Struggling to cope The quality of the CPS’s handling of disclosure remained ‘unacceptably low’ with prosecutors failing to identify when police had not disclosed all the relevant evidence in more than half of cases, as reported by the Justice Gap. The new study by HM Chief Inspector Kevin McGinty followed a damning 2017 joint inspection
A symbol of swashbuckling womanhood Lawyers fell over themselves to pay tribute to the, er, Beyoncé of the legal profession – Lady Brenda Hale retires next month. ‘Clearly, she is a woman who cannot see a glass ceiling without breaking through it,’ said Lord Reed, the incoming Supreme Court president. ‘All these achievements, and the personality
Weapons-grade shithousery Boris Johnson was accused of plagiarism – not to mention ‘weapons-grade shithousery’ – by the Secret Barrister for having ‘basically copied and pasted my blog post’ (as reported in the Independent). Over the weekend the PM posted a 16 tweet thread on the London Bridge terror case about sentencing which bore an uncanny
Manifestly awful The Conservative party manifesto delivered on its well-trailed promises of 20,000 new police officers, 10,000 more prison places and a ratcheting up of sentencing powers – reported in the Justice Gap. A raft of criminal justice policies were unveiled which would represent a clampdown on the perceived excesses of ‘soft justice’ as identified
Manifesto promises ‘Whatever the intentions of politicians and commentators, this general election is destined to be the narrowest of single-issue campaigns. Brexit will push other issues such as justice to the fringes of debate and those important but perhaps technical issues that typically struggle for airspace (eg, legal aid) won’t have a look in,’ I
Perverse incentives Conviction targets may be behind the decline in rape prosecutions which are at their lowest since 2008 – as revealed by freelance journalist Melanie Newman in an investigation for the Law Society Gazette. The CPS code of practice states that offenders must be charged if a conviction is in the public interest and is
Courts ‘strained to breaking’ MPs called for a ‘pause for breath’ on the government’s £1.2bn court modernisation programme as well as an ‘immediate moratorium’ on court closures (as reported on the Justice Gap). In a damning report that described the justice system as in ‘administrative chaos’, the House of Commons’ justice committee warned that the
Collapsing cases The number of collapsed criminal cases has ‘almost doubled in four years’, reported The Times (here). Figures from the CPS showed that on average last year about two criminal cases a day were dropped because of delays in bringing them to court or an abuse of process. ‘The rising number of collapsed cases
Priti scary ‘We are coming after you,’ threatened Priti Patel last week at the Conservative Party conference in Manchester. The ‘you’ being criminals, of course (as opposed to voters in marginal seats). The home secretary, who described herself as a ‘daughter of immigrants’ who needed ‘no lectures from the north London metropolitan liberal elite’, promised
Breaking point The latest criminal court statistics ‘sparked alarm among lawyers’ over ‘appalling’ crime detection rates and a growing backlog of cases, reported Jemma Slingo for the Law Society’s Gazette (here). According to the MoJ stats, the number of Crown court receipts and disposals ‘have fallen steadily over the past three years. While receipts rose
