The Public Accounts Committee said in a press release issued overnight that:
The criminal justice system is close to breaking point, the Committee of Public Accounts warns today.
In its First Report of the new Session, the Committee describes the system as “bedevilled by long standing poor performance including delays and inefficiencies, and costs are being shunted from one part of the system to another”.
It concludes the system is not good enough at supporting victims and witnesses and timely access to justice is too dependent on where victims and witnesses live.
This is staggering. Right across the political spectrum it used to be presumed that the upholding of law and order was one of the basic necessities that a government had to deliver. And now, largely because of cuts, that is not happening.
Austerity is hitting at the heart of justice.
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The Committee notes that the poor performance is ‘long standing’. Hope that helps.
So is austerity now
There is no point insisting on the principle of the rule of law if you’re not willing to fund the system of law. As seeking justice is now beyond the means of most people we are likely to return to the rule of might is right. And the might sits with the state, corporations and the wealthy who rarely get it right! I would rather see a national legal service where access to justice is free to all, funded through taxes and lawyers all public servants. Administering the Law should not be for profit in my view, as it creates so many perverse incentives for lawyers to fleece their clients and the state.
The creation of a more equal society should really include a national legal service. And it is interesting that if TTIP were ever to come about with its proposed independant arbitration service, which bypasses the courts, the corporate great and good would have that much less interest in the efficiency of the public legal system.
Interesting too that the ‘party of law and order’ seems happy to denude courts and prisons of resources, seemingly unaware of any threat to their grand plan. Perhaps they ought to remember that Joseph Kennedy, father of JFK, wrote at the height of the 1930s recession “I would be willing to part with half of what I had if I could be sure of keeping under law and order the other half.”
Or perhaps that is now just too quaint.
You could replace what Kennedy said then with today’s version: ‘I’ll white knuckle what I’ve got until hell freezes over.’