Issue 280  11th February 2023

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has launched a programme of research to identify, understand and tackle disproportionality in its charging decisions. Disproportionality has long been recognised as a criminal justice system-wide issue, and the CPS is committed to ongoing examination of our work to ensure suspects and defendants are treated fairly. The CPS commissioned the University of Leeds to examine the outcomes of our charging decisions and identify whether demographic factors led to disproportionate outcomes.

The study found that there is evidence of disproportionality in the outcomes of legal decision making, with defendants from minority ethnic backgrounds significantly more likely to be charged for a comparable offence than White British defendants. The limitations of the study mean it is not possible to identify what factors are causing this disparity, to determine what action may be needed as a result. To address this, the CPS has created an independent Disproportionality Advisory Group, made up of academics and third sector specialists, to oversee and provide expert scrutiny of a comprehensive programme of further research...

The majority of the service which tries to prevent criminals reoffending in England and Wales is working at excessive capacity, internal figures seen by the BBC show. Some officers in the Probation Service have workloads twice as large as their recommended capacity. A whistleblower warned the risks to the public are "significant". The government said it would "recruit thousands more staff to keep the public safe"...

The BBC has seen a snapshot of data from an internal Probation Service workload measurement system which monitors daily case numbers and warns if staff are operating beyond their capacity. The numbers were collected this week and assess workload based on a points system which takes into account the complexity of cases. In the 12 regions of England and Wales, 10 were operating at over 100% of capacity. Only Wales and the North East Region were just below. Seven were "showing red" with average scores of more than 110%...

Royal Mail strikes could cause further delays to criminal trials after jurors failed to receive summonses in the post. In a memo sent to senior judges at crown courts in England and Wales, seen by The Telegraph, court service officials warned of a potential shortfall in jurors this month as a result of the postal strikes. The document warned judges that Royal Mail strikes mean that “a large number of summonses” sent before the Christmas period alerting people to jury duty for the weeks of Feb 6 and 13 “have not reached them”. Court officials also suggested to judges desperate for jurors: “As a very last resort, you can summons people nearby the court to make up the numbers.” That means random members of the public near the court and off the street could be drawn into cases...

The UK government has rejected a call for prisoners detained indefinitely to be resentenced, in a move criticised by the chair of the justice committee as a “missed opportunity to right a wrong”. A report by the cross-party justice committee published last year said people stuck in prison under the now abolished imprisonment for public protection (IPP) scheme should be resentenced. IPP sentences were officially scrapped in 2012. They have been described as “the single greatest stain on our criminal justice system”, but almost 3,000 prisoners remain behind bars in England and Wales after receiving one...

The justice secretary, Dominic Raab, said the government had rejected resentencing as it “could lead to the immediate release of many offenders who have been assessed as unsafe for release by the Parole Board, many with no period of supervision in the community”...