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Date: April 30, 2024 Tue
Time: 2:16 am
Time: 2:16 am
Results for court efficiency
1 results foundAuthor: Ministry of Justice Title: Unrepresented Defendants: Perceived Effects on the Crown Court in England and Wales and Indicative Volumes in Magistrates' Courts Summary: Since 2014, there has been growing interest across the Criminal Justice System (CJS) in unrepresented defendants and their potential effects on court efficiencies. In this context, an unrepresented defendant is one who has no legally qualified defence practitioner to represent their interests, so therefore self-represents in court. As of 27 January 2014, any defendant whose disposable annual income is 37,500 pounds or more is no longer eligible for criminal legal aid at the Crown Court. This is a change from the previous system where there was no upper eligibility income threshold at the Crown Court. The application of this threshold is subject to a Legal Aid Agency (LAA) assessment on hardship grounds for individuals who exceed this income but show that they cannot afford to pay for their defence costs privately. The implementation of this threshold is consistent with the Government's wider principle that those who can afford to fund their own defence costs should do so, rather than the cost being funded through the criminal legal aid scheme. The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) estimated that between 200-3002 Crown Court defendants per year would be excluded from criminal legal aid funding due to this change. It was anticipated that this would lead to more people paying their own court costs, and that this increase would represent a relatively small proportion of cases in the Crown Court. However, feedback from judicial stakeholders has suggested that since this legal aid change, they believe unrepresented defendant numbers have increased and this is disproportionally reducing the efficiency of courts. This was evident in correspondence between the Senior Presiding Judge (SPJ) and MoJ officials where the SPJ requested that MoJ conduct further work on the issue, namely to provide more robust data on the number of unrepresented defendants in the Crown Court. A policy paper was presented to the Council of Circuit Court Judges in January 2015 outlining research options. The proposed work was well received by the group who were very engaged in sharing their own anecdotal experiences of cases involving unrepresented defendants. There has been some concern expressed by senior MoJ policy customers about the lack of information currently available in the magistrates' courts about defendants' legal representation status - a point echoed by the SPJ. Since implementation of the income threshold, LAA published data shows that some areas of criminal legal aid have been falling. The largest reduction was seen between October and December 2014, where legal aid funded representation at magistrates’ courts fell by around 8,000 cases (17%) compared with the same period the previous year. While MoJ publications do not breakdown data to monthly levels, it does not appear that there was a corresponding drop in the number of cases received at the magistrates. However, we have no data about the volume or representation for cases where no Legal Aid Order was made. Details: S.L., 2016. 40p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed September 9, 2018 at:https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/unrepresented_defendants_perceiv Year: 2016 Country: United Kingdom URL: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/487249/response/1176864/attach/6/DRAFT%2029%2002%2016%20Unrepresented%20Defendants%20perceived%20effects%20on%20the%20Crown%20Court%20in%20England%20and%20Wales%20and%20indicative%20volu Shelf Number: 151462 Keywords: Court EfficiencyCourts Defendants |