Criminal Justice update

Report: 8
Date: 12 May 2005
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.

A. Recommendations

That the report be noted.

B. Supporting information

Victim and Witness Care

1. Witness Care Units (WCU) were set up to deliver excellent victim and witness care. They currently support victims and witnesses involved in the Criminal Justice process from the point where a defendant has been charged with an offence. Witness Care Units are now in place on each of the 32 Boroughs and Heathrow.

2. The first phase of the national training programme has been delivered to all witness care staff. In addition, the training was also delivered to WCU staff from British Transport Police and City of London Police. The Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) and Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) personnel jointly delivered the training. Delivery of Phase Two of the national training programme is expected to commence in June 2005. The Witness Care Managers training package has now been amended and Operation Emerald staff will assist with its delivery.

3. The National No Witness, No Justice (NW, NJ) requires co-location of MPS and CPS WCU staff. Camden Borough Operational Command Unit (BOCU) became the first co-located BOCU within the MPS in March 2005. A further five sites have been identified as suitable and CPS staff have been recruited and co-location at these sites will be completed by June 2005. All MPS BOCUs will be co-located by December 2005. Site evaluations for Health and Safety and Information Technology (IT) requirements at the remaining boroughs are currently underway. CPS London will commence a new recruitment campaign for WCU staff in early May 2005.

4. The National team continue to review the WCUs to establish a baseline against national minimum requirements. Recruitment of additional MPS staff for WCUs continues to enable them to meet the minimum requirements and a joint MPS, CPS and City of London Project Board are overseeing the implementation of NW, NJ minimum requirements in London.

5. The levels of victim and witness satisfaction will be measured nationally by the Witness and Victim Experience Survey (WAVES) introduced by the Office for Criminal Justice Reform (OCJR). It will involve telephone interviews and Local Criminal Justice Boards are being asked to assist with the collection of contact details. WCUs will be responsible for identifying victims and witnesses to participate in the survey and each WCU will be expected to provide the details of 15 victims and 15 witnesses on a monthly basis.

Statutory Charging - CPS Lawyers at the Point of Charge

6. Operation Emerald undertook post implementation reviews at three charging sites during February and March. The best practice that was identified during these visits has been circulated to MPS and CPS colleagues involved in Statutory Charging.

7. Operation Emerald and the CPS are investigating the use of one Unique Reference Number (URN) that would be allocated at the start of each case. The URN would then remain in use throughout the life of the case. The use of a single URN would allow the CPS/MPS to improve their performance management with regard to the use of CPS Direct and the progression of cases on which they have provided advice.

8. Operation Emerald has identified Lewisham Borough as a potential site to set up a ‘model office for charging’. This would involve amalgamating the Case Progression Unit and CPS Charging function as well as establishing corporate standards for file building and charging processes. The Charging Project Team will be visiting Lewisham in May for an initial assessment.

Effective Trial Management Programme

9. The aim of the Effective Trial Management Programme (ETMP) is to reduce the number of ineffective trials by improving case preparation and progression from point of charge to the start of the trial or earlier disposal.

10. Local implementation teams have been established for each of the 12 London Crown Court areas and feeder Magistrates’ Courts. The Local Framework for Harrow Crown Court was presented and agreed by the London Criminal Justice Board Executive Secretariat on 19 April 2005.

11. London has been granted £466,000.00 funding for Prosecution Case Progression Officers. It has been agreed CPS London will receive the funding to enable the CPS to provide a Case Progression function.

12. In addition to ETMP two BOCUs, Haringey and Hounslow have been selected to pilot a fast track ETMP scheme. The fast track scheme aims to list cases from first appearance at court to court trial date within 28 days to 42 days. The mechanisms are all in place at Hounslow who went live with the fast track scheme on 29 April 2005.

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

13. Both the Police Information Technology Organisation (PITO) and the MPS have now signed the memorandum of understanding and work towards rolling out NSPIS across the MPS continues. A recent Home Office review endorsed the application from a National perspective and the MPS Directorate of Information is now in the process of writing the contracts to commit the MPS to the product.

14. Resolution of the outstanding technical issues at Newham continues by way of an action plan, owned by the NSPIS Project Team. The key area at the moment is the slow running and printing errors currently being experienced at Newham. A task force consisting of Vivista, ATOS and project team members have been working on this and a number of possible causes have been identified.

15. Version 4 of NSPIS is now available and the project team will shortly start work to move from the current version. This is essential if support for the system from PITO is to be maintained and to be able to take advantage of the facilities, which will become available through the Omega interface. (OMEGA is a facility for joining up other MPS IT systems with NSPIS).

Increasing Detection Rates

16. In January 2005, a paper entitled the ‘Contribution of Sanction Detections Performance to the Offences Brought to Justice Target’ was published by the Office of Criminal Justice Reform and the Prime Ministers Delivery Unit. The Sanction Detection Team has been tasked with reviewing this paper and implementing it throughout the MPS.

17. Several strands of work are already well developed by the Sanction Detection Team to improve detection rates. The Crime Control Strategy Meeting themed performance reviews’ have been undertaken since April 2004. Detection rate improvement and the critical processes that support this has been a constant theme through all reviews. This system enables managers to be held to account for performance, good practice to be shared and assistance to be requested. Operation Emerald undertakes an active role within this.

18. Several critical processes that support maximising detections have been reviewed with new procedures being implemented e.g. crime screening, crime desk manual and primary investigation minimum standards. The software to support this has been developed and is installed and running on the Crime Reporting Information System (CRIS).

19. The training of approx 2,300 sergeants was completed on 26 March 2005. The training was aimed at ‘improving detections through effective leadership and supervision’ which cross cut many of the critical processes and directly addressed the concerns raised in the review around lack of supervision, knowledge gaps and a young and inexperienced work force. The MPS training package and certain documentation has now been adopted as identified “best practice in leadership training” and will be used for delivery of training at a National level.

20. Work has begun on a training needs analysis for the next tranch of training. It is estimated that 20% of all MPS recorded Crime is initially reported by Station Reception Officers, it is therefore essential that this becomes the next area of focus.

Performance

Offences Brought to Justice (OBTJ) London

21. The chart below indicates the London area is currently above target for 2004/05. To ensure achievement of the 13% target in March 2005, the London area will only need to achieve 3,404 OBTJs during March 2005. February managed an estimated 12,519 OBTJs.

22. The 2005-06 target of 160,250 OBTJ will require London to achieve 13,333 OBTJ a month.

Figure 1:

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Sanction Detections

23. There is an upward trend in the Sanction Detection rate from 11% (April 2004) to 17% (March 2005). Performance year to March 2005 the MPS recorded a rate of 14.6%.

Further Analysis of OBTJ

24. Penalty Notices for Disorder (PNDs) issued for the offences of Section 5 Public Order, Theft and Criminal Damage contribute to the OBTJ total for London.

25. Over the last 12 months, a concerted effort in the MPS has seen the monthly total for these categories of PNDs rising to over 1000 per month. Overleaf is a breakdown of each of the disposal contributions to the OBTJ target. Although convictions have fallen there has been a substantial rise in PNDs and cannabis formal warnings.

Post Sentence Interviews and OBTJ

26 The MPS does not undertake Post Sentence Visits with a view to administering a formal caution against the offender. The MPS policy is focused on Pre-Sentence Visits with a view to obtaining Taken Into Considerations (TICs) which are then put before the Courts to obtain both a Sanctioned Detection and an 'Offence Brought to Justice'. To ensure that post sentence visits do not take place this forms part of the quality assurance checks on the Crime Reporting Information System (CRIS). This policy is in accordance with the guidance of the current Home Office Counting Rules.

Ineffective Trials in Magistrates Court

Figure 2:

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London has achieved its 2004-05 target of less than 30% ineffective trials in the Magistrate Court during the last 3-month of the performance year. The last 3 months average was 27.7% (December 2004- February 2005).

Ineffective Trials in Crown Court

London’s performance on ineffective trials in Crown Courts continues to improve. The figure for February 2005 was below 15%.

Discontinuance of MPS cases

Figure 3:

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27. There is a downward trend in the number of discontinuances by the CPS of MPS cases in London, from a high of 11.3% in June 2004. The current three-month average is 10.1% (January 2005 to March 2005).

Persistent Young Offenders

28. The January 2005 Performance has been issued by Department for Constitutional Affairs -. London results are:

• MPS Arrest to Sentence – 79.9 days. Five cases caused the MPS to miss the 71-day target.
• The MPS has 51.1% of its Magistrates Court cases being dealt within 60 days.
• The Crown Court average is 217.7 days for the five cases

29. A review of London’s data is being conducted.

Penalty Notices for Disorder

Figure 4:

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Figure 5:

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Emerald Warrants Management System

30. The period 24 December 2004 to 31 March 2005 has seen the MPS reduce the number of fail to appear/bench warrants by 13.6% to 13,695.

31. Since the introduction of the Emerald Warrants Management System in November 2004, police have executed 8,000 warrants and asked for 2,500 to be withdrawn. Withdrawal of these warrants is based on those that were issued with false details, the age of the warrant for summary only offences or not in the public interest to pursue.

32. There are still on average 2,200 fail to appear/bench warrants issued each month by the courts. Operation Emerald is targeting a number of key areas in order to reduce this figure. Two key areas which are being addressed immediately are:

• Use of bail from police stations,
• Training recruits and probationers in identification issues.

33. Operation Emerald is working in partnership with the court and other police units in order to reduce the number of outstanding Asset Warrants.

34. Operation Emerald is also working in partnership with the other criminal justice agencies in order to meet new criminal justice targets of ensuring notification of issuing of warrant from Court to police takes place within 24 hours. This will be progressed and implemented by October 2005.

Centralised Traffic Criminal Justice Unit

35. The centralisation of traffic prosecution work has been implemented according to plan. The northeast and central regions went live on the 1 November 2004 ahead of the previous 22 November date. The northwest and central regions went live at the beginning of February 2005. All summons traffic prosecution work and the input of traffic collision reports has now been centralised at Marlowe House.

36. The first gateway court at Greenwich, used by the south east region, continues to report efficiencies in effective first hearings, low numbers of trials and savings in police officer time in reducing the need to call them to court allowing them to be available for patrol duty. However, some fine-tuning of arrangements agreed with the court has been necessary to ensure that all work is dealt with without backlogs of cases awaiting court action. The gateway courts for the northeast and central regions (Redbridge and Marylebone) went live on 7 March and 23 February 2005 respectively. The OCU’s gateway courts for the northwest and southwest regions (Highbury and Wimbledon) are due to go live on 19 May and 21 May 2005 respectively.

37. The contract for the development of the Traffic Reporting Information System (TRIS) has been awarded to Steria Ltd. Development of Phase 1 of the new software has started and delivery will be on 1 September 2005. This will give the OCU a usable core system to deal with collision reports and process cases and should bring about considerable efficiency improvements. Phase 2 of the system will involve the construction of interfaces with the CPS and NSPIS Case Preparation System. Because the MPS rollout of the Case Preparation System will now not take place until 2006, implementation of Phase 2 of TRIS will be delayed in step with the NSPIS System.

CCTV evidence in courts

38. The London Criminal Justice Board (LCJB) and MPS have identified that the wide-ranging and increased use of CCTV evidence in London in the criminal justice process may be causing delays and contributing to ineffective trials and attrition. A one-day snapshot review of over five cases from every MPS CJU identified that issues with CCTV evidence were responsible for approximately 10% of ineffective trials. The LCJB, led by Operation Emerald therefore held a multi-agency workshop on Monday 21 February 2005 as an initial scoping exercise, the key findings of which were:

• No other National Agency is tackling the issue
• There is a need to invest in specialist staff at Borough Operational Command (BOCU) level
• More training on disclosure issues is required
• There is a need to agree a standard format for police, CPS and courts to play CCTV evidence in courts
• A need to set up a London Programme Board
• A need to link in with Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO)
• LCJB have been awarded 20K from the Office of Criminal Justice Reform to progress this issue.

39. As a result of the findings from the workshop, the LCJB have given their endorsement to proceeding with the project. A multi-agency CCTV Programme Board has been set up to look at a strategic and tactical way forward for London. The inaugural meeting of the Board was held at the Empress State Building, Earls Court, on 28 April 2005. The aim is to provide a corporate approach to the use of CCTV and other video evidence throughout the Criminal Justice process.

40. Stakeholders invited to take part on the MPS Project Board include the Department for Constitutional Affairs, Her Majesty’s Courts Service, the Home Office, legal advisors from the Crown Prosecution Service and Defence, the Government Office for London, the Association of London Government, Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships, and MPS Video Laboratory services.

41. Commander Hitchcock will be the ACPO lead for the MPS. A meeting took place on 15 April between Detective Chief Superintendent Benbow and the Deputy Chief Constable (DCC) of Cheshire, Graham Gerrard to ensure that there would be links on this issue at an ACPO level. DCC Gerrard has written a paper to make a proposal for a National Board for all CCTV issues. It was agreed that the London Programme Board would report to the National Board and take responsibility for all Criminal Justice CCTV related issues.

Update from the last London Criminal Justice Board Meeting.

42. No London Criminal Justice Board meeting was held for the month of April therefore there is no update.

C. Race and equality impact

It is acknowledged that there is a variation in confidence in the criminal justice system across black and minority ethnic communities/people. In order to address this the London Criminal Justice Board have set up an Independent Advisory Group to look at the issues and how confidence can be improved.

D. Financial implications

The finance issues are highlighted in the NSPIS update.

E. Background papers

None

F. Contact details

Report authors: Detective Chief Superintendent Mark Benbow, Territorial Policing

For more information contact:

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

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