Criminal Justice update

Report: 20
Date: 9 October 2003
By: Commissioner

Summary

This report provides an update on the work being carried out by the Department of Criminal Justice with the ultimate aim of bringing more offences to justice. The report provides: A copy of the MPS developed victim and witness support manual.

A. Recommendations

That members note the report.

B. Supporting information

Justice for London Project

1. The Justice for London (JfL) model, which has been developed to help increase the number of offences brought to justice and enhance the quality of service given to victims and witnesses, comprises four key elements: gatekeeper quality assurance supervisor, case progression unit, Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) lawyer at the point of charge and victim and witness support desk. This model was initially implemented in Southwark and is being rolled out across the MPS. The JfL project has moved to Lambeth and the model should be working at all three charging sites in the Borough by early October. Southwark and Lambeth boroughs operate in the same CPS and court areas and will therefore allow for meaningful evaluation using the performance data developed by the Department of Criminal Justice. This initial evaluation is planned for the beginning of November.

2. The JfL model will be implemented in the next four boroughs, Brent, Newham, Lewisham and Hackney by the end of December and at a further four street crime boroughs before the end of the performance year. This will bring the total to 10 as set out in the Annual Plan target.

3. Additionally, the gatekeeper element of the JfL model will be implemented on the remaining five street crime boroughs by the end of the 2003-4 financial year. The gatekeeper role is seen as critical to ensure that case files are prepared to the requisite standard prior to a charge being preferred. The full JfL model will be implemented for the remainder of the MPS during 2004-5.

Victim and witness care

4. To ensure delivery of appropriate standards in relation to victim and witness care in the MPS, the business will be focused in two key locations within the borough structure. Where there is an allegation that a crime has been committed but there is as yet no arrest, responsibility for delivery will rest with the Crime Management Unit (CMU), responsibility post arrest until case completion will rest with the new Victim and Witness Support Desk.

5. As a result of the work being undertaken to develop victim and witness support desks on each borough a user guide manual has been developed. It reflects the practice implemented at the Southwark pilot site.

6. The manual is made available to all boroughs before and during the roll out of victim and witness support desks and will help to create a corporate standard of working practices for victim and witness care.

CPS lawyers at the point of charge

7. Reports submitted to previous Planning Performance Review Committees (PPRC) provided details of the charging pilot scheme placing CPS lawyers at the point of charge. CPS lawyers are currently at the Boroughs of Barnet, Lambeth and Southwark and the Traffic & Transport Criminal Justice Unit (CJU) at Marlowe House. They will be present at a further five boroughs by the end of September. Wherever possible street crime boroughs are being prioritised. All thirty-two boroughs will have access to pre-charge advice by the end of the financial year. This will exceed the target of 20 boroughs in the Annual Plan. Attached at Appendix 1 is the roll out schedule for this project.

CPS Direct

8. London CPS has proposed a trial from September of the national CPS project, CPS Direct. This provides out of normal office hours charging advice to police officers by telephone contact with CPS lawyers at a remote site. It is intended to test this approach in Lambeth and Southwark to build on the work already undertaken. It should be noted that CPS London remain committed to providing lawyers at the point of charge in every borough and that this proposal is not a replacement for that service.

Criminal justice issues – Progress

Joint Performance Meetings

9. All London Boroughs have now taken part in the new joint performance process involving the MPS and CPS London. The meetings involve senior members of MPS Department of Criminal Justice and CPS London along with senior police/CPS managers for the boroughs and CPS Branch being scrutinised. This approach focuses on the joint MPS/CPS accountability for performance and any interface difficulties between the agencies at an operational level. A shared performance improvement plan is developed as a result of these meetings, which is then followed up. It is seen as a success by all parties involved.

10. The meetings have highlighted several issues involving the courts. Therefore, it has now been agreed that there will be similar level of representation from the Greater London Magistrates Courts Authority (GLMCA) at all future meetings. A new round of joint performance meetings is scheduled to begin in October to ensure that the process is repeated across London on at least one further occasion before the end of the performance year.

11. The following aspects of performance are currently measured against targets set by the London Criminal Justice Board (LCJB):

Discontinued cases

12. Discontinued cases are instances where an offender has been charged or summonsed, the files prepared by the police and forwarded to the CPS and at a stage prior to the court hearing the CPS take a decision not to pursue the matter. The reasons vary but include evidential issues, a change of decision by victims or circumstances of the case being such that a prosecution is not in the public interest.

13. There were a total of 25,832 discontinued cases last year from a total of 167,123 cases in the combined magistrates and crown courts. This gives a discontinuance rate of 15.5%.

14. The target set by the LCJB is to reduce the number of discontinued cases by 15%.

15. Performance for the first three months of the year is now available. The total of discontinued cases for April – June 2003 is 5153. This represents a year to date reduction of 12.13% for both Magistrates and Crown Court combined. In the Crown Court the reduction is 18.3% against the same period for 2002.

16. In order to focus on the need to reduce the number of cases that are discontinued the Department of Criminal Justice has introduced internal monthly meetings for all borough CJU managers as well as the MPS/CPS joint performance meetings, described earlier. The Justice for London model is seen as the key platform through which the MPS has the best opportunity to deliver a sustained reduction in the number of cases discontinued and the other criminal justice targets.

Discharged committals

17. A discharged committal occurs when a suspect is charged with either an indictable-only offence (triable in the crown court only) or either-way offence (triable in either the magistrates or crown court) and the offence is prepared for committal to the higher court for trial but discharged prior to the evidence being heard. This may occur due to a change of circumstances or evidential issues.

18. The LCJB set an original performance target for this year of a reduction of 35% in discharged committals. This was predicated on information that the discharged committal rate was running at approximately 200 per month and an expectation that accurate data for 2002-3 would be available. The CPS is the only source of this information. Unfortunately, accurate data for last year cannot be obtained for comparison.

19. The MPS will deliver improved performance through the joint performance meetings and new JfL business processes.

Cracked and ineffective trials

20. A cracked trial is where a date has been set for proceedings but on the date set for trial the defendant offers acceptable pleas or the prosecution offers no evidence. Following a cracked trial, proceedings are completed and no further court time is required.

21. An ineffective trial is where a date has been set aside by the court for trial and on that occasion the expected progress is not made due to action or inaction by one or more of the prosecution, defence or the court and a further listing for trial is required.

22. The LCJB target for 2003-4 is to reduce the number of cracked and ineffective trials through prosecution failures to 10%.

23. The ineffective trial rate through prosecution failures currently stands at 24%.

24. This area of performance spans the MPS, CPS and Courts. Performance is dealt with across the agencies through the London Criminal Justice Board. A significant opportunity is presented by the courts agreement to be included within the joint performance framework, which will start in October with this second round of meetings completed early in the New Year. The JfL model of Victim Witness Support Desk will provide a key opportunity to reduce those trials that are ineffective because prosecution witnesses, police or members of the public do not attend, for whatever reasons.

Persistent Young Offenders

25. The national persistent young offenders (PYO) target relates to timeliness through the criminal justice system from arrest to sentencing. The average time taken should be 71 days or better.

26. Success in this area relies on police, CPS and courts delivery of this target in London and is entirely inter-agency dependent. A high profile performance regime has been put into place within the MPS and in addition each BOCU completes a monthly return that provides the detail behind each PYO. Each magistrates’ court area has a regime of tracker meetings to smooth PYOs through the system as quickly as possible.

27. London has never met the 71 day target before this year. It has consistently improved performance down from over 100 days to an average of 75 days. However, for the first time London achieved an average 66 days in June 2003, the latest month for which data is available.

Warrants

28. The Department of Criminal Justice has implemented the new grading system for warrants, which has been copied by several other forces. This ensures a corporate approach in the classification and prioritisation of warrant execution within the MPS.

29. The system provides a grading system with three categories of warrant as follows:

Grade A

• Serious arrestable offences – as defined by Section 116 (2) PACE;
• MPS defined prominent and development nominals;
• Persistent offenders, as defined in the Government’s Narrowing the Justice Gap initiative;
• MPS defined hate crime;
• Warrants relating to burglary or street crime;
• Warrants relating to registered sex offenders.

Grade B

• All other crime matters which relate to recordable offences
• Any warrants that coincide with an individual borough’s objectives, for example, local community safety plans.

Grade C

• All other warrants, including traffic offences and non-payment of fines passed to the MPS by the GLMCA.

30. This is an area of activity that supports the delivery of the Narrowing the Justice Gap government target.

31. In the first quarter the number of outstanding Grade A warrants, which cover serious and priority crime, have been reduced by 21%.

32. The LCJB target is to reduce the number of outstanding warrants by 15%. There were 15,865 warrants outstanding in April 2003. There were 200 fewer in August, a reduction of 1.5%.

33. A service level agreement is in the final stages of completion between the MPS, GLMCA, Crown Courts, CPS and probation services, which deals with issues such as timely production of warrants by the court, collection, circulation and execution by the MPS.

34. A project is underway to deliver, by the second quarter of 2004, a corporate computerised administration system for warrants on boroughs, in support of the new business processes. It will also allow the provision of corporate data on a borough basis.

Ministerial meetings update

35. Members of the London Criminal Justice Board, along with the Chair of the MPA attended two ministerial meeting with the Solicitor General, Harriet Harman, Home Office Minister, Baroness Scotland, and Department of Constitutional Affairs Minister, Chris Leslie on 2nd July and 16 September 2003. The meetings deal with performance in relation to the LCJB. The intention is to hold these meetings on a monthly basis. The next is on 22 October 2003.

Centralised traffic prosecutions unit

36. A senior member of MPS staff oversees the implementation of this work. Although the accommodation issues have yet to be fully resolved, both the MPS and CPS are fully committed to delivering a satisfactory conclusion, which is in the interests of both organisations.

37. The timescale for the project is to implement phase one by April 2004, which will take over responsibility for approximately a quarter of all boroughs’ traffic work. Then take over all other parts within six months.

National Strategy for Police Information Systems (NSPIS) Custody and Case Preparation

38. NSPIS Custody and Case Preparation are integrated IT solutions to replace the current custody computer and provide case building and tracking support as a single electronic case file, which can be directly transferred between police and CPS. This is a national product delivered as part of the Police Information Technology Organisation (PITO) led national strategy for police information systems. It is centrally funded.

39. The system will be operationally piloted on a single borough. It will support the business change provided by the JfL project. PITO have promised that the systems will be available to start the operational pilot for NSPIS Case Preparation in February 2004 and for NSPIS Custody in late March/early April 2004. The two systems will be linked with information from the NSPIS Custody populating information required by the NSPIS Case Preparation package. Rollout beyond the pilot system is planned to start from June 2004.

Urban Justice Conference – 8 July 2003

40. This was a well-attended conference in which the MPS was a key stakeholder. Speakers included, the Commissioner; Baroness Scotland; Dru Sharpling, the Chief Crown Prosecutor for London; David Muir, MPA; Simon Hughes MP (representing Harriet Harman); Greg Baroni (a conference sponsor).

London Criminal Justice Board

41. There was no LCJB held in August. The latest meeting was held on 11 September at the Victim and Witness Support HQ. The issue of performance targets for discharge committals was discussed and Adrian Smith, the LCJB Performance Officer was tasked with developing some options that will ensure accurate data collection to enable realistic performance measurement against a remodelled target. These options will be discussed at the next meeting.

42. A presentation was given on Criminal Justice Information Technology (CJIT) – Secure e-mail by Jo Wright from the project. CJIT are pressing hard to introduce this facility between all the criminal justice agencies in London by Christmas. Due to the secure e-mail already implemented between the MPS and CPS, the impact on these 2 organisations will be limited.

43. Lead officers signed a Warrants Protocol at the board to improve joined up working in this area.

44. The London area met the PYO target in June, achieving an average of 66 days for arrest to sentence. PA Consulting have been asked by the board to provide more specific data in this area.

45. The board also agreed a Victim and Witness Protocol outlining the activity for each agency in this critical area of business. It is the view of the board that this will be a live business document that will continue to evolve through the Victim and Witness sub-group of the LCJB Executive Secretariat.

46. The next LCJB is scheduled for 9 October.

C. Equality and diversity implications

This is an update report and therefore there are no new equality or diversity implications at this time.

D. Financial implications

There are no financial implications contained in this paper.

E. Background papers

None

F. Contact details

Report author: T/Commander Gerry Howlett, MPS.

For more information contact:

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

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