Got any views on the Criminal Justice System ? Just a few, you say…. Well now's the time to get them off your chest. The Ministry of Justice recently published a consultation Green Paper ‘Engaging Communities in Criminal Justice' seeking your views on proposals for reform.

The paper sets out the Government’s proposals for transforming criminal justice from a system that does things to communities into (in their words) a true service that does things for and with communities.

Integration is the theme running through the paper (of both services and information provision) and Louise Casey’s footprint appears throughout. The vision of the paper is of ‘a criminal justice service in which all partners are focused on local communities and work together to tackle crime, deliver justice and provide high-quality services that inspire public confidence’.

The rationale is that if communities trust the system to deliver on its promises, they will be more willing to report crime; to come forward to give evidence as witnesses; to participate as volunteers and jurors or (maybe stretching the point here) to consider a career in the CJS.

The Green Paper proposals are centred on three areas:
strengthening the connections between communities and the prosecution and court services;
ensuring that justice outcomes are more responsive and more visible and,
improving communication between local people and their criminal justice services.

Crucial to the whole plan is improving the responsiveness and accountability of the CPS and the magistrates’ courts to the communities they serve. So Community Prosecutors will be introduced in at least 30 pathfinder areas for 12 months in 2009-10. The intention is that they will be more involved with their communities, more aware of local concerns and better able to reflect those concerns when making case decisions.

Community Impact Statements are also being trialled. The Community Impact Statement is a
summary of crimes committed in a local area which includes a section on the concerns of local people. The statement ensures crime and justice agencies are aware of the feelings of individuals and the wider community and enables practitioners to take into account the harm inflicted on both individuals and the community as a whole.

The level of detail in these will be interesting to see, as will the interpretation of ‘the community as a whole’. Whose data sets will be used, who will be compiling them and how representative will they actually be? Communities of interest, geography, or demography ? Does an overview of crimes committed in an area correlate with what concerns the community (whatever ‘the community’ means) or would ‘signal crimes’ that have been established as linking to the local confidence agenda be a more appropriate indicator for inclusion? Going to be an interesting one to watch. Community Impact Statements will be tested in at least 12 areas for six months and the results will then be assessed to inform national rollout.

Continuing the ‘lets involve the public’ theme, the paper proposes that people will be given more
opportunities to have a say on what work should be done under the Community Payback scheme in their area. The Citizens Panel concept, which provides the vehicle for local people to have a say in the work that is undertaken, is to be extended to the 60 Neighbourhood Crime and Justice Pioneer Areas by the end of 2009.

Apparently, nine out of ten respondents to the Casey Review questionnaire (there she is again) said they weren’t told enough about outcomes of arrests. The intention therefore, is to provide the outcomes of criminal court hearings on a public-facing website. The site will provide the final outcome of court hearings as this is considered the information of most interest to communities.

Staying ‘joined up’, the NPIA is working with the Office for Criminal Justice Reform to explore how information about aggregate CJS outcomes could be linked to crime maps so that they also show justice information at as local level as possible. A beta website, highlighting the outcomes of knife possession cases tried in the adult magistrates’ courts (supporting the current initiative on tackling knife crime) is available for the duration of the Green Paper consultation.

All in all, there are some pretty interesting things in the paper. As always, the devil is in the detail. The consultation runs to Friday 31 July 2009. You can contribute your views online here or by email to engagingcommunities@cjs.gsi.gov.uk  Go on, you know you want to…

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