Examination of Witnesses (Questions 484-499)
12 JANUARY 2005
Mr Simon Boyle, Ms Sue Hall, and Mr Stephen Routledge
Q484 Chairman: Welcome before the Committee
this afternoon. You are aware of what we are looking to, which
is basically policing and anti-social behaviour in Wales. Just
for the record if you could in turn introduce yourselves and describe
what you do it would be very useful. Perhaps we can start with
Mr Boyle.
Mr Boyle: Thank you, Chairman.
I am the Chairman of the Gwent Criminal Justice Board. I would
just like to point out that unlike the chairmen of all the other
Criminal Justice Boards in Britain I am a non-executive chairman
and not a professional member of any of the justice agencies.
When you question me my answers may show that!
Q485 Chairman: I am sure that will not
be the case. Ms Hall.
Ms Hall: Thank you, Chairman.
I am Sue Hall. I am Chair of the South Wales Criminal Justice
Board and I am also the chief officer for South Wales Probation.
Mr Routledge: I am Stephen Routledge.
I am performance officer for the South Wales Criminal Justice
Board.
Q486 Chairman: Thank you very much. We
are told that the role of the Criminal Justice Board is to improve
the delivery of justice and to secure public confidence in the
Criminal Justice System. I wonder if you could provide some examples
both in Gwent and in South Wales of how your Boards address these
issues and how you achieve the aims in practice. Again, if we
could start with Mr Boyle.
Mr Boyle: That is a very wide
question. We have in fact developed a plan with several headline
overarching goals and up to seventy-eight different action points
in our plan for this year. Each of those is under one or other
of the main headings and each main goal one member of the Criminal
Justice Board takes overall responsibility for. I do not think
you want to go through all these. They all fit with the overall
aim of the Board.
Ms Hall: Within South Wales the
Criminal Justice Board has been focusing up until now on coordinating
and improving joined up justice between the key criminal justice
agencies and our focus has very much been on increasing the number
of offenders who have been brought to justice, i.e. people who
have committed crimes, have been detected and whose cases have
been processed effectively through the Criminal Justice System
to the point where they have been convicted. As part of that we
had a whole series of actions. We have been looking in a very
rigorous way at how we capture data around offenders who are going
through the system so that we can monitor our performance. In
the early stages that was a very big task. We have been developing
our criminal case management project in terms of improving police
systems, CPS systems and the points at which those two organisations
come together to ensure that cases are processed effectively.
That is one side of our activity and I can go into a lot more
detail about that if you wish. In terms of public confidence,
we are in the process of setting up witness care units at the
moment and looking at the ways in which we consult with partners
and communicate with the public to inform the public of the work
of the Criminal Justice System and start to receive feedback about
key issues for the public. Those are the two broad priorities
that we have been focusing on up until now.
Q487 Mr Edwards: Good afternoon. Can
I refer to the role of the Criminal Justice Board and the way
that you determine and agree how nationally set public service
agreement targets will be achieved. Are all these nationally set
targets relevant and appropriate in the two areas of South Wales
and Gwent?
Mr Boyle: Some of the national
targets give a target for a particular aspect of our activity
where in our particular area we are already ahead of it. There
are examples of the opposite as well, where we are miles behind,
so sometimes there is a misfit between what seems desirable locally
and nationally only in that sense. There is no big problem, though,
in fitting our local subsidiary targets under the national target
headings.
Q488 Mr Edwards: Could you give any examples
of the two types?
Mr Boyle: Well, fines enforcement
is one. There is a national target and we are a long way ahead
of it in Gwent. That is just one. I do not think there is a huge
list where we are miles ahead of the national targets at all,
but that is one that triggered my comment.
Q489 Mr Edwards: Anything the other way
round?
Mr Boyle: I think the ineffective
trials percentage. We have been behind the national target but
now in the most recent ones we have come past it, down to 20%,
the national target having been 25% during this year. In our case
we know we can do a lot better than that. That is still one in
five trials with time and resources wasted, which is obviously
not acceptable. But we were at 35% ineffective, so we are making
progress.
Q490 Mr Edwards: Thank you. South Wales?
Ms Hall: I agree that it is not
actually a big problem. I think the role of Criminal Justice Boards
is evolving. In the early days the role of Boards was, I suppose,
focused around the national vision of reducing levels of ineffective
trials and bringing offenders to justice and I think it is quite
reasonable that there are national baselines set which areas start
to measure themselves against. But I feel that as we have become
more mature as Boards our sort of sense of what Boards can achieve
is beginning to grow and I am anticipating, for example, in South
Wales when we draw up our plan for next year that as well as the
national targets we will be supplementing that with local targets
which begin to reflect very particular local priorities. I would
also say that just because there are national targets we are not
constrained at the moment from setting ourselves more challenging
targets and in the same way as Gwent we have set ourselves more
challenging local targets in relation to ineffective trials, where
we have been quite successful, and also in relation to reducing
the number of outstanding warrants. So we do have that opportunity
at the moment, but my sense is that over the next two to three
years we will see an expansion of the role of Criminal Justice
Boards and that then will start to perhaps reflect a greater differentiation
between Boards across England and Wales.
Q491 Mr Edwards: Thank you. You mention,
Mr Boyle, in paragraph 22 that national initiatives are too frequent
and risk diversion of local resources from local issues. Can you
give us an example of some of the initiatives that you think are
too frequent?
Mr Boyle: There is an example
in the paper. The effective trial management programme is a national
initiative where in some respects, not all, we had already done
quite a lot of the work in that programme. I think the point I
am making is simply the one I have already made, that if you have
a target nationally some of the forty-two areas are going to be
in a very different position vis-a"-vis that target
and may be behind or in front, but if you have too many national
initiatives—I can produce a list of them if you like but
I have not got it with me. There are other examples. I just gave
one in the paper.
Q492 Mr Edwards: Do you feel the same?
Ms Hall: I can give one very good
example for South Wales and that was the implementation of the
prolific and other priority offender initiative over the summer,
which came at us really extremely quickly. I think it was announced
in June or early July for implementation by 6 September, or early
September, and over the summer the Criminal Justice Boards had
to work with the Community Safety Partnerships to ensure that
there were prolific and other priority offender schemes operating
in our case in each of the seven CSPs in South Wales. That was
something which it just was not possible to do well in the amount
of time that we were given, albeit it is an initiative we would
wholeheartedly subscribe to and have worked very hard on. So I
think it is very important that if there are going to be developments
such as the POPO scheme that we are given proper advance warning
and given enough time to implement them properly.
Q493 Mr Edwards: Thank you. Finally,
can I ask you how much scope you feel there is for the consultative
and advisory groups to re-focus the Boards' nationally based priorities
to more locally based priorities?
Mr Boyle: In Gwent we have had
three seminars at six monthly intervals, to which we have invited
all the members of all the organisations whom we treat as our
consultative advisory group. We do speak to them individually
and separately about specific issues in between. We have had these
three seminars, which have been very constructive. We have had
about sixty people there from the criminal justice agencies and
these other bodies and we directly run the agenda for the day
on the basis of explaining what we are doing and getting the input
from all present as to whether the priorities should be adjusted
in one direction or another and we find that extremely useful.
This is the way we have so far worked in making sure we get local
input and pick up local concerns as best we can.
Q494 Mr Edwards: Could you give the Committee
some examples of what the themes of those seminars were?
Mr Boyle: Well, they had banner
headlines such as—if I may, I will find the names and tell
you in a moment.
Ms Hall: I think it is fair to
say that consultative networks are not as developed in South Wales
as they currently are in Gwent and one of our priorities this
forthcoming year is to develop some sort of structure where we
can get better feedback from communities and partners. But in
itself, as I said in my earlier statement, I would not see that
as a problem. I think the national priorities are justifiable
national priorities and local issues would come along as additional
priorities, if that makes sense. I would not see them being in
opposition to each other.
Mr Routledge: I just want to say
with the confidence and public satisfaction target I think that
whilst we have a headline target of improving people's belief
in the effectiveness of the Criminal Justice System to bring offenders
to justice by 6% we as a Board need to find out over and above
what the British Crime Survey is telling us about crime actually
what the local drivers of confidence are and I think we are going
to look to try and establish a better network, particularly with
the public and people who have come into contact with the Criminal
Justice System. One example we mentioned in the paper was the
establishment of a citizens' panel. I am happy to elaborate as
we go on.
Mr Boyle: I had forgotten the
headings of the seminars. Two back it was simply entitled "Narrowing
the Justice Gap" and on that occasion we focused on all the
things that go towards making ineffective trials and picked through
everything that can go wrong and got people's input into how we
should correct the things that go wrong. The most recent one was
entitled "Full Steam Ahead". I think you were invited
to it probably, if I may say so. In that one what we did was,
if you can imagine a sort of bar chart with a hundred crimes and
somewhere at the end here is the number brought to justice, we
took all the bits of things falling off and got the people in
the room to discuss step by step all the things that go wrong
and the steps we could take to reduce the bits that fall off and
get the final offences brought to justice figure up. We got a
lot of ideas out of it.
Mr Edwards: Thank you.
Q495 Mr Evans: Did you mention that part
of your remit is also to look at outstanding fines as well, the
level of outstanding fines once they have gone through the system?
Ms Hall: At the moment our remit
is around warrants, that is in terms of people who have not turned
up to court. Does that include fines?
Mr Routledge: We have just been
recently consulted about the targets for 2005 and 2006 and it
is a new target for Boards whereas, as Sue says, before we had
just failure to appear at court warrants as a target, which was
a local target. It is now a full strand which is coming under
the heading of enforcement and within that enforcement there are
still going to be failure to appear warrants but yes, that will
also include fines.
Q496 Mr Evans: You are just taking on
this new responsibility now?
Mr Routledge: Yes. Before fine
enforcement was not a target for the Boards but as at 2005-06
it will be a target for all Criminal Justice Boards.
Q497 Mr Evans: Is it too early to say
how the outstanding debit is—
Mr Routledge: I think in South
Wales we had problems with it. Whilst it was not a target for
the board, the magistrates' court committee did bring some of
the issues to the table for debate. It was below the national
target, which I think is 78% for enforcing fines nationally, but
we have actually made a lot of improvements and current figures
are quite far ahead. So hopefully going forward we have addressed
some of the problems that we did have.
Q498 Mr Evans: Are you able to say what
level below 78% it actually was?
Mr Routledge: In the past I would
say it was operating at around about 50 to 60%, maybe mid sixties.
Obviously it would fluctuate month by month, but I think the most
recent figures showed a figure up in the nineties over the last
couple of months. So we have actually made a lot of difference.
It is a big jump.
Mr Evans: Thank you.
Q499 Mr Caton: Looking again at partnership
and consultation, Mr Boyle, you just suggested to Mr Edwards that
he was invited to your consultative group on a particular subject.
Actually, according to appendix 3 of the evidence you have submitted,
which does list a lot of organisations which are invited to these
groups, Members of Parliament are not actually mentioned there;
Assembly Members are. Is there a reason for that?
Mr Boyle: You are quite right,
sir. I apologise. I may have made a mistake but when Mr Edwards
I thought he meant he had. It could be it has been omitted from
the appendix or you were not asked.
| 
