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NEF - Better courts: not an option but a necessity

Blog posted by: Stephen Whitehead (February 24, 2014)
We all agree that our courts should try to reduce crime. But, in many cases, the reasons people commit crimes are complex, entrenched and difficult to tackle. Poverty, homelessness, addiction and a breakdown of trust in the law and wider society all contribute to offending. These are problems which cannot be solved by punishment alone.

That’s why, over the last two years, the Centre for Justice Innovation and NEF have been collaborating on Better Courts, a joint project to support courts to find new ways to tackle crime and improve their service to communities.

From simple ideas like making sure defendants know which courtroom they need to be in, to new ways of supervising drug users to ensure they are engaging with treatment, Better Courts is about local courts responding to local needs. It celebrates innovative local courts, but challenges the courts system to do more. Which is why we were excited when the most senior judge in England and Wales, Lord Chief Justice Lord Thomas, agreed to speak at our Better Courts event, co-hosted with the Criminal Justice Alliance.

Lord Thomas not only backed our call for innovation, but saw NEF and CJI as having an important role to play in that process:

“The fiscal circumstances of our country mean that innovation and change are not merely an option but they are a necessity. I therefore welcome the opportunity of discussing the issues that are raised; my task, and certainly my task this evening, is not to suggest solutions, but rather to seek the ideas. I wish to encourage, to the greatest extent I can, innovative thinking. The financial position of our State does necessitate re-thinking and I wish to do all I can to encourage such rethinking; that is why I am grateful to both the New Economics Foundation and the Centre for Justice Innovation for taking on this task in relation to low-level offending…”

“A judge or magistrate will always seek to do justice and, in a particular area, he may feel that what is on offer is not working. And in the past we’ve seen this not so much in low-level offending, but in other areas, where judges have taken initiatives and have put forward ideas.”

“Experience, I think, shows two things: first, we must encourage that kind of innovation. But as we all live in a country where we should be governed by the same system of justice, and you should not have what happens in one area being different to another, unless there was a good objective reason for it.  One does need to have some means of knowing what is happening locally; deciding objectively whether or not it is worthwhile; if it is good practice, to spread it; if it is bad practice, to stop it, and there is inevitably going to be a practice that is put forward that is not right, and which you need to stop; and there are practices which are good, which you need to encourage.”

Over the coming months we will be working with Lord Thomas and others to find out more about what good practice in courts looks like, and how to spread it.

You can read the full transcript of Lord Thomas’s remarks here.

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