The Ministry of Justice has launched a Call for Evidence on Local Criminal Justice Boards (LCJBs) on 8 January 2024. Local Criminal Justice System (CJS) partners are crucial to driving improvements across the system, and this Call for Evidence presents a real opportunity to better understand the challenges that LCJBs face and inform future policy.
The Call for Evidence is live until 23 February 2024 and can be accessed here: www.gov.uk/government/consultations/local-criminal-justice-board-call-for-evidence
Understanding the local aspect of the CJS is a key issue and there has been an increased interest in the role of local groups and local leaders to drive improvements, particularly LCJBs. We have made steps to address this, including publication of renewed guidance for LCJBs in March 2023 and holding the first LCJB conference in April 2023, but we want to go further. Evidence gathered from this Call for Evidence will be considered in conjunction with other ongoing work relating to LCJBs, and used to better understand local CJS challenges and inform future policy and support for local leaders.
This Call for Evidence is seeking evidence from all parties with an interest in LCJBs to better understand the challenges that LCJBs face and how they can best be supported. Therefore, it is important that the views of the whole of the local criminal justice system and associated sectors are reflected in this Call for Evidence, so we are particularly keen to hear from representatives from the criminal law legal community and encourage you and colleagues to respond with your views.
Where possible, respondents should answer questions as individuals, rather than as a collective LCJB or organisation. Where individuals are part of, or have an interest in, multiple LCJBs they are free to respond in relation to one or multiple LCJBs and can indicate which LCJB(s) their response relates to in the ‘About You’ section. Respondents are only required to respond to questions they feel are relevant to them. Should they prefer, individuals are also welcome to respond to the Call for Evidence anonymously by omitting to complete the ‘About You’ section.
We will also be holding a virtual roundtable session on the Call for Evidence via Microsoft Teams on Monday 5th February 2024 between 3:30pm – 5pm, for individuals to come along to provide any verbal views on the questions within the survey. An agenda for the session will be circulated ahead of time. If you are interested in taking part in this roundtable session, please let us know via lcjb.evidence@justice.gov.uk
If you have any questions or queries relating to this Call for Evidence, please direct them to the Criminal Justice Insights team via the following email address: lcjb.evidence@justice.gov.uk
Many Thanks