Archive for November, 2005

Justice by postcode

Thursday, November 24th, 2005

I worked for several weeks examining data from the Crown Prosecution Service, which resulted in a package in yesterday’s Times newspaper.

The package comprises:

I wanted to get some empirical data to get behind the breezy rhetoric of politicians and journalists to see what was really happening in the criminal justice system. I sent an FOI request to the CPS asking for their caseload disposition database and went from there. I have posted an insider’s guide on how I did this story in the Secret Squirrel section.

I was impressed with the helpfulness and timely way the CPS FOI officer dealt with my request and the quality of the raw data I received. The reason so much of British journalism is simplistic and polemical is due to the dearth of objective, raw data publicly available. The CPS should be praised for opening itself to public scrutiny in this way, and now that we have some facts, we can begin an informed public debate about the way we want to run our criminal justice system.

The project prompted the CPS to publish its own league table, which mirrored my findings: CPS publishes own league table

In addition, the Director of Public Prosecutions, Ken MacDonald, and others contributed to the debate in today’s Letters to the Editor.

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Article: Justice by Postcode

Thursday, November 24th, 2005

Justice by postcode: the lottery revealed
The Times, 23 November 2005
By Sean O’Neill, Frances Gibb and Heather Brooke

Criminal suspects are up to eight times more likely to go free in some parts of the country than others because of a postcode system of justice, The Times can disclose.

A detailed analysis of the work of Britain’s prosecutors shows stark differences in conviction rates around the country for offences ranging from dangerous driving to murder.

Data obtained by The Times under the Freedom of Information Act established that:

  • 34 per cent of homicide prosecutions in London involving murder and manslaughter failed
  • Almost 40 per cent of sexual offence prosecutions in London failed
  • 37 per cent of sex crime prosecutions failed nationally

Hundreds of victims of sexual and violent attacks in Bedfordshire were left with their cases unresolved after almost 50 per cent of prosecutions for sex crimes and offences against the person failed.

Bedfordshire came bottom of the first, unofficial league table of the Crown Prosecution Service’s 42 regional teams in England and Wales, with an overall conviction rate of 76 per cent.

The performance measurement, compiled from casework data spanning an 11-month period, placed Warwickshire on top with a 93 per cent success rate.

The statistics also exposed systemic inefficiencies within the CPS, which took 41,000 cases to court then dropped them at the last moment when lawyers offered no evidence.
(more…)

Posted in Articles, Crime & Justice, Freedom of Information | 2 Comments »

Article: Prosecution rates by area

Thursday, November 24th, 2005

Prosecutors in dock over disparity in convictions
The Times, 23 November 2005
By Sean O’Neill and Heather Brooke

The Crown Prosecution Service’s own data on the outcome of cases reveals huge variations in performance by its lawyers and administrators across England and Wales.

The Times obtained the data through a freedom of information request which led to the disclosure of spreadsheets of monthly case outcomes.

Further study of the results was carried out with the help of the Danish International Center for Analytical Reporting (DICAR).The figures, covering just under a year’s caseload between September 2004 and August 2005, were refined to identify trends in performance by the CPS’s area offices and national patterns in the handling of different types of offence.

The CPS and its independent inspectorate has no plans to draw up similar league tables although the 42 areas are soon to be graded as excellent, good, fair or poor.

Tables, it says, are misleading because they lead to unhelpful comparisons between very different areas, such as West Mercia and Greater Manchester.

There are pitfalls. Factors such as the social composition of juries at different courts and the differences between rural and city crime have a huge influence on conviction rates.

But the data can be fairly used to identify regional offices which perform consistently poorly across the range of offences and to pinpoint types of crime where prosecutors across the country are struggling to secure convictions.

BEST & WORST

The best performing CPS area office, according to conviction rates, is Warwickshire, which is successful in 93 per of the cases it handles. The regional office has high conviction rates across the whole range of cases from homicide (where it secured 12 convictions in 12 cases) to motoring.

But Warwickshire’s apparent success is skewed by the high level of motoring offences which returned a 96 per cent conviction rate.

Bedfordshire always appears at or close to the bottom of the performance tables. Of 1,590 cases of offences against the person, only 51 per cent resulted in convictions. The CPS inspectorate found in June 2004 that Bedfordshire had fewer lawyers than in 2001 and that the workload handled by each prosecutor had risen from 695 cases per year to 875.

(more…)

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Police Secrecy

Thursday, November 17th, 2005

The secret policeman has a ball
The Times, Thunderer, 17 November 2005
By Heather Brooke

When I was a reporter in the US, one of the first things I did was ride along with a local cop. I was in South Carolina – hardly the progressive policing capital of America – where it was perfectly normal for members of the public to shadow an officer on the beat. Local people knew the names of their officers, how many were on duty, and had access to weekly crime statistics, street by street.

I’ve tried to ferret out similar facts from the police forces in Britain and failed. Officers are shocked at the idea of trusting the public with such basic information, even though their American counterparts divulge this and much more every day.

Yet Sir Ian Blair, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, had the temerity to say at the Richard Dimbleby lecture last night that he’s frustrated by the lack of serious debate about policing. If he’s frustrated how does he think the public feel? How are we meant to have an informed opinion when the police shroud their routine activities with such secrecy? How are we supposed to join the debate when the police and politicians continue to foist their decisions ready-made on us in feudal fashion?

There was no debate about the shoot-to-kill policy. The first the public knew about it was the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes. Yesterday it emerged – through leaks, of course – that he was shot with hollow-point bullets; ammunition selected in total secrecy three years ago. Even now the police refuse to justify such decisions, hiding behind the excuse of “national security”.

The Association of Chief Police Officers increasingly controls many aspects of policing. It receives substantial sums of public money, yet is not accountable to us. It is not even considered a public body under the Freedom of Information Act. Acpo lobbied hard for 90-day detention, yet it failed to provide any compelling reason why the police need to hold terror suspects without charge longer than any other democratic country. Tony Blair resorted to arguing that “if the police say they need this power then they should have it”.

For too long the authorities have demanded that we trust them while giving nothing in return. If the commissioner really wants a mature debate he can kick it off by trusting the public enough to give us a full and frank account of what his officers do.

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Binge lawmaking

Wednesday, November 2nd, 2005

We don’t need new terror laws
The Independent, 2 November 2005
By Heather Brooke

Politicians are stumbling around Parliament, giddy from binge lawmaking. Each week, another new law is introduced to give the police state more power, and the public even less. Today the House of Commons debates the Government’s new terror laws. But what is the point of creating new laws when old ones are not enforced? The rise of Islamic terrorism in Britain did not happen overnight nor did animal rights activists or binge-drinking yobs appear from out of the blue. In each case, there was a litany of illegal activity taking place and in every instance the phrases that spring from news reports are ‘case dropped’ or ‘no charges filed’.

Trustees at Stockwell mosque in south London have said they tried getting police help two years ago when an extremist group that included London bombing suspect Hussein Osman, tried to take over. The police did nothing.

The closure of a guinea pig farm in Newchurch came after years of sustained harassment. Between 2003 and 2004, more than 400 incidents including hoax bomb attacks were reported. The family who owned the farm received no police protection and no justice.

Many complain the police do too little too late, if they even show up at all. A damning report on police services by the think-tank Politeia released this week states that, given the ‘sheer difficulty of cutting through bureaucracy and getting the police quickly to the scene,’ many people have given up reporting crimes.

Politeia’s director Sheila Lawlor said: “Policing suffers from low-quality recruits, poor leadership and a structure of divided authority. Both training and employment lack direction, and even a sense of fundamental purpose, with confusion about what the police are employed to do and how well they do it. As a result, the system is failing.” Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair would do well to tackle these problems before he demands further powers.

It must be said, however, that final responsibility for the decision to prosecute rests with the Crown Prosecution Service, and so it must be the CPS who shoulders blame for the general feeling that there has been a breakdown in justice, particularly from the victim’s viewpoint. It could even be argued that the CPS’ feather-soft approach to prosecution has led to the rise in direct action and violence in the UK, particularly among religious and protest groups whom prosecutors fear offending.
(more…)

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FOI in Parliament: 18-31 October 2005

Wednesday, November 2nd, 2005

31 October 2005
Written Answers – Health: Patient Records
Tim Loughton (East Worthing & Shoreham, Con): To ask the Secretary of State for Health if she will list hospital trusts which send confidential patient records abroad for processing.
Liam Byrne: …I understand that the trust has followed guidelines published by the *Information Commissioner* and the European Commission relating to the transfer of personal data outside the European Union. More generally, details of trusts sending patient records abroad for…

Written Answers – Home Department: Kamel Bourgass
Charles Clarke: …confirmed a notification received earlier that morning (no time, medium, source or recipient recorded) that the powder found inside the mortar was ricin-enough for one lethal dose. Under the *Freedom of Information* Act 2005, we have a legal obligation to search for any relevant information before making the decision whether to disclose or apply an exemption…

28 October 2005
Written Answers – International Development: Non-departmental Public Bodies
David Amess (Southend West, Con): To ask the Secretary of State for International Development which of the advisory non-departmental public bodies sponsored by his Department have a statutory base; which (a) publish their advice to Government, (b) publish an annual report and (c) lay an annual report before Parliament; and whether it is under a statutory requirement in each case.
Gareth Thomas: …On completion of this, the Advisory Board will be dissolved. The Advisory Board (a) publishes its advice in the minutes of meetings, under the terms of its *freedom of information* publication scheme, (b) publishes an annua report and accounts which (c) are laid in Parliament, as required by the Pensions Act, 1995.

Written Answers – International Development: Non-departmental Public Bodies
David Amess (Southend West, Con): To ask the Secretary of State for International Development which of the advisory non-departmental public bodies sponsored by his Department (a) hold public meetings, (b) conduct public consultation exercises, (c) conduct consultation exercises with outside commercial interests, (d) publish a register of members’ interests, (e) publish agendas for meetings and (f) publish the minutes of meetings; and whether it is under a statutory requirement in each case.
Gareth Thomas: …The (Overseas Service Pensions Scheme) Advisory Board does not hold public meetings, conduct public consultation exercises, conduct consultation exercises with outside commercial interests, or publish a register of members’ interests. It does, however, publish agendas for meetings and publish minutes of meetings under the terms of the overseas service pensions scheme’s *freedom of information* publication scheme.

27 October 2005

Debates
Affordable Housing (Cumbria)
Phil Woolas: …I wish that some of the newspapers that, under the *Freedom of Information* Act 2000 introduced by the Government, report the allowances of Members of Parliament, would point out that those of us who have second homes in fact voted to increase our own taxes quite substantially-I am not sure whether all Members realised what they were doing at the time.

25 October 2005
Written Answers – Health: Patient Records
Tim Loughton (East Worthing & Shoreham, Con): To ask the Secretary of State for Health how much has been spent by the Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals Trust on sending confidential patient records to South Africa for processing.
Caroline Flint: …the confidentiality of patient information in these, as in all other circumstances. Surrey and Sussex Strategic Health Authority has advised that the trust has followed guidelines published by the *information commissioner* and the European Union relating to the transfer of personal data outside the EU.

Written Answers – Transport: Departmental NDPBs
David Amess (Southend West, Con): To ask the Secretary of State for Transport which of the advisory non-departmental public bodies sponsored by his Department (a) hold public meetings, (b) conduct public consultation exercises, (c) conduct consultation exercises with outside commercial interests, (d) publish a register of members’ interests, (e) publish agendas for meetings and (f) publish the minutes of meetings; and whether it is under a statutory requirement in each case.
Karen Buck: … The Disabled Persons’ Transport Advisory Committee publishes minutes of Main Committee meetings on its website at http://www.dptac.gov.uk/about.htmminutes, but this is not a statutory requirement. Minutes of other meetings may in some cases be available under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

18 October 2005
Debates
Identity Cards Bill (Programme) (No. 3)
William Cash: …As the Minister well knows, the reality is that in the context of what the *Information Commissioner* said, this is about state surveillance. That is why I presented George Orwell’s book “1984″ to the Home Secretary who, to his disgrace, is not here this afternoon…

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