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The Summary Justice Review Committee: REPORT TO MINISTERS
Chapter 18: PRIORITISATION OF CASES
18.1 Priority is given currently to cases involving domestic violence, cases with a racialist dimension and cases involving children or vulnerable witnesses. The Committee was urged to recommend that these and other types of case, such as cases affecting community safety and those involving persistent offenders be given priority over others. A strong case was made by some for a specialised domestic violence court. We have also, on the other hand, been urged not to recommend the prioritisation of any type of case, on the basis that some other types of case will suffer by being accorded a low priority and would take much longer to deal with.
18.2 The main thrust of our recommendations is to speed up the summary justice system as a whole. If it were to function significantly more quickly than at present, the need for prioritisation of some types of case would diminish. The introduction of specialised courts, such as drug and youth courts, has the effect that cases calling in these courts have a priority of their own in terms of court time and in terms of resources from social work services. Prioritisation in practice means that slots have to be reserved in the court diary so that cases can be fitted in at short notice; but if the court diary is already full, cases with dates already fixed may have to make way for priority cases, i.e. some cases will have to be adjourned. For these reasons, whilst recognising that priority is currently accorded to a number of cases fulfilling certain criteria, we would urge caution in extending the types of case which should be accorded priority, with the possible exception of cases calling in a domestic violence court because of the risk that a delay in intervention may lead to the complainer sustaining further harm. We do not have any general recommendation to make as to the prioritisation of some types of case over others. We believe that prioritisation of types of case can best be achieved by decisions made by COPFS which is already operating to guidelines as to which cases should be given priority. The operation of these guidelines might usefully be monitored by local criminal justice boards.
We do not have any general recommendation to make as to the prioritisation of some types of case over others.
We recommend that prioritisation should remain the responsibility of COPFS.
We recommend that efforts to speed up the system as a whole should take precedence over prioritisation of some types of case and over the introduction of further specialised courts.
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