The CLSA wishes to thank Sir Brian Leveson and his team for the care and thought they have put into the Independent Review of the Criminal Courts. We will be carefully studying the report which was published today.
In our submission to the Review we made a number of recommendations but did make it plain we did not believe a case for an ‘Intermediate Court’ had been made out and expressed concerns about any removal of the right to jury trial.
The published report contains a number of recommendations, but the central theme is that it recognises a system that is broken and severely underfunded. Our members will recognise that stark picture.
Many of the recommendations are to be welcomed including those around out of court disposals, early engagement and committals for sentence. We do remain deeply sceptical around the recommendation concerning a new ‘Crown Court Bench Division’ and whether it would make a substantial difference to the backlog, which is of particular concern given the serious erosion it represents to civil liberties and the potential expense as well as a being a retrograde step with regards to a suitably diverse and representative arbiter of fact. The trial by jury is one of our greatest exports as a nation and we should be slow to consign it to the annals of history.
That having been said the Review is a wholistic piece and recognises the many different intertwined strands of the Criminal Justice System. We will be digesting the Report in full and will be commenting further in due course.