Written evidence from North Wales Criminal
Justice Board is printed on Page Ev 350
Examination of Witness (Questions 344-359)
30 NOVEMBER 2004
Ms Carol Moore
Q344 Chairman: Welcome before the Committee.
If I could start off by asking you to introduce yourself for the
sake of the record.
Mrs Moore: Carol Moore, chief
officer for North Wales Probation Area and currently chair of
the North Wales Criminal Justice Board.
Q345 Chairman: As I understand it, the
CJB is (a) to improve the delivery of justice and (b) to secure
public confidence in the criminal justice system. Could you provide
some examples of how the North Wales Criminal Justice Board is
attempting to do that and say whether you are achieving it.
Ms Moore: When Criminal Justice
Boards were set up in April 2003, the Home Office and Government
established target areas for boards around what we call "narrowing
the justice gap". This includes targets and expectations
that local boards will work together to bring an increased number
of offences to justice (that is, offences that result in either
a caution being taken into consideration or prosecution) and to
target specific types of offending. In our first year, we were
working to increase the number of offences brought to justice.
We were specifically targeting drug offences and offences of assault.
We were also focusing on persistent offenders, and we defined
persistent offenders by a national definition: "individuals
who had committed and been convicted of six or more offences in
the previous 12 months." Later in the year, the Government
asked boards to focus on improving confidence. The North Wales
Board has performed well across all the targets for narrowing
the justice gap. There are some variations. We also set ourselves
a very high target on improving public confidence. When we started
as a board, the national average for public confidence was 41%
and we set ourselves a target of 50%. We did not achieve that
during the year, but we know from the information that is available
to us that we have had an improving target over the last three
quarters and I am confident that is going to continue.
Q346 Chairman: You just mentioned targets.
Are all the nationally set targets appropriate for Wales?
Ms Moore: The target areas are
nationally set but there is some discretion for the local board
as to what the specific targets are. It is appropriate to focus
on offences brought to justice because this has a direct bearing
on public perception about the effectiveness of the criminal justice
system. One of the ironies for us in North Wales is that we perform
very well on increasing the number of offences we bring to justice
but that is not always reflected in public perception in terms
of the confidence figures we get. On targets around improving
the effectiveness of courts: nationally the average on effectiveness
for magistrates' courts is set by a target of 25% of ineffective
trials, and the target for North Wales—which we set ourselves—is
for 15% of trials being ineffective (that is, trials that do not
take place on the day either because the defendant does not turn
up or the witness does not turn up and that case has to be adjourned).
In year 1 we knew that we were performing considerably better
than the national baseline average, we set ourselves a very ambitious
target, and it has been a difficult target for us to achieve;
hence, you will see in our annual report that it looks as if we
are failing to meet that target, despite the fact that we are
one of the better performing areas in the country and despite
the fact that we are out-performing the majority of those areas.
Chairman: Thank you. I would like to
commend you on your choice of photographs in your report!
Mrs Williams: Of our photogenic Chairman!
Chairman: And our photogenic Mrs Williams!
Q347 Mrs Williams: On partners and consultation,
the North Wales Criminal Justice Board has established a consultative
group, has it not?
Ms Moore: That is right.
Q348 Mrs Williams: And it has a wide
membership.
Ms Moore: Yes.
Q349 Mrs Williams: How does the group
work with the board? Have you established formal procedures or
is it an informal relationship?
Ms Moore: Consultation goes beyond
the actual consultative group as well. The arrangements for consultative
groups were described in the documentation from the centre when
Criminal Justice Boards were set up. The intention was to provide
a continuing vehicle, which would include organisations that were
previously involved in the Area Criminal Justice Strategy Committees
which pre-dated Criminal Justice Boards, primarily organisations
and individuals who were directly involved in the criminal justice
system itself. The structure and framework for our consultative
committee is based on a national model that was proposed to
boards with quite a strong recommendation that that was the model
we adopted; hence, the chairing arrangements for our local consultative
committee/group was the previous chairman of the Area Criminal
Justice Strategy Committee, the local senior resident judge. We
have formal protocol and terms of reference and agreement with
the consultative committee that sets out the basis by which the
board will manage its relationship with the group. For example,
we provide copies of minutes of board meetings to members of the
group and we have timescales as to when we will make those available
and also commitments when we want to consult on areas of development.
The consultative group itself meets two to three times a year.
The numbers of those who attend does vary but it is a cross-section
of stakeholders—if you will excuse the jargon—including
local authority members, including elected members, local authority
chief executives and community safety lead practitioners. We also
usually have attendance by representatives of the Magistrates'
Association, defence solicitors and the Bar, Victim Support and
North Wales Race Equality Network. So there is quite a broad spread
of individuals who are either connected with criminal justice
system or community safety partnerships or who represent groups
which have a direct interest in the workings of the system. We
complement the approach we take through the consultative group
by the links that we have tried to establish with community safety
partners. In a separate role, I chair a chief officer forum in
North Wales for community safety and we always make sure there
is a standing item on the Criminal Justice Board on the quarterly
meetings of that forum, so that we can make sure we are bringing
issues that are of common concern and providing regular feedback
about the work of the board through that particular forum.
Q350 Mrs Williams: Clearly, from your
answer you are enthusiastic about all this, and for a successful
partnership or group to work it does require enthusiasm. Can you
tell us a little bit more about the dynamics of the relationships;
for instance, which partners have good relationships and which
are the most proactive and enthusiastic in their support of the
CJB?
Ms Moore: I think the groups and
individuals that we find give priority to engaging with us are
through the community safety leads—and I think it is relevant
that we have a community safety practitioner here today with interest
in the criminal justice system and proceedings. Victim Support
has been a consistent support and partner with the board. The
board does have a number of sub-groups and working groups. One
of those is a group that focuses on race and diversity issues,
so in addition to attendance at the consultative meetings for
the board, we invite North Wales Race Equality Network to attend
an internal sub-working group looking at race and diversity issues
on behalf of the board. That is a forum that pre-dated the board
formally coming into being, and in fact that group were responsible
for the arrangements for a very successful conference we had on
hate crime in February last year. We also involve members of the
consultative group—again, very active members, who act as
a planning group in advising the board on focus and issues that
they would wish us to put on our annual conference agenda, so
they very much drive the agenda for our annual conference and contribute
actively to the planning and arrangements for that event.
Q351 Mrs Williams: Could you perhaps
give us some specific examples of successful co-operation between
the group and the board itself. Have you come across any tension
or difficulties that have arisen?
Ms Moore: The discussion we had
at our last consultative group meeting in early October was how
we can further develop the consultation arrangements. It is a
polite forum, supportive, and perhaps it could be more challenging.
One of the issues that we have is that there is a broad spectrum
of business with which the board is involved and I personally
wonder whether the consultative group structure we have, where
you bring a number of different organisations and different agenda
and interests together, is always the best way of actually having
a really focused dialogue. We have said and agreed with the consultative
group that we need to review how we work with consultative group
members and other stakeholders in the future, and that has included
looking at whether there are other groups that should come into
the consultative process. In terms of areas of potential tension,
I think it is right to say that for the board it has been quite
a steep learning curve in terms of working to joined up objectives.
When we started in 2003, we had a very good baseline because the
chief officers of all the criminal justice agencies would regularly
meet together to look at interests of common policy and concern,
so we had a bedrock of good working relationships within the criminal
justice sector. The focus of our business agenda over the last
year and for the coming year I think is going to cause us to have
perhaps some more challenging dialogues with some partners, particularly
around taking forward services for victims and witnesses, which
is a very important area of our confidence agenda. I think there
is more we could do to involve Victim Support and the witness
service in terms of looking at what we are doing and giving us
feedback as to how effective the new working arrangements that
we have been introducing are.
Q352 Mrs Williams: How much scope do
you think there is for the group to re-focus the boards nationally-based
priorities to more locally-based priorities?
Ms Moore: There is quite a bit
of flexibility. We are not dictated to in terms of every objective
that we set. Within the broad umbrella of bringing more offences
to justice and improving confidence, we have quite a considerable
degree of scope for focusing on what are the key issues for North
Wales. In the last few weeks, I have been meeting with senior
managers from across the criminal justice agencies, reviewing
our current year's plan, looking at the Government's agenda for
criminal justice strategies for the future, and looking at what
are actually the key and significant issues for us in North Wales.
That includes issues around domestic abuse, antisocial behaviour—both
of which have not been specific focus areas in our current plan,
but which we are looking at next year. Again, I feel fairly confident
that we have that flexibility to customise the templates we are
working with to focusing on local priority areas and issues.
Q353 Mrs Williams: I would like to turn
now to infrastructure and funding and ask you how the Criminal
Justice Board is funded. What is the time scale or cycle of current
funding?
Ms Moore: There has been a bit
of a journey around funding and I do not quite know where we are
going to be next year, but I am pretty confident. When we started,
the only additional funding that boards had was for the appointment
of performance officers that were funded from London but appointed
by and working within the local board. They were supported by
regional performance advisers. In addition to that, there was
a very small pot of money to support expenditure around supporting
the consultative group, for example. In our first year, we approached
London and secured additional funding to increase our communications
capacity, because we felt this was a major priority for the board.
For most of the agencies within the board, particularly the courts,
the Crown Prosecution Service and, to a certain extent, the probation
service, their public profile, in terms of the media and general
public, was very low. We felt we really need to give priority
to this, so we secured funding for that post in year 1. We started
the current financial year with quite a tight budget that was
just supporting that post, with some additional capacity to deal
with issues around the consultative group, with some of the minor
expenditure, but the Government did increase the amount of money
available to boards in the year and we have had confirmation that
our funding for the current year would be £115,000 for this
year. That was confirmed in June. That represented a five-fold
increase in terms of the money that the centre was putting into
boards between year 1 and year 2. Although we have not had confirmation
for next year, because we are in the process of investing that
money in posts to support the work of the board and really support
the joining-up agenda I have been seeking clarification from the
centre about funding for next year, and we are quite confident
that we will retain that baseline amount and we will also be bringing
in the equivalent of the salary costs of the performance officer
posts that the centre originally set up. I am expecting that will
give the board what is a very small budget but it is one which
will support about three posts next year, plus some additional
work and some conference and other promotional activities, and
I am expecting us to have a budget of approximately £140,000.
If I could just add that we do not work on the basis of the funding
that just comes from the centre. Clearly the work of the Criminal
Justice Board is complementary to our core business. When we started
the financial year, the police were putting in resources in kind,
facilitating the production of the Justice magazine—which
I hope there are copies of for you to look at—and the probation
service underwrote the funding of a booklet called Living in
Harmony—which we have circulated to every member of
staff throughout all the criminal justice organisations—looking
into diversity issues. So the practical and financial support
to achieve the business outcomes that we want as a board comes
mostly from the centre, but lots of the issues, about time of
managers and funding when we have specific initiatives, have to
be looked at as a collective as well.
Q354 Mrs Williams: How have the several
changes—and you have mentioned some of them—in membership
of the board since its formation in April 2003 impacted upon the
effectiveness and cohesiveness of the board in delivering its
Priorities?
Ms Moore: I do not believe it
has. I know we have had several changes of Crown prosecutor: for
a variety of reasons I think we have had four chief prosecutors
for the area in the last 18 months. The courts are reforming and
therefore we have had changes with the crown court/magistrates'
court chief officers moving out and the new head of the unified
courts coming in. Those have been critical changes, but I think
the important thing is that the board has established quite a
strong culture of corporate responsibility and the business plan
that we have is what drives the business of the board, regardless
of the individuals and any changes in membership. The other point
which is absolutely critical is that underneath the board we commit
senior management time from across all the organisations to lead
and be responsible for delivery of the goals and objectives we
set ourselves as a board. So we have a complementary structure
in terms of the leadership function that the board holds, the
strategic leadership, and the operational delivery, working together,
which is embedded now, and I think that is one of the big plusses
of the whole Criminal Justice Board agenda. There will be a massive
increase in working together across what historically were quite
separate silos of individual agencies.
Q355 Mr Caton: Could we move on to performance
issues. In section 2.1 of your evidence, you outline the board's
success in meeting performance targets; for example, in narrowing
the justice gap and increasing the number of offences brought
to justice by 7%. Could you explain in a little bit more detail
how the board achieved this.
Ms Moore: It comes down to how
effective the individual agencies are in their respective roles,
which are complementary, and how that is harnessed collectively
by the board and its senior managers. For example, bringing more
offences to justice comes down to a bottom line about police detection
levels—and we heard earlier about the performance of North
Wales Police in terms of improving detection levels. The next
critical element is getting the right charges on the offences:
in the information that is provided you also have information
about the charging and narrowing the justice gap pilots that we
have been running. In North Wales we have crown prosecutors and
lead police practitioners working together, co-located, ensuring
that police decisions about which is the appropriate charge will
ensure that the matter proceeds to court and secures an outcome,
and in that they have the benefit of the CPS advice. The next
critical element in the chain is bringing matters to court in
a timely manner and getting them through the court without undue
delays and adjournments. Those are the factors that actually drive
the whole narrowing the justice gap and bringing more offences
to justice outcomes.
Q356 Mr Caton: In response to a question
from the Chairman on targets, you mentioned that your very ambitious
targets have not been met in North Wales in reducing ineffective
trials in magistrates' court, although you made the point that
North Wales is better than the national average. What are the
specific problems and difficulties that arise in addressing this
particular issue?
Ms Moore: There are a number of
angles on this. For the courts, they have targets that are about
the efficient use of court buildings. Therefore, in an environment
where there is a presumption that you will have a number of cases
that for different reasons will not proceed on the day, it can
mean that you will put more cases into the diary for that day
than the court could deal with if everybody was there. That is
a potential indicator of where you are working on the one hand
to get as many cases to court at the earliest possible time and
make efficient use of time, but at same time problems can occur.
A case does not proceed on the day either because the defendant
does not turn up or the witness does not turn up, and the figures
we have been getting show that we have been achieving real progress
in terms of defendants' attendance at court. You can tackle that,
and create a climate that makes this quite clear as an expectation,
by the courts being willing to continue with a case in the defendant's
absence and not agreeing to unnecessary adjournments unless there
is a really defensible explanation. The issue about witnesses—and
this relates to our pilot around No witness: no justice
national agenda—is about providing witnesses with a single
point of reference. The police and the Crown Prosecution Service
work together to ensure that when it is known that a case is going
forward on a not-guilty basis, the witnesses involved in those
cases are kept informed and also encouraged and reminded about
the importance of their attendance, because, if witnesses do not
turn up, that raises the risk that the case might collapse. This
feeds another element that can impact on how a court operates
on the day, because often defendants will hold back on declaring
their plea until the date at court to see whether the witnesses
turn up. If they put in a not-guilty plea, it is a bit like a
calculation that, if the witness is not there, perhaps it will
not proceed, and, in effect, there is therefore an avoidance of
justice. The pilot schemes in which our practitioners have been
involved have been looking at practical solutions to tackling
those sorts of key elements which amount to how effective the
court is on the day, in terms of being able to conclude a not-guilty
case in particular.
Q357 Mr Caton: You have just mentioned
the three national pilots as part of the Criminal Case Management
Programme (the charging pilot, the effective trial management
project and the No witness: no justice project). Could
you tell us a little bit more about each of these projects—basically,
what they are there for and what the Board's role in it is.
Ms Moore: North Wales is one of
only two Criminal Justice Board areas in the country that are
actually piloting all three of these particular elements of improving
case management and case progression within the courts. The rationale
for us proposing North Wales as a pilot Welsh Assembly was the
board and member agencies' confidence that we had good working
relationships between practitioners, particularly between the
Crown Prosecution Service and the police and the courts. Those
are the triumvirate, key partners in relation to these pilots.
The pilots have given us the opportunity to get ahead and get
the experience of working with these government programmes that
are now being rolled out across the country. The actual focus
of the individual pilots is really as I have described. In terms
of the charging pilot, that is where we have the co-location or
the availability of CPS advice to police at that critical point
of charge. With the effective trial management, that is ensuring
that we actually get the case through, get the listing right in
the crown/magistrates' court so that we are reducing the delay
and that has now resulted in a national manual which is identifying
a best-practice model which all areas in the country in England
and Wales would be working to. The No witness: no justice
project is absolutely key to this and links across to public confidence.
If people are not confident about the system, they will be reluctant
to support the system by being witnesses. Most people's perception
about how witnesses are treated will be either from their own
experience or from what they hear from friends and people who
have actually been through that experience themselves. That is
why we felt it was important that we were giving priority to be
involved in that pilot. I just wish we could get a bit more publicity
about some of the good work that is going on behind the scenes
on this.
Q358 Mr Edwards: Could I ask about antisocial
behaviour. Are you getting on top of it?
Ms Moore: The Criminal Justice
Board does not have specific objectives this year about antisocial
behaviour. We will be putting it into our business plan next year.
If you are asking about whether the criminal justice system is
engaged with antisocial behaviour, again, there are a lot of issues
here. My own view is that, yes, we are making some progress. The
specific initiative that is going to bring the board and all the
agencies into a direct impact on antisocial behaviour is the new
government initiative Prolific Priority Offenders. That
has just been tasked to boards this summer and the boards and
other partners are working on three strands: prevent and deter;
catch and convict; and then how we work with individuals once
they are in the system. That is going to be a big business agenda
for all agencies and community safety partners over the coming
year. Just to reflect back on your earlier witness's evidence,
there is a very wide range of behaviours that are classified as
antisocial within the Government's own guidelines. There are about
50 individual instances of antisocial behaviour. We find that
most people are referring to one particular element, whether it
be a drink-related disorder or a nuisance neighbour. The issue
of the criminal justice system is how we identify what the antisocial
behaviour is and what the targeted response is. In the North Wales
criminal justice system in recent weeks we have seen an example
of a criminal case in Holyhead Magistrates' Court where there
were 17 defendants, all involved in town centre disorder, which
resulted in 13 or it might have been 15 criminal antisocial behaviour
orders that the court imposed on the back of the prosecution of
the criminal behaviours—and the others I think are working
through the system, so it was not only a percentage. We have had
another case in the last few weeks—an example of an individual
who was a persistent nuisance neighbour, making his local community
and his own neighbours' lives absolute hell—where the court
imposed an antisocial behaviour order of ten years in relation
to the application before them. So, depending on what the issue
is in relation to the particular bit of behaviour you are dealing
with, that is where I would be coming from in response to your
question. The Home Office information about public perception
of antisocial behaviour, which has been taken from the British
Crime Survey, actually puts speeding as the highest issue on respondents'
list of priorities when they have been asked about antisocial
behaviour. It depends on who you are having the dialogue with
as to which antisocial behaviour you are wanting to focus on.
If there is a specific one, I can perhaps assist you.
Q359 Mr Edwards: I think we are running
a bit short of time, so could I move you on to ask about sentencing
guidelines. Are they helping to get the magistrates to sentence
in a consistent way with respect to antisocial behaviour?
Ms Moore: I think that would have
to be a personal perspective. I am not aware of specific sentencing
guidelines on antisocial behaviour that have gone out to magistrates.
I have to say that. They have not come to me as chairman of the
Criminal Justice Board or as chief officer for the probation Service.
I do talk to senior magistrates and to our district judge about
a number of issues, including antisocial behaviour, and I welcome
that the police are looking to re-establish a forum we have had
in North Wales for antisocial behaviour which enables the police,
court representatives and community safety partners actually to
come together to look at where there are issues about interpretation,
around how appropriate conditions are applied to antisocial behaviour
applications, and what is the process then in relation to the
court process. One of the issues which has certainly been flagged
up to me is that one of the problems for the court, where an application
has been brought for the individual, is that the individual has
the right to defend themselves, so therefore the courts have to
hear the matter. On issues around the actual imposition of antisocial
behaviour orders, I am aware that the Government are looking at
how they are going to extend the availability and the way in which
orders can be applied, and I think that will need to be supported
by clear guidance. I am always aware that one of the concerns
that many sentences have is that antisocial behaviour orders in
themselves are effectively negative; they are not positive interventions.
I think there is scope to look at either involving sentences more
in the earlier part of the process, which is around acceptable
behaviour contracts (effectively a contract between the police
and other agencies at the moment and the individual) or in reviewing
the progress of individuals on such orders. There is no continuity
for them at the moment.
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