Issue 348  1st June 2024

Legislation to make pet abduction a criminal offence received Royal Assent today (24 May). Under the Pet Abduction Act 2024 – which was a Private Members’ Bill sponsored by Anna Firth MP and Lord Black of Brentwood and supported by the Government – anyone found guilty of stealing a pet in England or Northern Ireland will face up to five years in prison, a fine, or both. The new law recognises that cats and dogs are not inanimate objects but sentient beings capable of experiencing distress and other emotional trauma when they are stolen from their owners or keepers...

The Victims and Prisoners Bill received Royal Assent and became an Act of Parliament following its final stages in the House of Lords on Thursday 23 and Friday 24 May. The Victims and Prisoners Bill aims to improve the support and guidance offered to victims of crime and major incidents, and those suffering bereavement, including through the appointment of specialist advocates. The bill will also implement planned government reforms of the parole system, including preventing life-term inmates from marrying and greater ministerial oversight of the Parole Board and the early release of dangerous offenders...

The Bar Council has submitted written evidence to the Public Accounts Committee’s inquiry update on reducing the backlog in Criminal Courts. Our submission sets out how criminal justice is in a parlous position due to reductions in funding across the system over the last decade of austerity. This has led to structural problems by reference to the insufficient numbers of courts, court staff, judiciary and advocates needed to resolve criminal cases, making it impossible to tackle the crisis of the backlog now at unprecedented levels (over 67,000 cases awaiting trial in the Crown Court)...

Areas for improvement the Bar Council has identified:

• Early legal advice
• Early guilty pleas
• Prison transportation and interpretation services
• The use of remote hearings
• Judicial recruitment
• Community resolution
• Scheduling and listing
• Recruitment and support for legal aid professionals
• Targeting assistance to specific areas and court centres

A mass court observation project which sat in on more than 1,100 hearings has reported that magistrates’ courts ‘often fall short’, with courtwatchers ‘shocked by what they perceived to be inefficiency’. Drawing on the findings of its CourtWatch London project, Transform Justice has produced recommendations for the Ministry of Justice, judiciary, Sentencing Council, HM Courts & Tribunal Service and Crown Prosecution Service. The report, The Wild West? Courtwatching in London magistrates’ courts, covered defendants, court efficiency and outcomes.

Recommendations to the MoJ include: an independent inquiry into the impact of video hearings; ceasing video links for defendants in hearings, excepting case management hearings, until that inquiry begins; commissioning research into the main causes of court delays; and abolishing the means test in the magistrates’ court for all those charged with an imprisonable offence. Transform Justice also recommends discouraging the use of court fines, encouraging rehabilitative sanctions, discontinuing ‘very old cases’ to reduce listings, and encouraging police to offer more out-of-court resolutions for lower-level cases. Of the 1,055 hearings where an outcome was recorded, 22% were adjourned. Courtwatchers found ‘many delays’ were attributable to lawyers or others not having the information necessary or possessing conflicting information...