CJS Enforcement Programme
The effective use and enforcement of penalties is crucial to maintaining confidence in the criminal justice system. Increasing public confidence ensures that victims and witnesses are more willing to engage with the courts system, and that the public as a whole feels more protected. If the justice system is to be respected, sentences and court orders must be complied with - offenders must realise that they cannot ignore the orders of the court. We aim to do this by ensuring that fines and compensation are paid, community penalties must be enforced and attendance at court must be seen as compulsory. The National Criminal Justice Board's vision for 2008 is that, 'rigorous enforcement will revolutionise compliance with sentences and orders of the court'. The NCJB has set a number of enforcement targets for Local Criminal Justice Boards in order to achieve this vision.
Financial Penalties
In a concerted effort to increase public confidence and compliance in the first instance, Her Majesty's Courts Service (HMCS) rolled out a new statutory framework for fine enforcement in the Courts Act 2003 (including compulsory attachment of earnings orders for defaulters and new sanctions for those who default on fines). It also introduced a number of other initiatives aimed at increasing information sharing between departments to aid the tracing of offenders. Longer-term business redesign work is also underway to improve ways of working and further optimise performance.
The national fines payment rate target has been set at 85% for 2008/09.
Community Penalties
The Community Penalty and Licence Enforcement Group (CPLEG) has a wide delivery plan in place to secure improvements in community penalty enforcement performance. CPLEG is chaired by NOMS (National Offender Management Service) and is working with HMCS, National Probation Service, Youth Justice Board, Police, electronic monitoring contractors and the Office for Criminal Justice Reform (OCJR). The LCJBs are focussing on efficient and effective processes to list breach cases quickly, reduce adjournments, improve the quality and timeliness of information exchange and improve warrant execution. All areas are required to implement a fast-track process, which ensures that offenders who pose the highest risk to the public are dealt with even more quickly than the standard process. Areas with the poorest performance can be provided with targeted intervention to secure performance improvement.
There is a single headline performance target which is to resolve 60% of breaches within 25 working days from the date of the relevant failure to comply to the resolution of the case. In addition there are indicators designed to ensure that those cases that fall outside of the 25 day target are resolved in the shortest timescales.
Defendant Attendance
Defendant attendance is being addressed through a strategy which has three key elements: improving first-time compliance with bail, increasing the speed and consistency of execution of Failure To Appear warrants when defendants fail to comply with bail, and ensuring that defendants who commit a Bail Act offence by failing to appear are dealt with quickly and robustly for that offence when they are brought back to court. Local targets play an important role in achieving this.
The national timeliness of execution of warrant targets are:
- 73% of category A warrants to be executed within 14 days,
- 73% of category B warrants to be executed within 21 days and;
- 64% of category C warrants to be executed within 28 days.
The number of unexecuted FTA warrants was successfully reduced by 52% from March 2005 to 25,039 outstanding warrants at the end of March 2008. The March 2009 target for outstanding warrants is 24,457. From April 2008 the stock/flow ratio is also being measured, which is the number of warrants outstanding at the end of the month divided by the average number of warrants received during the last three months. The national target is 2.0.
LCJBs have agreed their own local targets for these measures which collectively meet the national standards In addition to focussing on these discrete areas of enforcement HMCS is leading on a cross CJS initiative to develop a joined-up approach to delivering sustained and effective enforcement performance.