Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers
254-259)
STEPHEN WOOLER
CB, SALLY HOBBS
AND JERRY
HYDE CBE
10 FEBRUARY 2009
Chairman: Mr Wooler, Chief Inspector
and your two deputies, Mr Hyde and Ms Hobbs, welcome to all of
you. I know you have some opening remarks but I think they follow
quite naturally from the opening question which Mr Turner is going
to ask. I shall let him do so and that question will enable you
to give some opening comments.
Q254 Mr Turner: Could you tell us one
thing you think the CPS most needs to improve on in terms of its
day-to-day business?
Stephen Wooler: The area where
the CPS needs to improve most is in securing greater consistency
across the organisation in its systems and procedures. One of
the things we have found in the years of inspection has been tremendous
variation not only between the 42 areas but within some of the
larger areas in order to deliver its basic business. The linkage
between those comments and the specific areas is actually around
case preparation in the magistrates' courts which the CPS has
been working on over the last year or so, partly as a result of
the findings of our overall performance assessment, partly as
a result of comments in the Cabinet Office's capability review
of the CPS and, similarly, in the Crown Court there is a need
also to reinforce the systems and processes which underpin case
preparation. If I had to pick one thing, that would be it.
Q255 Mr Turner: Yes, the different
areas have different views about priorities.
Stephen Wooler: I am talking about
the delivery of the business. In terms of priorities, the Service
as a whole has very strong leadership from the top and some very
clear priorities are signalled in terms of the national initiatives
which it is pursuing. I am talking about the way that those are
implemented at area level and at unit level in order to deliver
the basic business, which is the handling of the cases before
the court, the public front shop window.
Q256 Mr Turner: Do you think that
is more popular than a local choice?
Stephen Wooler: What the public
in any area will want to see is that there is effective handling
of cases, fair, firm prosecution and that, in terms of improving
the efficiency of the Service, is where the emphasis would lay.
In terms of local priorities, it is right that the Service must
operate to consistent national standards but responsive to local
needs. That is why the Service has been working quite hard in
its membership of the local criminal justice boards to develop
its community engagement and develop that responsiveness. It is
a balance between having consistent national policies which are
applied in the areas and the responsiveness to local needs and
the prevalence of particular types of offence locally.
Q257 Dr Whitehead: What does responsiveness
to local needs actually mean in terms of the question of a locally
responsive service but with national standards and national guidelines?
Has the oscillation between centralism and decentralism which
has characterised the CPS over recent years in terms of its organisation
been in part a search to find an answer to that question?
Stephen Wooler: The Service certainly
has been trying to find the balance between the national service
and local delivery. That is what the Glidewell review was about
some 10 years ago and that very much pointed in the direction
of the 42 largely autonomous areas. To come back to your question,
society obviously is structured differently across the country.
Where, for example, you have perhaps large immigrant, black and
minority ethnic populations or immigrant populations there you
will have particular needs and the Service has strong policies
in relation to racially aggravated crime, for example. I would
expect in areas where there are large BME populations to find
strong community engagement ascertaining the extent of problems,
working with the police to ensure that there are firm and clear
policies and that those who may be the subject of racially aggravated
hate crime know that they will be supported if they come to the
authorities and report that. That is what I would be looking for
on an inspection. I mentioned immigrants because of course that
is a group of society which may well be subject to exploitation.
I know that there are parts of the country where that is a big
issue for the local Chief Crown Prosecutor because he or she must
work closely with the police to ensure that they are supportive
and that they are looking into those types of situations. I can
think of East Anglia where there are large numbers of people working
in very lowly paid jobs, subject to possible exploitation, possible
abuses and we have seen some quite serious consequences of that
up in Morecambe Bay for example. That was an example of exploitation
which had not been checked. Now there is a much greater awareness
of those types of issues. When I say that it is a national service
but responsive locally, then that is what I have in mind and indeed
particular areas subject to the prevalence of particular types
of offence and offending.
Q258 Dr Whitehead: In the inspection
regime there is not really a category saying you were particularly
good at being locally responsive.
Stephen Wooler: In our inspection
regime we certainly looked at the effectiveness of community engagement
and when we talk about community engagement we are not just talking
about the Service going out and projecting its image to the local
community and local population, we are talking about actually
engaging, talking about what the problems are and then looking
within the parameters of national policies to adapt and to respond
to those problems.
Q259 Dr Whitehead: At first sight,
in terms of the way that the outcome of the inspection is phrased,
one of the local CPS organisations will say "Hang on a minute.
What about the police doing a good job in my area in their local
responsiveness or bringing the prosecutions to the point where
I can take decisions?" or "Is the Court Service operating
effectively so that what I do is going to be as good as it could
be?". Bearing in mind what is therefore essentially a matrix
of what the national performance is, the local responsiveness
is and the other agencies' impact on the judgments which are made,
how confident are you that the judgments which eventually come
out about the grading of the critical aspects of the CPS actually
works?
Stephen Wooler: We are pretty
confident that in the overall performance assessment, which is
clearly what you are referring to, we look at the interaction
of the CPS with its criminal justice partners very fully indeed.
For example, when we look at the aspect, the first aspect is the
statutory charging regime, the quality of advice is in it. We
have just concluded and published a report which we did jointly
with the Inspector of Constabulary on statutory charging which
found very constructive ways of improving the Service for the
benefit of the public overall and where we looked to the CPS to
be more flexible, more responsive to the police needs in the way
that it delivers pre-charge decisions but also we were looking
very much at the role of the police in the preparation of files,
the supervision of investigating officers, to make sure that the
CPS had the quality of the material that it needed to take properly
informed and sound decisions. That was something we were able
to do perhaps more effectively than we can as a single agency
because we were working with partners there. I think that we try
to reflect not only the way that the CPS behaves towards the other
criminal justice agencies and how its performance affects them,
but we make allowance. We do flag up in our reports where we think
that the CPS's performance has been affected by the way that others
have discharged their duties: police file quality being perhaps
a prime example of that but from time to time we touch on the
way the courts are run and scheduled, the impact that may have,
the impact that may have on others like victims and witnesses.
It is a circle and the better the treatment by the criminal justice
system as a whole is for victims and witnesses, the more likely
it is that one will retain their cooperation, their support in
a case and the more likely that you will successfully bring offenders
to justice.
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