It may be a surprise to the lay person but there are really very few people involved in determining how much money is spent on criminal justice in England and Wales. And that relatively small group of people, officials and Ministers in Whitehall, have just finished the latest round of the grand game, the Spending Review. At one level, the Spending Review is a series of technocratic and financial arguments that are exchanged between Government departments and the Treasury. But, of course, the spending review process is also an essentially political process, dependent on the judgements of, and relationships between, Ministers. Nowhere is this clearer than in the criminal justice settlement. The announcement of protected police budgets in last week’s Spending Review came as a big surprise to forces anticipating continuing substantial cuts. It was, it seems, the tragic events in Paris which forced the Chancellor’s hand. The question for reformers is that with the dust of the Spending Review settling, what ought to be done with the money? At the Centre, we think there are two clear choices that officials and Ministers can make, amongst others.
First, in protecting police budgets, forces should go beyond merely preserving the current size of their workforce and take a far more active interest in understanding and managing the current and future demand for their services. This is not an area in which all forces have excelled. The National Audit Office recently reported that “police forces have insufficient understanding of the demand for their services.” Getting a handle on this means grappling with complicated questions, including how changing (and more complex) crime patterns and significant funding cuts to other sectors impact on service delivery.
One simple way to tackle some of the demand on the system is the increased use of youth diversion - whereby young people arrested for low-level behaviour, often for the first time, are dealt with without escalating use of the formal justice system. Diverting a young person typically allows officers to deal with the case more quickly by handing it off to local partners (often Youth Offending Teams) allows officers to return to frontline duties more quickly, and for resources to be better focused on tackling serious and complex crime. Importantly, this is not just about managing demand, but it is a measure proven to be effective at reducing re-offending for young people. However, youth diversion schemes need support to continue. Because these fall outside any agency’s statutory responsibilities, they are particularly prone to disinvestment. We have developed a toolkit for practitioners involved in, or considering creating, youth diversion schemes. In part, this provides guidance on a method of demonstrating the cost effectiveness of diversion through its local impact on justice system stakeholders - prominently including the police.
Second, the Ministry of Justice has secured an additional £420 million in capital expenditure for transforming the use of IT in courts. This is on top of the £380 million secured in 2014/15. This should be good news for people that have to use our courts in the future. But, despite the capital investment, savings continue to need to be made. The resource expenditure for the Ministry of Justice is still set to decrease by 15%. To realise real savings, we need to acknowledge that many cases don’t really need to be heard in a courtroom at all. Having defendants and witnesses physically travel to court, often to wait for hours only to have a hearing cancelled or, when it does take place, to spend a few minutes in the courtroom, is clearly frustrating for those who use the courts and inefficient for the system.
If we can shift some cases that currently go to court into online processes, we must, at the same time, ensure that all processes that seek to resolve cases are fair and feel fair. Increased perceptions of fairness are not just good in and of themselves but the evidence shows that being fair increases people’s willingness to comply with the law. We have a once in a generation opportunity to build fairness into the way that services are provided and that opportunity is now, as we design them. In particular, the language used must be easily understandable. Much of the written material that courts use —forms, reminders, and other paperwork— are written with the requirements of the legal system in mind, rather than the people receiving them. Designing new systems gives us a chance to change that. If we direct people's cases into online systems, or continue to ask them to appear in court, it should be done only with clear explanations of the procedures that will be followed every step of the way, especially as to what the potential consequences of a guilty plea are.
Neither of these simple ideas may be very headline grabbing. But they are part of a wider argument we are making to Government and others to build a better justice system. Next week, we will be releasing our new policy paper setting our ideas about these and other issues in full, a blueprint for innovation. What is clear is that the spending review makes the need for that innovation ever more urgent.