Criminal Justice: Courts & Sentencing

"Order in the Courts: restoring faith through local justice" A Policy report from the Courts and Sentencing Working Group | 2 November 2009

'Every day, our criminal justice system deals with the consequences of social breakdown. When the same characters - the same individuals - appear in local courts time and time again, we must recognise there is something wrong with the system' Rt Hon. Iain Duncan Smith MP, Order in the Courts

This 192 page report draws on interviews with the public, experts, the judiciary, probation and others involved in the criminal justice system. It makes 40 recommendations which will shift the focus of magistrates’ courts, the probation service and prisons onto the communities they serve and will make sentences more productive.

The report makes recommendations on a variety of typical problems facing local justice institutions, including deprivation, addiction, mental illness and the broad loss of public confidence.

The five key recommendations are:

1. Magistrates’ courts should be put in charge of the sentences they pass, with power to hold probation officers and prison governors to account and to vary the terms of the order imposed if the offender does not comply.

2. Courts should be able to sentence offenders to residential drug rehabilitation and require that psychiatric hospitals accept offenders with mental health problems.

3. Short prison sentences of less than 2 months (i.e. 4 weeks nominal) should be abolished, and offenders leaving short sentences should be supervised.

4. Strengthened Local Criminal Justice Boards should control the administration and budgets of local justice institutions.

5. Courts must state clearly how long an offender will serve in prison or under supervision, taking into account any early release schemes.

Order in the Courts: restoring faith through local justice" A Policy Report by the Courts and Sentencing Working Group
Executive Summary

Criminal Justice: Courts & Sentencing                                                                            
The courts are supposed to pursue justice, and discipline and rehabilitate law-breakers. But there is a widespread loss of faith in the sentencing process. Citizens do not believe that the courts punish appropriately. Sentences often fail to reflect the crime and appear opaque. Moreover, sentencing strategies do not seem successful in rehabilitating prisoners.

Criminal activity and punishment are too distantly linked in the minds of many criminals because of a cumbersome and bureaucratic trials and sentencing process.

Time Lag

• 32% of defendants wait longer than 143 days between committing an indictable offence and being sentenced if they plead not guilty in a magistrate’s court.[i]

Crimes Missed

• In 2005 there were only three convictions for every 100 BCS estimated crimes.[ii]

Misguided Resources

• A report by the Prison Reform Trust on the numbers in prison as a result of technical breaches of post-release licences estimated that approximately 8000 offenders were in prison having been recalled as a result of enforcement procedures.

Effective sentencing

• 50.5% of people who are given a community sentence go on to reoffend within two years compared to 64.7% who are sent to prison.[iii]
• The most ineffective types of community punishment are drug treatment and testing orders with 82.3% of offenders going on reoffend.[iv]
• Since their launch in 1999 till the end of 2005 a total of 9618 ASBOs have been issued; [v]however there have been 6491 breaches proven in a court of law.[vi]
• Some 50,000 people are sent to prison for less than six months each year.[vii]

The courts and sentencing policy group is undertaking a major review of court procedure and sentencing strategies, with the goal of restoring the propriety of judicial retribution and the effectiveness of criminal deterrence. We want to link what’s happening on the streets with what’s happening in the courts. We think that the excessive piecemeal reform of the last few years is only damaging the system further, and the aim of this working group is to establish clear guiding principles about the purpose of policing and sentencing, and consequently to recommend policy.

  Image: Joe Gratz  

CHAIRMAN

Martin Howe QC,
Martin Howe is a practising Queen’s Counsel specialising in European law and intellectual property law, who conducts cases before the English courts, the European Court of Justice, and other European tribunals. He was appointed QC in 1996. He was called to the Bar (Middle Temple) in 1978. Before joining chambers Martin worked as a commercial and systems software programmer for IBM and for a software house, and continues to maintain an interest in evolving computer technology. 

WORKING GROUP

Victoria Elvidge JP

Simon Pellew OBE
CEO, Time for Families

Helen Reeves, DBE
former Chief Executive, Victim Support

His Honour Judge John Samuels QC (Retd.)
Chairman, Prisoners’ Education Trust

Tom Stancliffe
former Secretary, Conservative Social Justice Policy Group

Malcolm Thomson
Project Manager, CLINKS

Advisors

Rob Allen
Director, International Centre for Prison Studies, King’s College London; Chairman, CLINKS

Professor Sir A.E. Bottoms
Emeritus Wolfson Professor of Criminology at Cambridge; Honorary Professor of Criminology at Sheffield

District Judge Daphne Wickham