Source · Select Committees · Justice Committee
Recommendation 15
15
Deferred
Set specific timeliness targets across criminal justice system, including for rape cases.
Recommendation
The Committee welcomes the publication of criminal justice scorecards. We recommend that the Government builds on these scorecards by setting itself targets to improve timeliness across the criminal justice system. The Government should also set timeliness targets for the average time taken from offence recorded to ultimate conclusion for specific offences, such as rape. (Paragraph 52) Sitting days in the Crown Court
Government response summary AI-generated
The government did not commit to setting new timeliness targets across the criminal justice system or for specific offences. Instead, it stated it would evaluate the impact of remote hearings from the HMCTS Reform program to inform future policy.
Summary of the government's response below — read the verbatim text to verify.
Government Response
Deferred
HM Government · verbatim extract
Deferred
The department has previously worked with the judiciary to consider reasonable expectations for case completion times in the Crown Court. This resulted in the development of Better Case Management (BCM) framework, a judicially-led initiative introduced in 2016, under which timeframes are set out for each stage of the process regarding preparation for trial. BCM outlines that cases are expected to take 182 days from receipt at Crown Court to start of trial (assuming a non-guilty plea), providing all parties undertake their obligations. The department believes the timeframes set out in BCM remain a reasonable expectation. The CJS Delivery Data Dashboard (formerly called CJS Scorecards) shows timeliness at different stages of the system such as the investigating or charging stage to better understand where in the justice process delays are occurring, down to Local Criminal Justice Board level. For example, the local data dashboard monitors how long it takes between a case arriving at the Crown Court and the case completing. We are committed to continuing to improve the dashboard with each publication cycle which includes making sure we are monitoring the right metrics that give the fairest reflection of timeliness across the system. The Criminal Courts—Sitting Days in the Crown Court
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