CJSSS

CJSSS is an acronym for Criminal Justice Speedy Summary Justice. Last week my local Magistrates Court had its first hearings under the CJSSS banner. The theory behind CJSSS is that the whole criminal justice system in the Magistrates Court will suddenly speed up.

It is planned that when people plead guilty to offences that would normally require an adjournment for a pre-sentence report to be produced by the Probation Service of about three weeks that the report will simply be done on the same day that the person pleaded guilty. This is fine by me, provided that the reports will actually be produced and will be of some use to the Court. I am quite happy to deal with a case in one hearing rather than several. An example of how the system does not work is when an HGV driver appeared in Court, pleaded guilty to being three times over the drink drive limit when driving his HGV. The Court asked for a new style Fast Delivery Report from the Probation Service. The Probation Service did not have enough staff to prepare the report within a 'fast' period and the case simply got put in at the back of the Court list. The report did nothing more than confirm what the HGV driver said in his interview with the Police, it did not look at any background issues, and most importantly it made no reference to the underlying issue as to why the HGV driver was in Court - his alcohol problem. When the case came back in to Court the HGV driver was sent to prison for three months - why you may ask? Because is was obvious any person who was drink driving whilst in control of a large articulated lorry should be sent to prison for public policy reasons! The report should not have been asked for because it was obvious only custody would be imposed. The Probation Service were lacking suitable staff to complete the report anyway.

Another example of the failing system is that for the system to speed up all parties have got to move up a gear. In one case a solicitor could not advice his Client on the evidence because the main evidence was CCTV footage in a public order incident. The CPS had statements referring to the CCTV and presented their case on the basis of the CCTV - but the CCTV was not on the CPS file, it was still in the hands of the Police who had not provided it to the CPS! The Court did comment that they were well aware that the Police had been given substantial funding to provide CCTV at first hearings and told the Prosecutor to go across the road at lunchtime to collect the CCTV!

These might seem like small points but the real thrust of CJSSS is that you can get from the start of a case to the end of a case far quicker than you can currently. In my local area if you plead guilty and have a Magistrates Court trial it will take between four to six months for your case to be concluded. Under CJSSS it is expected that cases will be concluded between six to ten weeks from the first date of hearing. I am comfortably predicting that I will see a return to the bad old days when cases were listed for trial so quickly that there was insufficient time to deal with real legal issues such as disclosure. I am of the firm opinion that with fast trials the Police will not be in a position to deal with all of their evidential and disclosure duties and turn up to trials more regularly with new evidence that has not seen the light of day before.

The idea behind CJSSS is very good, cut delays and waste out of the system. Defence solicitors are usually fairly small organisations that can adapt well to change. Unfortunately organisations like the Police, Probation and Her Majesty's Court Service are unlikely to be in a position to adapt so fast even though CJSSS has been planned for many months.

It has been suggested to me that there is a different meaning to CJSSS - Criminal Justice Same Stupid Sh*t. I think that the person who came up with that definition has got it right.