LCD press notice 1/02
Date: 2 January 2002
Michael Wills, Minister for the courts at the Lord Chancellor's Department, today urged magistrates' courts to play a leading role in tackling cracked, ineffective and vacated trials.
An estimated £41 million a year is wasted on cracked and ineffective trials in the magistrates' courts. A cracked trial happens when a case is concluded without a trial and an ineffective trial happens when a hearing is cancelled on the day it was due to go ahead and has to be delayed to a later date. Both waste time and money and lead to unnecessary trips to court for victims and witnesses, including police officers. Vacated trials can be similarly costly and inconvenient for victims and witnesses when a trial date is cancelled in advance of a hearing and delayed to a later date.
Magistrates' Courts Committees across England and Wales are being urged to adopt a new scheme to identify the number of cracked and ineffective trials and the reasons for them. The scheme then encourages them to work together at a local level with the Crown Prosecution Service and others involved in getting a case to trial to set joint targets and implement strategies to improve performance.
Michael Wills said: "Cracked and ineffective trials waste court time, public money and cause unnecessary stress for victims and witnesses keen for justice to be done without delay. They can also tie up valuable police time when officers attend court to give evidence only to be turned away because a hearing has been cancelled at the last minute. This is unacceptable.
"In order to reduce the number of cracked and ineffective trials we need to first establish the scope, scale and, crucially, the causes of the problem and then get local criminal agencies working together to improve performance. This is what the new joint performance management monitoring scheme aims to do.
"This is not about laying the blame at the door of the court, prosecution or defence. Indeed, sometimes cracked and ineffective trials will be unavoidable, for example, if a defendant is ill. What we do want to encourage, and is already happening in some parts of the country, is constructive joined up working at a local level to reduce these wasted hearings for the benefit of the wider community.
"I urge all 42 Magistrates' Courts Committees to implement this new scheme and lead the drive to improve standards."
The scheme relies on the court recording and analysing the agreed reasons for the wasted hearing. For example, reasons for a cracked trial could be because:
of a late plea change; or
the prosecution ends the case because a witness has withdrawn;
and reasons for an ineffective trial could be because:
the defendant was absent;
a witness was absent;
of lack of court time.
While it is recognised there will always be some cracked and ineffective trials which are unavoidable, for example, if the defendant, key witness or victim is ill, this scheme encourages local criminal justice agencies to draw up strategies to reduce those wasted hearings which could be avoided.
Pilots of the scheme in Cumbria, Durham, Dyfed Powys, Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, Northumbria, North Wales, North Yorkshire, Surrey and the West Midlands saw a major benefit in establishing joint ownership of the problem rather than just seeing it as a court problem. The police became involved in some of the pilot areas and this has already led to action to reduce the non-attendance of police witnesses at cracked and ineffective trials.
Notes to Editors:
1. The joint performance management monitoring scheme for cracked, ineffective and vacated trials was piloted for three months from 2nd April to 29th June 2001 in nine areas: Cumbria, Durham, Dyfed Powys, Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, Northumbria, North Wales, North Yorkshire, Surrey and the West Midlands. The evaluation report is available on the LCD website: www.lcd.gov.uk/magist/evaluation.htm
2. The National Audit Office report, "Criminal Justice Working Together", published in December 1999 estimated that ineffective hearings in the magistrates' courts wasted expenditure of at least £41 million each year.