News
Outgoing DPP: justice system can’t cope
Britain’s criminal justice system is “creaking” and unable to cope with the huge amounts of data being generated by technology, the head of the Crown Prosecution Service has warned in her final interview before stepping down.
Speaking exclusively to the Observer, Alison Saunders said the CPS and police were failing to investigate thousands of cases efficiently – from rape to fraud to modern slavery – and were critically short of the skills and resources required to combat crime.
Saunders, who steps down as the most senior prosecutor on Wednesday, said: “There is a huge issue to train all of [the people in] the system. In some cases, we’re seeing downloads [of online data] taking six to eight months and you have suspects and witnesses and victims waiting that long for the investigation.
Court of Appeal Ruling on Reasonable Lines of Enquiry
In the case at the centre of this judgment, a Crown Court judge stayed proceedings after ruling the failure to seize a mobile telephone belonging to one of the complainants meant the defendant could not have a fair trial. The CPS appealed this ruling and the Court of Appeal has ruled in favour of the CPS, deciding that a fair trial would have been possible.
Importantly, the Court of Appeal has handed down guidelines which emphasise that seizing a phone is not automatically a reasonable line of enquiry in every case.
The Court of Appeal judgment can be found here.
NHS Violence Reduction Strategy
Secretary of State for Health and Social Care Matt Hancock is announcing the first ever NHS violence reduction strategy.
The strategy includes the NHS working with the police and Crown Prosecution Service to help victims give evidence and get prosecutions in the quickest and most efficient way.
The new plans follow the Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Act, which was recently brought into law and will see the maximum prison sentence for assaulting an emergency worker double from 6 months to a year.
'Met chief Cressida Dick backs 'traditional' policing call'
The head of the UK's largest police force has backed a call for officers to focus on "traditional values". Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick said she "absolutely" agreed with a senior officer who said forces were too stretched to pursue "deserving" issues.
National Police Chiefs' Council chair Sara Thornton had said incidents of misogyny should not be pursued. Amid a fresh debate about police priorities, Ms Thornton said that although it may be "desirable" to log incidents of misogyny, forces did not have the resources to deal with such cases and should "refocus on core policing" - such as tackling violent crime and burglary. She also said investigating claims against dead people was taking resources away from investigating "today's crime today".
APPG Report on Sentencing Women
The All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Women in the Penal System has conducted an inquiry into the sentencing of women.
Women who become tangled up in the criminal justice system are among the most disadvantaged and vulnerable people in society, and prison makes things worse not better for them. Evidence published by the Ministry of Justice shows that short sentences are less effective than community sentences at supporting people to desist from crime (Hillier et al, 2015). Despite this evidence, women continue to be sent to prison, overwhelmingly for short periods, while the number of community sentences has decreased.
Cases
R v E [2018] EWCA 2426 (Crim)
Subsequent to this ruling, on 24 July 2018, ‘A Guide to “reasonable lines of enquiry” and Communications Evidence’ was published by the DPP (‘DPP Guide’) which states... This guidance appears to us accurately to set out the considerations that investigators should have in mind when deciding what enquiries should be made during investigations into allegations of sexual offences. It should be noted that it does not say that mobile phones should be examined as a matter of course in every case: the decision is fact specific in each and every case.
Valiati v Director Of Public Prosecutions [2018] EWHC 2908 (Admin)
These appeals by way of case stated both involve consideration of the use which the court may make of information provided by advocates acting for the defendant as part of case management in the Preparation for Effective Trial (‘PET’) form. In both cases, it is argued that critical information was taken from the PET form and treated as evidence either to fill a gap in the prosecution evidence or to support a conclusion reached.
It is not suggested that a formal application was made by the prosecution to admit the information on the PET form or that the defence were alerted to the evidential use to which the PET form would be put so that representations could be made about it. Neither does it appear that there was any evidence that proved the relationship between Ms Santos and Mr Valiati. Not being contained in formal admissions made pursuant to s. 10 of the 1967 Act, or the subject of the discussion envisaged by the Practice Direction at the start of the trial, the inconsistency between the case management information that presence and identification was not in dispute and the observation that Mr Valiati did not remember any of the incidents and put the prosecution to proof was not explored. What is clear, however, is that no attempt was made to utilise s. 118 of the 2003 Act by admitting what was said on the PET form as hearsay and what the justices (albeit understandably) did was to confuse the provision of case management information with evidence without the same being formally adduced. If the relevant Practice Directions had been followed, this problem would not have occurred.
Education
The Moral Machine Experiment
If forced to choose, who should a self-driving car kill in an unavoidable crash? Should the passengers in the vehicle be sacrificed to save pedestrians? Or should a pedestrian be killed to save a family of four in the vehicle? To get closer to an answer - if that were ever possible - researchers from the MIT Media Lab have analysed more than 40 million responses to an experiment they launched in 2014.
The results from 40 million decisions suggested people preferred to save humans rather than animals, spare as many lives as possible, and tended to save young over elderly people. There were also smaller trends of saving females over males, saving those of higher status over poorer people, and saving pedestrians rather than passengers.
The research can be found here.
Other
Mukul Chawla QC: Reflections from my years at the independent Bar
What follows is a self-indulgent and personal reflection of my years at the independent Bar and my thoughts (which echo those more eloquently set out by others not least the owner of this blog page) of the present and future state of the Criminal Justice system. If that introduction is not enough to put you off, may I thank you in advance for taking the time to read this.
'Funding for Justice 2008 to 2018: Justice in the age of austerity'
The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the effects of austerity on the resources that government has devoted to the justice system. It will come as no surprise to learn that resources have been reduced over the period 2008-2018, but the extent of the reduction, where it has been focused and the potential implications of that in the context of viewing this area of expenditure as an investment in a well-functioning and fair society, have not hitherto been described. In the broader view, an under-resourced justice system imposes costs on society and damages economic welfare. Short-term savings may result in long-term burdens.
In contrast the justice system as reflected in the expenditure of the Ministry of Justice on frontline service provision and access to justice has seen massive real terms reductions. In the context of an economy that has grown 13 per cent in real terms, tax- financed funding for the Ministry has declined by 27 per cent. That is a huge withdrawal of public finance support for what must be regarded as a fundamental and integral part of the state’s functions and obligations. The withdrawal is ever greater for the Crown Prosecution Service, being 34 per cent in real terms. Even after allowing for the declining number of prosecutions this constitutes a withdrawal of resources from the vital function of prosecuting alleged criminals.
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