Press

A support service aimed at offenders in Highbury Corner Magistrates’ Court has celebrated helping 600 defendants in its first year.

The Centre for Justice Innovation says the London Family Drug and Alcohol Court cost £560,000 across its 2014-15 caseload, a sum that includes expenses such as specialist staff salaries and office costs. But it generated estimated gross savings to public sector bodies of £1.29m arising from that caseload over five years.

An innovative court that helps keep families together and assists parents in overcoming drug and alcohol abuse saves the taxpayer twice the cost of its upkeep, new research has suggested.

The Better Courts report by the Centre for Justice Innovation, a charity seeking to improve the justice system, said the court’s interventions with drug or alcohol using parents would deliver an average saving to public services of £15,850 per family over five years.

American-style “problem-solving” courts could be extended nationwide after a study found that they save taxpayers thousands of pounds per case.

Ministers frequently reverse decisions taken by their predecessors, sometimes wisely, often not. But it usually happens after an election has produced a change of government. What is remarkable about the justice ministry since last May is that the new Tory Lord Chancellor, Michael Gove, has been systematically undoing many signature policies of his Tory predecessor, Chris Grayling.

In a speech on February 8th David Cameron set out what he claimed was “the biggest shake-up of prisons since the Victorian era”. The package included more freedom for governors, league tables for jails and measures to improve ex-cons’ job prospects.

Lord Chancellor Michael Gove has set up a team to investigate how to establish United States-style courts that would monitor drug offenders rather than send them to jail, in the hope it could reduce prisoner numbers.

Despite overall falls in crime, our criminal courts are facing new challenges, the most serious of which is the rise in a number of complex and serious types of crime, like sexual offending and domestic abuse. As our new report outlines, these crimes have always posed challenges for our criminal justice system: the harm caused is high, the reporting of the crime to the system is low and its prosecution, let alone its resolution, is hard and resource intensive.

The criminal justice system should take into account the developmental maturity of young adults with the creation of specialist courts, a thinktank has said.