Executive Summary
National Audit Office Value for Money Report
- The Crown Prosecution Service is the principal prosecution
authority in England and Wales. It works closely with the police
and the courts to bring offences to justice in the magistrates
courts. The Crown Prosecution Service has an annual expenditure of
568 million, employs over 7,800 staff and, in 2004-05, prosecuted
about 1.25 million people for criminal offences. The vast majority
(92 per cent) in terms of numbers of cases were in the magistrates
courts.
- This study considers the performance of the Crown Prosecution
Service in making effective use of magistrates court trials and
hearings. It estimates the number of ineffective hearings in the
magistrates courts, in particular those due to the Crown
Prosecution Service (as opposed to the police) although most
ineffective trials and hearings are to do with defence-related
problems. [Footnote 1] With the help of Her
Majestys Courts Service, we recorded the outcome of over 6,000
hearings and reviewed case files relating to over 1,300 hearings to
produce a statistical sample on which to base our conclusions and
recommendations. As a result we have estimated that ineffective
trials and hearings cost the criminal justice system 173 million,
of which the Crown Prosecution Service is responsible for about 24
million. The study identified examples of good practice, recommends
changes to the Crown Prosecution Services working practices and
recognises that the criminal justice agencies need to work together
more closely to improve the efficiency of the prosecution of
magistrates courts cases.
- The Crown Prosecution Service is currently undertaking a
business change programme to improve its performance and enhance
its contribution to the performance of the criminal justice system.
It is playing a key role in delivering the Governments objectives
for the criminal justice system through the criminal case
management programme. This includes the charging programme, which
means prosecutors now decide the charge, and the No Witness, No
Justice initiative, which is designed to improve witness attendance
at court. Reducing the proportion of ineffective trials is a
criminal justice system Public Service Agreement target towards
which the police, the Crown Prosecution Service and the courts have
made good progress. Better value for money across the criminal
justice system could nevertheless be achieved in relation to
magistrates courts hearings if the Crown Prosecution Service were
to implement the recommendations outlined in paragraph 20.
Overall conclusions
- The cost of prosecutions includes both case preparation
and time at court, including that of other criminal justice
agencies. Pre-trial hearings, for example, require the attendance
of prosecution and defence lawyers, magistrates and courts staff.
Trials additionally involve witnesses, including the police, and
sometimes probation staff and prison escorts. Adequate preparation
for hearings and trials is, therefore, important, to avoid
unnecessary adjournments or the dropping of charges, once the case
reaches court.
- In this report we consider the Crown Prosecution Services role
in the effective use of magistrates hearings, specifically whether
it:
- plans and prepares cases to make effective use of
hearings;
- uses court time for the purposes of the hearings listed;
and
- is taking action to improve its performance in magistrates
courts.
- From our examination we estimate that 28 per cent of all
pre-trial hearings (784,000 annually) are ineffective. The defence
is responsible for just over 478,000 of these, often where the
defendant fails to attend, and the prosecution (that is the Crown
Prosecution Service or the police or both)[Footnote 2]
for about 165,000, of which we estimate that about 71,000 can be
attributed to the Crown Prosecution Service. In addition, published
statistics show that 62 per cent of magistrates courts trials were
ineffective [Footnote 3] or cracked[Footnote 4]in 2004-05. Similarly, the
defence was responsible for the majority of failed trials but
nearly 17 per cent (19,500) were attributable to the Crown
Prosecution Service. Together, we calculate that ineffective
hearings and cracked and ineffective trials cost the taxpayer 173
million each year, of which just under 24 million was attributable
to the Crown Prosecution Service.
- Individual prosecutors deal with a large volume of cases, often
at very short notice. Nevertheless, we found that problems with the
Crown Prosecution Services planning and preparation for magistrates
courts hearings contribute to ineffective hearings. There is
insufficient oversight of cases; lawyers often do not have enough
time to prepare for hearings; there could be more effective systems
for prioritising and progressing urgent or high-risk cases;
evidence is sometimes incomplete; and files are mislaid. The police
and the courts contribute further to the inefficiencies that result
in prosecution delays: often the police do not provide the evidence
in time for the hearing; and Her Majestys Courts Service staff move
cases between courtrooms, so that prosecuting lawyers have to
present cases they have not prepared.
- Nationally, the Crown Prosecution Service is seeking to improve
its performance through initiatives such as No Witness, No Justice,
which aims to support prosecution witnesses through the courts
process, and the Charging Initiative which passes responsibility
for determining charges from the police to the Crown Prosecution
Service. Also, it is playing a key part in Local Criminal Justice
Boards to promote joint working with the other criminal justice
agencies. We found good examples of local action by Crown
Prosecution Service offices to improve performance at magistrates
court hearings, but generally the Crown Prosecution Service needs
to do more to re-organise and modernise its management of
magistrates court casework.
Main Findings
- Statistics published by the Department for Constitutional
Affairs show that in 2004-05 there were 190,466 trials, of which
117,922 (62 per cent) did not go ahead as planned. The defence was
responsible for just over half, most frequently because the
defendant pleaded guilty on the trial date. In addition 38 per cent
(45,366) of the trials that did not go ahead, fell either because
the prosecution case was not ready or the Crown Prosecution Service
dropped the charges on the day of the trial. The Crown Prosecution
Service was responsible directly for just under 17 per cent of the
117,922 trials which did not go ahead.
- In addition, there were over 2.8 million other hearings in
magistrates courts relating to Crown Prosecution Service cases.
[Footnote 5] These hearings are where
the defendant pleads guilty (uncontested cases), or preliminary
hearings that precede a trial. There are no statistics on the
number of ineffective hearings. We therefore conducted a
statistical exercise which showed that 28 per cent (784,000) of all
hearings were ineffective and that they can occur at any stage. For
example, 24 per cent of first hearings and 33 per cent of committal
hearings were ineffective. As with trials, the defence
(specifically the failure of the defendant to attend court) was the
most frequent cause of ineffective hearings (at least 61 per cent);
but the prosecution [Footnote 6]
was responsible for at least 21 per cent, and caused more delays at
committal hearings than the defence. This means that, in addition
to the 45,366 trials, we can have 95 per cent confidence that
annually between 150,000 and 180,000 ineffective hearings are due
to the prosecution.
Figure ("Common reasons for prosecution problems") is
unavailable in this version of the executive summary.
- To understand the reasons for prosecution problems, we carried
out court observation and file review for 1,300 hearings including
a sample of cases where the outcome had been unsuccessful. From
this we obtained information on 622 ineffective hearings. We found
that 26 per cent of these failed hearings were attributable to the
prosecution (a higher proportion than the 21 per cent recorded in
the statistical exercise referred to in paragraph ten above). Of
the failed hearings caused by the prosecution; 43 per cent were
caused by the Crown Prosecution Service, 43 per cent by the police;
and the remaining 14 per cent were due to both organisations. The
table above shows the most common reasons for prosecution
problems.
- Each prosecutor has to deal with a large volume of cases, many
of which may be received just prior to presenting the case at
court, for example, because defendants were taken into custody
overnight. Even when there is sufficient time to prepare cases,
courts staff may move cases between courts with the result that the
prosecutor has to present new, unseen cases. Against this
background, we found that further avoidable problems within the
Crown Prosecution Service arose for the following reasons:
- a lack of ownership of cases: there is a lack
of continuity in presenting cases. We found that in a sample of 234
cases with more than one hearing, 54 per cent had been presented by
a different advocate at each hearing, and only 15 per cent of cases
had been presented by the same prosecutor throughout;
- a lack of preparation before hearings: lawyers
receive the files less than 24 hours before hearings and may not
have time to prepare fully for the hearing if they are already in
court. The problem is exacerbated when court staff move cases
between courts during the day to use spare capacity elsewhere so
that cases are given to other lawyers at the last minute;
- inadequate prioritisation of cases which require
urgent action: urgent cases, for example, those given a
short adjournment are not prioritised sufficiently. As a result,
the necessary action may not be taken in time for the next
hearing;
- poor case tracking results in files being
mislaid: details of location may not be updated on the
file information system, a lawyer may have taken a file home, or it
may have been misfiled; and
- incomplete evidence is on the file: in 35 per
cent of ineffective hearings caused by the prosecution, delays had
arisen because the police had not provided the Crown Prosecution
Service with the evidence. The Crown Prosecution Service cannot
direct the police to follow up a line of investigation or to
collect evidence.
- We calculate that ineffective hearings cost the taxpayer 173
million, of which just under 24 million is due to failings in
preparation, and delays in decision making, by the Crown
Prosecution Service, taking into account both the costs of the
criminal justice agencies in bringing the prosecution, and
increased criminal legal aid payments to defence solicitors. If the
Crown Prosecution Service were to reduce the number of ineffective
hearings and cracked and ineffective trials for which it is
responsible, this would release savings of around 2.4 million for
every ten per cent by which these hearings were reduced.
- Some Crown Prosecution Service areas are trying to address
these problems. For example, the Cardiff office is re-organising
its teams so that lawyers assigned to discrete police divisions
jointly monitor and present cases in specified court rooms. This
increases continuity of presentation, reduces delays in
decision-making and assists with file-tracking. There would be
merit in developing this approach elsewhere so that:
- administrative staff are located and work closely with lawyers
to help monitor and action cases. At present, administrative staff
in most of the offices we visited are managed in separate teams
carrying out routine clerical support such as filing and post
opening, but failing to provide the proactive support lawyers
require; and
- administrative staff are trained to carry out more complex
administrative tasks such as liaising with the police, defence
solicitors and courts, to free up the time of lawyers for review
and preparation of cases.
- The Crown Prosecution Service is making efforts to release
lawyer resources by using designated case workers to present more
straightforward cases in magistrates courts. In 2004-05,
magistrates courts scheduled only enough cases to occupy designated
case workers for 60 per cent of their time; increasing this to 80
per cent would release the equivalent of 33 lawyers for other work
and achieve savings of 2.3 million.[Footnote 7]
To achieve this will require the co-operation of Her Majestys
Courts Service.
- More generally, not enough use is made of the information about
the use of resources. No reconciliation is made of the funds
provided for magistrates court work with the resources allocated to
it. From our interviews with Chief Crown Prosecutors and our
observations at the area offices, there appears to be an imbalance
in the staffing mix, with fewer lawyers and more administrative
staff than needed. Without a system of time recording, however, it
is not possible to determine whether resources for magistrates
court work are being diverted to Crown Court cases.
- The Crown Prosecution Service is seeking to improve case
management and tracking of files by the introduction of its
electronic case management system, Compass. Further improvements
could be made by providing lawyers with the means to record
information electronically at court. At present, details recorded
manually at court are later transcribed onto Compass by
administrative staff. Eliminating this duplication would both speed
up the processing of files and save the equivalent of around 60
full-time administrative staff, giving a net saving of 5.5 million
over five years.
- A number of the improvements necessary to prevent ineffective
hearings require the co-operation of the police and the courts. In
Greater Manchester, case progression officers have proven to be
effective in reducing the number of ineffective trials, but while
the Crown Prosecution Service has established successful joint
working between itself and the Courts in Trafford, this has not
been possible in other areas, such as Manchester City, where the
court appointed a case progression officer only recently.
Increasing continuity of presentation will also require the
co-operation of Her Majestys Courts Service to list cases from
particular police divisions together in designated court
rooms.
- We found examples where local Crown Prosecution Service offices
were working successfully with the other criminal justice agencies
to resolve problems across their organisational boundaries. For
example, Manchester Crown Prosecution Service has persuaded Her
Majestys Courts Service to arrange for District Judges to conduct
pre-trial reviews. For its part the Crown Prosecution Service has
enabled its lawyers to spend more time preparing for committal
hearings, and thus reduce the number of adjournments requested.
Both the Association of Chief Police Officers and the Crown
Prosecution Service told us that the Charging Initiative was
increasing co-operation between them and reducing the number of
non-viable cases going to court. The Crown Prosecution Service,
together with the Local Criminal Justice Boards, should take the
lead in setting up more of these mutually beneficial
arrangements.
RECOMMENDATIONS
The
Crown Prosecution Service should:
Improve joint working with other criminal justice
agencies
- Chief Crown Prosecutors should continue to take the lead at a
local area level in setting up arrangements with the police and
courts to improve the efficiency of prosecution of magistrates
court cases, including:
- appointing case progression officers;
- listing contested cases according to the originating police
division;
- brigading cases that can be presented by a designated case
worker without the support of a crown prosecutor;
- extending the use of designated caseworkers; and
- establishing a Crown Prosecution Service contact point notified
to police, courts and defence lawyers for all magistrates court
cases (paragraph 3.20).
Maintain proper oversight of the cases
- establish case management teams in each area responsible for
reviewing, and presenting, a tranche of cases from a single police
division where possible in a discrete magistrates court (paragraphs
3.43.7). The size of the teams should be determined by the size of
the police unit with which they are aligned, but typically would be
no more than 1012 lawyers;
- assign to the case management teams a designated case worker
and administrative staff who would be located and work closely with
the lawyers (paragraphs 3.103.13);
- extend the training programme to all lawyers to equip them for
their new role either as casework team managers or members
(paragraphs 3.11 and 3.13); and
- conduct case work review in all areas to ensure the quality and
efficiency of decision making is satisfactory (paragraphs
2.292.30).
Make more prosecutor time available for review and
preparation
- provide training for caseworkers on magistrates court
procedures and their roles and responsibilities in the case
management team (paragraphs 3.11 and 3.13);
- introduce time recording for legal and administrative staff to
establish the current resources engaged on magistrates court cases
(paragraphs 3.163.18); and
- compare the Crown Prosecution Services Activity Based Costing
model with the actual resources engaged on magistrates court cases
to ensure there is the correct mix of staff (paragraphs 3.163.18).
Prioritise cases to ensure that they are ready when they come to
court
- develop procedures to identify and prioritise urgent and
high-risk cases such as those with short adjournment dates or
requiring medical evidence, to ensure the evidence is obtained in
time for the next hearing (paragraphs 2.27, 2.28, 3.83.9). Remove
duplication and release resources
- provide Crown Prosecutors with electronic equipment to enable
them to update the case management system at court (paragraphs
3.193.20).
- [back from footnote 1] The National
Audit Office reported on this in Facing Justice: Tackling
defendants' non-attendance at court (HC 1162 Session
2003-04).
- [back from footnote 2] Throughout the
report the prosecution refers to the Crown Prosecution Service and
the police, if not otherwise specified.
- [back from footnote 3] Ineffective
hearings are those that do not proceed on the scheduled day and are
adjourned to a later date.
- [back from footnote 4] Cracked trials
are concluded on the day without the case being heard for example
because the defendant pleads guilty or the prosecution offers no
evidence.
- [back from footnote 5] National Audit
Office analysis of Crown Prosecution Service management
information.
- [back from footnote 6]The Crown
Prosecution Service and the police
- [back from footnote 7] Crown
Prosecution Service report on Higher Courts Advocates and
Designated Case Workers.