Criminal Justice update

Report: 04
Date: 10 Jul 2003
By: Commissioner

Summary

This report sets out the current work being carried out by the Department of Criminal Justice in order to improve the service the MPS give victims and witnesses and to achieve closer interaction with CPS lawyers with the ultimate aim of bringing more offenders to justice. The report provides information on how performance is measured within the MPS and CPS.

Costs associated with the work at Southwark are provided to give an indication of the cost of the entire roll out.

A. Recommendations

That the Committee

1. notes the contents of this report; and
2. agrees to extend the roll out to more than the agreed five charging sites within the Boroughs of Southwark and Lambeth.

B. Supporting information

Introduction

1. The combination of Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) lawyers at the point of charge and case progression units with victim and witness focus desks are being implemented at Southwark and Lambeth. These two boroughs operate in the same CPS and court areas and, therefore allow for meaningful evaluation using the performance data within the Department of Criminal Justice.

CPS lawyers at the point of charge

2. At the Committee meeting held in May 2003 a report was submitted that provided a broad outline of the roll out programme for placing lawyers at the point of charge. This programme has been updated to reflect the fact that current street crime boroughs should be treated as a priority and that all thirty two boroughs will need to have access to pre-charge advice prior to April 2004.

3. The schedule is continually updated and will be submitted to each Committee meeting for information.

Implementation plan for borough pre charge advice services in street crime boroughs

Implementation plan for borough pre charge advice services in non - street crime boroughs

Key: SB – Stan Barton; CPS – headquarters; () Main Charging stations

Criminal justice issues - Progress

4. The London Criminal Justice Board (LCJB) Narrowing the Justice Gap plan was submitted in March and at that time attracted a grading of 3 with support. Immediately after the grading, the plan was re-submitted with a fourth priority outlining the extensive joint work being undertaken by the various agencies in the LCJB. PA Consulting have been spoken to and the MPS has been informed that with this additional information, the plan now attracts a grading of 2.

5. The Attorney General, the Commissioner and the Chief Crown Prosecutor for London, formally opened the pre-charge advice centre at Southwark on Monday, 9 June 2003. All elements of the new processes for dealing with offenders, victims and witnesses have now been detailed at Southwark and are being put into place with appropriate staff. A manual for managing victims and witnesses has been developed and is the only manual of its kind in the country.

6. Essentially, case progression units have two new elements, quality assurance and investigators. The new units will, however, be supported by existing resources. Although an increased number of staff will be involved in the case preparation stage, it will remove the need for individual team sergeants to supervise case papers and, therefore, increase the time they are able to patrol with their staff.

7. It is intended that the Case Progression Units (CPUs) will deal with level 1 and 2 crime and so ensure that case file quality is improved in relation to volume crime. All probationers will be expected to work in these units alongside experienced staff as part of their development.

8. On 2 July 2003 a ministerial meeting including the Attorney General with members of the LCJB is scheduled to take place, where current issues will be discussed. The Committee will be verbally updated on this meeting on 10 July 2003.

9. The original Glidewell unit at Holborn continues to develop and it is anticipated that it will move into phase 2 during the rollout of the lawyers at the point of charge programme and the development of case progression units. This unit is due to receive a lawyer in September 2003 and at that point we will begin to be able to monitor the progress of a fully co-located unit against other units where the administrational functions remain separated.

Performance measurement

10. All boroughs are now performance managed in a new and innovative way. A programme of performance management jointly lead by the MPS and CPS examines critical areas of criminal justice performance on each borough. The performance meetings result in an action plan designed to address areas of weakness and apply equally to the MPS and CPS. The action plans are published on the Department of Criminal Justice website for other boroughs to review. Areas of good practice are also highlighted.

11. To date all boroughs have been visited and provided with action plans. The second round will begin in the near future and it is the hope of the Department of Criminal Justice that the courts can become involved in the next series and thus address some of the issues highlighted by both the MPS and CPS as separate from their sphere of responsibility.

12. The following aspects of performance are measured.

Discharged committals

13. There were a total of 1,365 discharged committals last year and the target set for this year is to reduce that number to 887.

14. The first three quarters of last year were rising to an average of 391 per quarter. The fourth quarter saw a decrease to 322 and the trend appears to be dropping.

Discontinued cases

15. There were a total of 25832 discontinued cases last year from a total of 167,123 cases in the combined magistrates and crown courts. This represents a discontinuance rate of 15.45%. This does not include cases forwarded to the CPS for advice or those written off (defendant dies, no likelihood of a conviction etc)

16. This figure will improve during the coming year.

Persistent young offenders

17. The target for PYOs is that 70% of all PYO cases are dealt with from arrest to conviction within 71 days. The MPS never met that target until February this year (most up to date data) when the time was recorded at 69.4 days.

Warrants

18. There are currently 15800 warrants outstanding in London. The target is to reduce this number by 15%. Data on warrant performance is still being collated.

19. Other areas of performance such as the rate of cracked and ineffective trials and the police use of ‘livescan’ are also reviewed.

NSPIS case and custody

20. The development of NSPIS case and custody thin client technology continues.

Deaths in police custody

21. The death in custody workgroup continues to make progress and is currently overseeing the refurbishment of cells to ensure that they meet health and safety requirements. This initiative costs approximately £6000 per cell and is concerned mainly with the location and removal of ligature points and the replacement of cell doors where appropriate.

Warrants database

22. This is being pursued by the Department of Information on behalf of the Department of Criminal Justice. Although we are aware of the number of outstanding warrants in London, a bespoke database will be able to provide more detailed information on specific activity taken and current position of enquiries.

Victim and witness focus desks

23. A victim and witness desk has been implemented at Southwark, the initial indications are that the number of victims and witnesses attending court has increased. Consultancy group has been engaged to undertake an evaluation of victim and witness attrition rate. Arrangements have been made for the recruitment of staff for the desk in Lambeth. The Public Service Delivery unit is seeking to implement victim and witness desks at six pilot sites nationally (not in London) on behalf of the Attorney General. The lead on this initiative has already consulted the Department of Criminal Justice and is keen to see the good practice developed in London, spread to the six new sites across the country.

24. The victim and witness manual developed by the Department of Criminal Justice has been recognised by the Home Office Delivery Unit as unique and good practice. This manual will be made available to the PPRC at the meeting in September, when a fuller presentation on the outcomes will be made. Hopefully, this presentation will be informed by work carried out by the Police Consultancy Group and researchers from the Home Office Delivery Unit, who will be examining the impact of the Victim and Witness Focus Desk at Southwark

Three-year strategy

25. A three-year strategy for Department of Criminal Justice will be launched at the Urban Justice Conference on 8 July 2003 at the Novotel London West.

Urban Justice Conference – 8 July 2003

26. This conference, held at the Novotel London West on 8 July 2003, will examine criminal justice issues, one year after the ‘Modernising Criminal Justice – New World Challenges’ conference. Sir John Stevens, Dru Sharpling and David Muir will address this event, sponsored by the Evening Standard. Interactive workshops will feature ‘Prevention – Better than cure’, ‘Effective communication – The key to delivering effective criminal justice’, ‘Partnerships – Closing the gap, myth or reality’ and ‘Custody or community’

27. The conference will provide delegates with a unique forum for the exchange of good practice as well as an inter-agency debate on how best to move the agenda forward.

Centralised traffic unit

28. Negotiations continue with the development of the centralised traffic unit. Agreement has been reached with the CPS that a single prosecutions team operating at a single location should deal with traffic prosecutions. It is very likely that this location will be at Marlowe House in Sidcup, but accommodation and equivalence issues are yet to be finalised

Proposals for evaluation

29. The charging centres will be rolled across London, performance in relation to discontinuance and discharged committals will be the median through which we can measure the impact of lawyers at the point of charge. It is too early to provide detailed evaluation of performance at Southwark, but the CPS are collecting the data which will be available in the near future and will be used in conjunction with that provided by the MPS Consultancy Group and the CPS.

London Criminal Justice Board

30. The LCJB comprises the MPS, the CPS, the Probation Service, the Courts and the Prison Service. The main focus of the Board is currently on ‘Narrowing the Justice Gap’ (NJG) performance and the multi-agency approach to dealing with persistent young offenders (PYOs).

31. Early indications are that London is reaching the NJG target and has for the first time met the pledge in relation to PYOs – 70% of PYOs dealt within 71 days.

32. The LCJB has taken particular interest in Local Criminal Justice Boards and recognises that sustained improvement can only be delivered locally.

33. The MPS plays a key role in this Board and has been responsible for developing much of the performance data, which the Board uses for tracking activity.

34. The LCJB is overseeing the LCD case preparation pilot, which will focus on courts case listing and progression. The board agreed that the pilot will be implemented at the Inner London Crown Court which is fed predominantly by the boroughs of Southwark and Lambeth.

35. Dru Sharpling met with the Chairs of the borough criminal justice groups on 28th April. She discussed the future role of these groups in narrowing the justice gap and it was agreed to:

• look at ways of assessing performance within those groups to assist in holding them accountable for performance
• ask for views at the Conference ( 13th May) which can be fed into the LJCB
• chief officers to ensure they brief their Group reps on the need for delivery of the targets

C. Equality and diversity implications

Many MPA buildings are old and this developing initiative will by definition encourage people from other organisations into the MPA estate. The age of the estate often precludes necessary modifications, which would increase greater access to differently abeled members of the community. This issue has been discussed with the CPS who understand the difficulties. They have assured the MPS that currently this does not cause a difficulty but the issue will be born in mind and will need to be reviewed regularly.

D. Financial implications

Case Progression Units

1. Case Progression Units will be implemented by a phased replacement of existing Criminal Justice Units. Therefore there will be no ongoing additional staffing finance and resource implications. However, there will be an element of ‘dual-running’ that will require additional one-off support

2. The recent ATOS KPMG (Justice for London) report identified a substantial cost associated with CPUs, this was however ‘opportunity costs’ as the existing staff working within CJUs will be deployed. These ‘opportunity costs’ of CPUs breakdown as follows

Case progression units – opportunity costs

3. There are of course some one off costs associated with each case progression unit that are difficult to estimate precisely. The following table is based on the case progression unit at Southwark and if that need were to be to extrapolated to cover the would of the MPS the following costs would apply:

4. This is of course an estimation, which will need to be refined as the rollout programme takes place.

E. Background papers

None

F. Contact details

Report author: Cmdr Alan Given

For more information contact:

MPA general: 020 7202 0202
Media enquiries: 020 7202 0217/18

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