Preamble
I've been a bit pre-occupied of late on domestic matters, but noticed that yesterday for no obvious reason the blog attracted 4,698 hits. I can only assume it was connected in some way to the budget, the ending of the public sector pay freeze and the possibility of more cash for the MoJ. Or maybe it was a probation officer turning up in Eastenders this week, or angst over not getting contractual increments? Meanwhile, this from labourlist confirms what we've known all along about courts:-
In the 18 years I spent as a probation officer, things changed a lot. Like most people joining the profession in 2002, I was initially motivated by the idea of rehabilitation, but court work was an essential part of the job.
Each week, my colleagues and I would spend around two hours interviewing those recently convicted. This was for a document known as a pre-sentence report: a detailed analysis of their offence, background, circumstances, risk to the public and proposal of what sentence would be most appropriate. It provided genuine opportunity for rehabilitation of those convicted and justice for victims.
Also once a week, each of us would spend the day in the local magistrates’ court writing a quicker version of this report for people convicted of minor crimes and furnishing magistrates with information about the people appearing already on probation orders. We were part of a functioning criminal justice system.
This came to an end for me in 2011, when Woolwich Magistrates’ Court, a ten-minute walk from the Probation Office, closed and the building was sold. Gradually, we saw a decrease in cases being heard quickly. By 2017, Greenwich Magistrates and Woolwich County Court had also closed.
Greenwich wasn’t alone in losing its court. When I began working for the London Probation Area, one of many names I was to be employed by, there were 320 magistrates’ court in England and Wales. Today, there are 165.
The sale of these buildings generated at least £223m for the public purse, but of course we are now seeing the real costs. Defendants, witnesses, police, lawyers and justices now commonly travel more than 50 miles to access local justice. Cases are taking years to be heard.
In June 2021, there were more than 60,000 outstanding Crown Court cases, and more than 386,000 in the magistrates’ court. It’s not just the loss of buildings that caused the court crisis. A complete failure to appreciate those working in the criminal justice system has led to staff shortages.
In 2020, inspectors rated all of the probation divisions as requiring improvement on staffing, with none of the areas fully staffed. High rates of staff sickness averaged 11 days per person, 50% of which related to mental health difficulties, and there were 650 job vacancies nationwide.
Many of these vacancies are likely a result of the disastrous changes made to the service in 2014 by Chris Grayling, who split the service in two, with half run by private sector agencies. The ethos of the organisation was changed, and six out of ten probation officers had a workload over the 100% target. Earlier this year, the services were amalgamated – but it’s not easy to put a broken organisation back together.
It was not as if the problems were unpredictable: Grayling ignored significant warnings from within his department to push through his reforms in 2014. And since then, MPs on the public accounts committee have said the reforms were rushed through at breakneck speed, taking “unacceptable risks” with taxpayers’ money. The justice committee has described the overhaul as a “mess” and the cause of “serious issues”.
The government has had to bail out the private providers at an estimated cost of £467m. I am one of many experienced probation staff who left the profession in this era – no longer recognising the organisation as one that could change lives, but rather one that had lost its identity and purpose.
Other areas of the criminal justice system face similar crises. For example, the Criminal Bar Association has warned that clearing the backlog is being hindered by a shortage of barristers. Falling rates of pay, in large part due to cuts in legal aid over the past decade, have led to an exodus from the profession. In the four years to 2020, the pool of criminal barristers shrank by 11%, from 2,553 to 2,273. It has also become an ageing profession, with 45% of barristers who specialise in crime aged 45 or over.
Of course, it suited the government to blame this on the pandemic. But coronavirus exacerbated an already growing backlog of cases – the pandemic didn’t create it.
The new Justice Secretary Dominic Raab now wants people to be able to look up their local court online and check how quickly cases are dealt with. The new national register will give scores on the speed cases go through the system, and on the ‘quality’ of justice served, measured by the percentage of guilty pleas before cases come to court, as well as the number of cases rearranged because of problems with the prosecution.
The ratings will initially cover the whole of England and Wales, but it is understood the Justice Secretary is keen on introducing scorecards on a more regional level, so that in future members of the public would be able to look at the performance of local courts.
Now, in my experience, people don’t generally give too much thought to courts until, for whatever reason, they need to attend court themselves. What you are supposed to do with this information is a mystery. If, as a victim, you see your local court is a poor performer, you can hardly choose to take your case elsewhere.
This feels like an attempt to blame those working in the criminal justice system for the problems that were created by the Conservative Party and their Justice Secretaries playing games with the services until they could no longer function properly. A score card won’t change that.
Kelly Grehan
Borough councillor in Dartford and a county councillor in Kent, a member of the LGA Labour Women’s Taskforce and a member of the Fabian Women’s Network Committee.
Each week, my colleagues and I would spend around two hours interviewing those recently convicted. This was for a document known as a pre-sentence report: a detailed analysis of their offence, background, circumstances, risk to the public and proposal of what sentence would be most appropriate. It provided genuine opportunity for rehabilitation of those convicted and justice for victims.
Also once a week, each of us would spend the day in the local magistrates’ court writing a quicker version of this report for people convicted of minor crimes and furnishing magistrates with information about the people appearing already on probation orders. We were part of a functioning criminal justice system.
This came to an end for me in 2011, when Woolwich Magistrates’ Court, a ten-minute walk from the Probation Office, closed and the building was sold. Gradually, we saw a decrease in cases being heard quickly. By 2017, Greenwich Magistrates and Woolwich County Court had also closed.
Greenwich wasn’t alone in losing its court. When I began working for the London Probation Area, one of many names I was to be employed by, there were 320 magistrates’ court in England and Wales. Today, there are 165.
The sale of these buildings generated at least £223m for the public purse, but of course we are now seeing the real costs. Defendants, witnesses, police, lawyers and justices now commonly travel more than 50 miles to access local justice. Cases are taking years to be heard.
In June 2021, there were more than 60,000 outstanding Crown Court cases, and more than 386,000 in the magistrates’ court. It’s not just the loss of buildings that caused the court crisis. A complete failure to appreciate those working in the criminal justice system has led to staff shortages.
In 2020, inspectors rated all of the probation divisions as requiring improvement on staffing, with none of the areas fully staffed. High rates of staff sickness averaged 11 days per person, 50% of which related to mental health difficulties, and there were 650 job vacancies nationwide.
Many of these vacancies are likely a result of the disastrous changes made to the service in 2014 by Chris Grayling, who split the service in two, with half run by private sector agencies. The ethos of the organisation was changed, and six out of ten probation officers had a workload over the 100% target. Earlier this year, the services were amalgamated – but it’s not easy to put a broken organisation back together.
It was not as if the problems were unpredictable: Grayling ignored significant warnings from within his department to push through his reforms in 2014. And since then, MPs on the public accounts committee have said the reforms were rushed through at breakneck speed, taking “unacceptable risks” with taxpayers’ money. The justice committee has described the overhaul as a “mess” and the cause of “serious issues”.
The government has had to bail out the private providers at an estimated cost of £467m. I am one of many experienced probation staff who left the profession in this era – no longer recognising the organisation as one that could change lives, but rather one that had lost its identity and purpose.
Other areas of the criminal justice system face similar crises. For example, the Criminal Bar Association has warned that clearing the backlog is being hindered by a shortage of barristers. Falling rates of pay, in large part due to cuts in legal aid over the past decade, have led to an exodus from the profession. In the four years to 2020, the pool of criminal barristers shrank by 11%, from 2,553 to 2,273. It has also become an ageing profession, with 45% of barristers who specialise in crime aged 45 or over.
Of course, it suited the government to blame this on the pandemic. But coronavirus exacerbated an already growing backlog of cases – the pandemic didn’t create it.
The new Justice Secretary Dominic Raab now wants people to be able to look up their local court online and check how quickly cases are dealt with. The new national register will give scores on the speed cases go through the system, and on the ‘quality’ of justice served, measured by the percentage of guilty pleas before cases come to court, as well as the number of cases rearranged because of problems with the prosecution.
The ratings will initially cover the whole of England and Wales, but it is understood the Justice Secretary is keen on introducing scorecards on a more regional level, so that in future members of the public would be able to look at the performance of local courts.
Now, in my experience, people don’t generally give too much thought to courts until, for whatever reason, they need to attend court themselves. What you are supposed to do with this information is a mystery. If, as a victim, you see your local court is a poor performer, you can hardly choose to take your case elsewhere.
This feels like an attempt to blame those working in the criminal justice system for the problems that were created by the Conservative Party and their Justice Secretaries playing games with the services until they could no longer function properly. A score card won’t change that.
Kelly Grehan
Borough councillor in Dartford and a county councillor in Kent, a member of the LGA Labour Women’s Taskforce and a member of the Fabian Women’s Network Committee.
It just one part of living in Tory Britain 2021.
ReplyDeleteWe've had over a decade of shrinking the State, unsustainable cuts to public services and privatisation. We've had over a decade of a government that has no concept of 'social', its fixated on free market economy and the individual.
I find it telling that Dominic Rabbs response to the courts backlog is to introduce league tables and score cards, as if somehow introducing an element of competition will allow free market ideology to play its part and solve the problem.
Yet free market ideology has been the model the government has championed for eleven years now, and everywhere I look I see crisis, chaos and dispair.
It's the government that has the obligation to its citizens to ensure its social structures function correctly and effectively, not the markets.
Covid has provided a much welcomed smokescreen for the government (and the markets) to hang their failures on, but the truth is that the country is in its current state because of Tory ideology, not Covid19.
'Getafix
Getafix after the budget this week government spending as a percentage of GDP is higher than any point since the 1970's and taxes are higher than any point in the last 70 years. You can accuse this government of a lot but they definitely aren't shrinking the state. Arguably this tory government is the most economically centrist ever.
DeleteDaft Osborne wrote off tax for shell oil and BP in the North sea . Tax payers lose this revenue amounting to 142 billion in 3 years . Hey did pay their share holders the dividends on running cost being reduced by the tax break which ran them 42 billion. All these figures would have paid covid furlough schemes and fixed the national debt. All this money lost by Tory treats for their chums. In the meantime the oil and gas they pump out is free to them some measly under rated licence fee . They cited the tax break to pay for decomission of empty oil rigs fields and remove the metal. Bizzare what the fuck is their profits for the just share holders while we the tax payer foot another British national industry bill . The worker pay the bill private companies take the profits. The stupid in this country always ask where labour will fund it's plans from . Their thick to think thbetories would pay for social British need when they van take the money out for their yachts and super life of filthy rich. That drax Dorset guy a slave trader millionaire in parliament wtf does he know or value for ordinary people's experience. The people in this country are politically illiterate . Perhaps we deserve the greed culture of the tory evil.
Deletehttps://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/598732
DeleteI CAN and Do accuse the Tory government of shrinking the State. They've done so for the last decade. That's why there's not enough police officers, doctors, nurses, probation officers. It's why there's not enough access to mental health services, and why the social care system is crumbling. It's why there's not enough social housing and its why the education system is such a mess. It's why local councils can't provide the services needed. It's why our transport networks are so bad and so expensive.
DeleteThe Tories have privatised and outsourced their civic responsibilities to private enterprise to such an extent nothing works properly anymore.
Anything that Sunak announced in the budget last week is a drop in the ocean to what the Tories have stripped out in the previous decade.
The recent budget has been mainly enforced on Sunak rather then being a policy choice. Partly by a necessary response to the pandemic, partly by the consequences of leaving the EU, and mostly by austerity and under investment in our social fabric for the past ten years.
Tory Britain 2021 might seem bleak now. Tory Britain 2022\2023 will be even bleaker.
'Getafix
https://www-standard-co-uk.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/ministry-of-justice-court-closures-england-wales-b963913.html?amp_js_v=a6&_gsa=1&&usqp=mq331AQKKAFQArABIIACAw%3D%3D#aoh=16359265666119&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&_tf=From%20%251%24s&share=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.standard.co.uk%2Fnews%2Fuk%2Fministry-of-justice-court-closures-england-wales-b963913.html
DeleteEvery modern crisis is manufactured - by politicians and/or those wealthy enough to exert undue influence.
ReplyDeleteThose carrying the can are, almost without fail, without any meaningful power or agency.
In the last thirty to forty years successive govt's have disenfranchised & deprofessionalised multiple areas of work in order to shift control to politicians.
Teachers, lawyers, probation staff, environmental health, public health, nursing & healthcare... all are examples of the centralisation & accumulation of power into the hands of dangerously ideological fuckwits who are, in turn, massively vulnerable to manipulation because of their hubris, their greed for power & wealth & status.
This govt is the perfect storm - A Benny Hill govt. Look what happened to napo when we had our very own Benny Hill in charge - total meltdown of professional standards, loss of any resistance to damaging behaviours, capitulation of the profession to political imperative.
The UK is falling down the same rabbit-hole. We're a laughing stock at the G20 - its the saddest Ultra-Benny Hill show.
note: "The actions of ultras groups are occasionally extreme and they may be influenced by political ideologies such as conservatism, or views on racism, which range from avowedly nationalist to anti-fascist."
Deliberate & wilful manipulation of news/media is a key strategy of the govt to ensure the manufacture of bespoke crises:
ReplyDeletehttps://medium.com/@edwinhayward/how-a-single-mistranslation-seeded-dozens-of-negative-news-reports-about-the-french-and-brexit-d96101227605
Also one might wish to refer to Cummings/Johnson et al during Brexit campaigns, fuel 'shortage', and soon-to-be-replaced Kuennsberg's recent "mis-sending" of inflammatory tweets.
Wonder if Miss Laura will be leaving the publicly-funded Beeb role to assume the more honest stance of being paid by Johnson & co, whom she clearly bats for whenever she can?