Issue 284  11th March 2023

Magistrates are to lose their power to jail offenders for up to a year and will be pushed back to maximum sentences of only six months after the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) ended a scheme designed to speed up justice. The move could help ease pressure on crisis-hit jails as cases will now take longer to come to trial as they will have to be referred up to the crown court.

Prisons are said to be just 600 places short of their capacity with the MoJ having commissioned up to 400 police cells to take the over-supply of convicted offenders. JPs were handed the powers last May to jail offenders for more serious crimes of assault, drug dealing, affray, fraud and theft as part of an attempt to speed up justice in the wake of the Covid pandemic. But the MoJ quietly laid out new regulations on Thursday which will peg magistrates back to a maximum of six months from the end of March in three weeks’ time.

The Ministry of Justice appears to be testing the criminal bar’s patience as it emerged that the final part of a deal struck last year to suspend long-running industrial action has yet to materialise. In her latest weekly update, Criminal Bar Association chair Kirsty Brimelow KC said the final part of the deal for payment for special preparation and wasted preparation should have been brought into force last month...

Brimelow said in her update that the government has had five months ‘and holding up your side of the bargain is not complex’. She said: ‘In summary, the Ministry of Justice officials raise a possibility (and all things may well be possible) that there will be overspend of the £3.3m committed to this part of the deal. We have pointed out to the MoJ that it has a history of modelling which produces inflated figures. This reality gap needs again to be pinched as it widens between assumption and practice and failure to do justice to understanding as set out in [the criminal legal aid review]'...

The Council has published updated sentencing guidelines for offenders convicted of child cruelty offences in England and Wales, following consultation. The new guidelines update the existing guidelines, which came into force in January 2019, and reflect new maximum sentences introduced by the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022... The guidelines will come into effect on 1 April 2023.

Mayor of London Sadiq Khan has announced a £3m annual fund to overhaul how the Met treats victims of crime. It will be used to fund a free phoneline for victims and make it easier for them to access key information about their case. Met commissioner Sir Mark Rowley said it would help put victims' voices at the "heart of everything we do". It will also boost the number of staff responsible for caring for victims and direct them to support services. The announcement came as it emerged that one in three victims of crime in London was unsatisfied with the Met's level of service, according to a report by the mayor's office...

The prosecution of three former G4S executives over claims of defrauding the Ministry of Justice has collapsed, in a fresh embarrassment for the Serious Fraud Office. Richard Morris, Mark Preston, and James Jardine were all accused of fraud over the handling of a multi-million pound contract for electronically tagging offenders. Criminal charges were brought in 2020 at the culmination of an investigation that began in 2014, but at the Old Bailey on Friday the SFO offered no evidence against the three men, bringing the case to an abrupt end...

Explaining Friday’s decision to abandon the case against the G4S directors, prosecutor Crispin Aylett KC said the SFO was facing a complex disclosure exercise in advance of a six-month trial in April next year and ever-mounting costs. “While the prosecution considers there remains a realistic prospect of conviction against each defendant, we have come to the conclusion it is no longer in the public interest to proceed with this case”, he said...