that the prosecution would continue to seek AC's co-operation in the court process, which included the preparation of a witness statement. There is no basis upon which to regard his determination to be unreasonable or irrational or the procedure to prejudice the appellants. There was no good basis for him to withdraw the witness summons...
We were not persuaded that the defence found themselves in any worse position than counsel who encounter a witness giving evidence that is not contained within his/her statement. There may well be nuanced differences, corrections or amplification. It is commonplace. In this case, although the defence did not have the "security" of a witness statement from AC, they had three separate police officers' statements and two sets of contemporaneous notes of what he had said, and which prior inconsistency, if that was revealed, they might expect prosecution counsel to concede. Counsel, whether prosecution or defence, must take decisions on how to react in these circumstances, whether by challenge and/or to seek an adjournment to take instructions, and/or in extreme cases to seek to discharge the jury. We see no error in the judge's approach in determining that AC could be called to give evidence and that any difficulties, for example, his refusal to give evidence would be accommodated in the trial process.