Alliance's Vision for a Devolved Department of Justice

Confidence relating to the devolution of policing and justice is not merely a matter of what happens before devolution but what happens afterwards. Indeed, devolution should not be regarded as an event that happens on any one particular day, but rather is a process whereby the Minister and Department of Justice, Executive and Assembly demonstrate the tangible benefits of transferring powers from Westminster to the Assembly.

This paper therefore provides the platform for the smooth and successful realisation of the agreed vision for the criminal justice system, the realisation of the key goals, and the delivery of the agreed action points by a new Department of Justice, other Departments where relevant, and the Executive as a whole.

Safer Communities and Justice for All

Central to a healthy, vibrant and shared civic society is the rule of law and a modern, efficient and effective criminal justice system that:

  • ensures the impartial application of that rule of law;
  • protects life and property;
  • reduces crime and the fear of crime;
  • provides accessible justice without undue delay;
  • is sensitive and responsive to the needs of victims and witnesses; and
  • rehabilitates offenders.

Significant organisational and policy changes have been made to the criminal justice system over the past decade. The Police Service of Northern Ireland has secured broad-based confidence in the community and has begun to change its policies and practices of policing. The Criminal Justice Review delivered major institutional change. A new Public Prosecution Service is in place with a regional structure. A community safety strategy was developed alongside a new Community Safety Unit. A Youth Justice Agency was created which has introduced youth conferencing, based on international best practice, which is already making significant impact on reoffending rates. A fresh emphasis on the needs of victims and witnesses is emerging. The Northern Ireland Court Service is providing the administration of courts and tribunals, and supporting an independent judiciary. North-South agreements on co-operation have encouraged practical collaboration between agencies so that criminals cannot use the border to escape the law. A unified Criminal Justice Inspectorate is driving up standards.

Notwithstanding these positive changes, significant challenges remain within and outside the criminal justice system.

While, in recent years, levels of crime have fallen, more must be done to address both the actual levels of offending and the fear of crime within the community. Efforts to increase confidence in both the fairness and effectiveness of the criminal justice system and its agencies must be ongoing.

There are considerable inefficiencies and cost pressures within the criminal justice system, and work to manage scarce resources more efficiently and effectively must be intensified to ensure a sustainable level of public service. A particular challenge is ensuring that avoidable delay is removed from the criminal justice system, especially in relation to young offenders.

The devolution of policing and justice has provided the opportunity to further address these challenges. In particular, it has provided a platform to introduce more innovative solutions to criminal justice problems.

In particular, devolution has created new opportunities for collaboration between government departments and agencies on shared objectives. Examples of the potential for collaboration include ensuring that the criminal justice system assists wider efforts to build a shared future, addressing the high incidence of mental health and personality disorder issues within the prisoner and offender population, and tackling the reasons for offending and other forms of anti-social behaviour. Other discrete areas of interaction are between DCAL and DoJ over sports offences, DoJ and DHSPSS over health issues in prisons and wider alcohol strategies and DoJ and DSD over licensing issues.

Key Goals

In working towards the development of safer communities and a fairer, more efficient and effective criminal justice system, the Executive will work towards:

  • improving confidence in the effectiveness of the agencies of the criminal justice system and the fairness of the system overall;
  • promoting a shared future within the criminal justice system, and working to ensure that the criminal justice system assists wider efforts to encourage cohesion, sharing and integration;
  • tackling avoidable delay in the criminal justice system, and improving the speed of justice;
  • ensuring greater attention towards the needs and interests of victims and witnesses;
  • supporting police resourcing in a manner that allows more visible policing on the streets;
  • assisting the police service and other justice organisations to find ways to increase their efficiency, allowing them to operate more effectively within the parameters of their budgets;
  • raising the profile of mental health and personality disorder issues within the criminal justice system to reflect the considerable incidence of such problems with the prisoner and offender population; and
  • driving reform of and within the Northern Ireland Prison Service, including in particular a greater focus on rehabilitation leading to lower risks of reoffending.

Key Actions

In realising these goals, the following actions should continue to be pursued by a Justice Minster, the Executive and the Assembly, informed by domestic and international best practice:

Avoidable Delay/Effective Justice

  • implementation of a court and tribunals estate strategy and reform of the current geographical and jurisdictional court boundaries;
  • review and reorganisation of the tribunals system, including delivering a unified court and tribunal service;
  • facilitating cost-effective and affordable infrastructure modernisation to improve performance and unleash efficiencies in the justice system;
  • encouragement of greater co-operation and co-ordination between the criminal justice agencies tackling undue delay and the speed of justice, including working to agreed and shared targets;
  • support for a consultation on the introduction of statutory targets for progressing cases, drawing on lessons from the Scottish model;
  • support for comprehensive reform of the legal aid system, including full provision of adequate funding and other resources to the disadvantaged in society, ensuring equality of access to justice for all;
  • review of strategies for assisting victims and witnesses within the criminal justice system;
  • development of a Victims' Code of Practice;
  • development of a formal set of guidelines on sentencing and on the enforcement of judgements, through the creation of a Northern Ireland Sentencing Guidelines Council;

Preventing Offending and Managing Offenders

  • agreement on a more efficient and effective approach to addressing and punishing minor offences, including a review of alternatives to custody and diversionary alternatives to prosecution;
  • review of how children and young people are processed at all stages of the criminal justice system, including detention, to ensure compliance with international obligations and best practice
  • creation of an inter-Ministerial working group on the factors contributing to levels of offending and anti-social behaviour;
  • facilitation of collaborative working between statutory and non-statutory agencies to drive down offending and re-offending rates;
  • creation of a Northern Ireland Offender Management Strategy;
  • finalisation and implementation of the empirically-based Strategy for the Management of Women Offenders, and full examination of a potential women's prison;
  • creation of an inter-agency working group to examine improved responses to mental health and personality disorder issues within the criminal justice system;
  • review of governance and accountability arrangements within the Northern Ireland Prison Service;
  • review of the conditions of detention, management and oversight of all prisons;
  • review of the powers of the Prisoner Ombudsman, in light of experience elsewhere;
  • development of adult restorative justice pilots;
  • shift in the balance of resources to managing offenders more effectively within the community;

Supporting a Cohesive, Shared and Integrated Community/Community Planning

  • ensuring that criminal justice aspects are fully included within and central to any forthcoming model of community planning, including requirements for statutory agencies to co-operate with one another and protocols for data-sharing;
  • finalisation of the five-year community safety strategy;
  • facilitating the rationalisation of District Policing Partnerships and Community Safety Partnerships, ideally as part of wider community planning developments;
  • ensuring that a robust regime is in place to deliver compliance with Section 75 obligations across the criminal justice system;
  • encouragement for the criminal justice agencies to take shared future considerations into account within decision-making, and to prioritise support for decisions to share and integrate, including the defence of shared space;
  • development and resourcing of an active strategy to engage with communities to commence and support a process for the removal of so-called 'peace-walls';
  • contributing to the development and implementation of a revised inter-agency protocol on dealing with the public display of flags;
  • driving the inter-agency team to improve the performance of the criminal justice system in dealing with Hate Crime;

Policing

  • working with the Northern Ireland Policing Board and Police Service of Northern Ireland to review and agree the strategic vision for policing and establishing the means and time-frame for delivery;

Supporting Victims/Dealing with the Past

  • commitment to the long-term funding of the Historical Enquiries Team or any agreed successor body;

Civil Law

  • support for continued initiatives, led by the Northern Ireland Law Commission, to review the content and operation of civil law;

During the lifetime of this Assembly, the should be passage of a comprehensive Criminal Justice Miscellaneous Provisions Act, encompassing a range of reforms, potentially including inter alia:

  • Alternatives to Prosecutions
  • Community Planning and related Crime Reduction Responsibilities
  • District Policing Partnership and Community Safety Partnership Rationalisation
  • Sports law and spectator control
  • Statutory Powers for the Prisoner Ombudsman
  • Updates to the law on Police and Criminal Evidence (if required)
  • Legal Aid reform

Get more from Alliance

Alliance is the Party for ALL of Northern Ireland. Keep in touch with us, join our growing Party or make a donation.