School of Law Academic contributes to a ‘once-in-a-generation’ review of the criminal courts
Dr Laurène Soubise was invited to contribute to the Independent Review of the Criminal Courts, chaired by Sir Brian Leveson.
This once-in-a-generation review of criminal courts will enable victims and defendants to experience faster resolution of their cases.
Dr Soubise’s submission to the review concerns all prosecution decisions, not just charging decisions. She specifically focuses on how charging practices impact the current crisis in the criminal justice system, and potential solutions to address the crisis.
She says:
Addressing the systemic issues within the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) is essential to create a more efficient and just criminal justice system, but any reforms must prioritise fairness and long-term impact, avoiding quick fixes that could lead to future problems.
Her key findings and recommendations are as follows:
Fragmentation and inefficiencies:
The segmentation of the CPS prosecution process into smaller tasks leads to a lack of continuity and ownership over cases. This results in inefficiencies, as different prosecutors handle different stages of a case, causing delays due to repeated familiarisation and communication challenges with the police and defence.
Impact of managerialism on prosecutorial autonomy:
Managerialism within the CPS prioritises efficiency and predictability over the quality of prosecution decisions. This pressures prosecutors to meet rigid guidelines and performance targets, instead of evaluating cases based solely on their merits. This focus on quantitative metrics, like conviction rates, undermines professional autonomy and can lead to inefficiencies, delays, and compromised justice, as evidenced by the EVAW judicial review and issues in domestic abuse prosecutions and case discontinuances.
Delegation and bureaucratisation:
Efficiency concerns and budget cuts have led to the delegation of magistrates’ court advocacy to Associate Prosecutors (APs), reinforcing the bureaucratisation of summary justice. This delegation can result in inefficiencies and delays, as APs lack the authority to make significant legal decisions and must seek authorisation from Crown Prosecutors, who may be unfamiliar with the case details.
Recommendations:
Implementing small, dedicated teams to handle cases from start to finish can enhance continuity, improve communication, and lead to more effective case management. This approach would reduce inefficiencies, improve decision-making consistency, and decrease the rate of cracked or ineffective trials. It would also provide better supervision for paralegals, such as APs. Additionally, revising performance metrics to prioritise qualitative assessments would further ensure that prosecutors make decisions based on the merits of each case rather than rigid performance targets.
Additional input from School of Law colleagues
At the request of Professor Ormerod, adviser to the Independent Review of the Courts, the School of Law’s Professor Pina-Sánchez also contributed some summary points in response to the review. He focuses on efficiency of the courts and issues relating to sentencing data.
He supports the diversion of cases from the Crown Court so they can be processed in the magistrates’ courts, as well as the raising of their jurisdiction to 12 months imprisonment from six months. He also urges the Independent Review to increase the quality and accessibility of sentencing data, by making administrative sentencing datasets open to all researchers without restrictions, in their current format.
Dr Soubise’s and Professor Pina-Sánchez’s engagement with this Review exemplifies how School of Law academics produce research that has real-world impact on the current criminal justice challenges facing society today.
Dr Soubise is a member of the Centre for Criminal Justice Studies and the Legal Professions Research Group and can be found on Bluesky @lsoubise.bsky.social and LinkedIn.
