Shaping the future of Criminal Justice
by John Jackson
From: Human Rights, Equality and Democratic renewal in Northern Ireland edited by Colin Harvey
Hart Publishing 2001
Driven by the values of the Good Friday Agreement and drawing on best practice elsewhere, the group came up with a wide-ranging package of reforms dealing with fundamental issues such as prosecution, judicial appointments and youth justice and how to ensure fairness and accountability throughout the system. A new independent Criminal Justice Inspectorate was recommended responsible for the inspection of all aspects of the criminal justice system other than the courts. The review also recommended that a strategy for equity monitoring be developed throughout the criminal justice system so that the effect of decisions can be monitored on people according to categories such as community background, gender race ethnic origin, sexual orientation and disability. The outcome of this monitoring should also be published on a regular basis to demonstrate that problems have been identified and action is being taken.
The principles of independence, accountability, transparency and fairness informed many of the specific proposals. For example, a newly named prosecution service was proposed to take responsibility for prosecuting all criminal cases through the courts with extended powers to direct that specific matters are investigated by the newly created Police Ombudsman where the prosecutor is not happy with the response of the police. On devolution the head of this service should no longer act under the direction of a politically appointed Attorney General. There is to be a presumption in favour of giving reasons to victims and other interested parties for not prosecuting cases and there are a number of recommendations for a published annual report, a code of practice explaining how decisions are taken, a published code of ethics, inspection arrangements and complaints mechanisms.
The group considered that under new devolved arrangements an independent Judicial Appointments Commission could better safeguard the need for appointments to be insulated from political interference than a system whereby appointments were in the hands of a Minister. A commission would also provide greater transparency than the present arrangements. While appointments should be made strictly on merit, there was a need to make the judiciary reflective of all sections of the community in terms of community background and gender and the review proposed widening the present eligibility requirements to draw upon as wide a pool of legally qualified persons as possible.
To make the courts less remote and give all sections of the community a feeling that they have a stake in the system, the group proposed a number of practical measures such as consulting victims about decisions affecting their cases as well as ending the practice of lawyers and judges wearing wigs. In this context the proposal already mentioned to abolish coats of arms within courthouses was also seen as a necessary measure to make all people as comfortable as possible in the courtroom environment.
Finally, youth justice was given specific priority as indeed it has in England
and Wales. But instead of recommending the coercive model proposed in the
Prevention of Crime and Disorder Act and the Youth Justice and Criminal
Evidence Act which seeks to prevent crime by means of a variety of sanctioning
orders, the review group considered that the philosophy of restorative justice
should be integrated into the juvenile justice system using a conference
model (called a "youth conference") which would be available for all juveniles
subject to the full range of human rights safeguards. The group considered
that there was also a role for community restorative justice schemes to
deal with low-level crime but it considered that such schemes should receive
referrals from statutory agencies and be accredited according to human rights
standards. |
