§ Mrs. Curtis-ThomasTo ask the Solicitor-General if the recommendation advanced in the review of the Crown Prosecution Service, Cm 3960, concerning the agreement of statistics, has been achieved. [35952]
§ The Solicitor-General[holding answer 14 February 2002]: As an interim measure, the Research, Development and Statistics Directorate of the Home Office undertook the publication of the Criminal Justice Business Quarterly Report, bringing together the best available data from existing sources and presenting figures in a revised format agreed by representatives of the Home Office, Lord Chancellor's Department, and Crown Prosecution Service.
The Criminal Justice Joint Planning Unit is taking the lead in developing and testing joint or shared performance measures. This involves examining the current matrix of agency performance measures and targets and making recommendations as to which need amendment and where new inter-agency measures are required. The aim is to develop a cohesive set of indicators on criminal justice system priorities while meeting the needs of individual agencies and services.
Linked to this, the Unit is also developing, with local practitioners, the business requirement for a shared management information system for the criminal justice system. A number of areas, including Merseyside, Northumbria and West Yorkshire, already have access to a web-based management information system that contains performance information from each of the main agencies. The system will be further developed over the coming months both in terms of its technical specification and, more importantly, its content.
None of the above resolves the long-standing problem of incompatibility in agency definitions and counting protocols. However, this issue is being addressed by an independent consultant, guided by a small inter-departmental steering group. This project—The Review of Statistics on Administration of Criminal Justice—is due to report later this year, and is expected to result in recommendations about both short and long-term improvements in the integrity and availability of our information, including common definitions. Whatever recommendations emerge, further progress will involve agreement between the various agencies to ensure that individual business needs continue to be served.
§ Mrs. Curtis-ThomasTo ask the Solicitor-General what actions have been taken in response to the observations in Cm 3960, Summary of the report, paragraph 24, concerning performance indicators for timeliness, the magistrates' courts and the CPS. [35964]
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§ The Solicitor-General[holding answer 14 February 2002]The Government have accepted the need for whole systems targets. Reducing unnecessary delay in the criminal justice system has always been a priority for the Government. The importance of this, and a key achievement to date, is illustrated by cases involving persistent young offenders, in respect of which the Government set a target to halve the time that it took to process persistent young offenders from arrest to sentence from 142 days in 1996 to 71 days, a target systematically met over the summer of last year.
The criminal justice departments have continued to work together to identify and agree further timeliness targets. An announcement will be made once the new timeliness targets have been agreed.