Police were unprepared for the scale of disorder that broke out in part of the UK following the Southport knife attacks, a police watchdog has found. Police intelligence did not predict the “rising tide of violent disorder well enough”, according to the review of their response to the worst UK unrest in more than a […]
Watchdog says police unprepared for scale of riots Read More »
The backlog of cases in crown courts in England and Wales could hit 100,000 unless radical action is taken to overhaul the criminal justice system, a watchdog has said. Anthony Rogers, the chief inspector of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and Serious Fraud Office (SFO), said prosecutors’ caseloads were already beyond what had been seen before and he feared
Crown Court Backlog could hit 100,000 cases without radical overhaul Read More »
Magistrates in England and Wales could be given powers to hand down longer custodial sentences under proposals to help reduce the backlog in crown courts and prisons. The move could allow magistrates to try more serious crimes, and double the maximum punishments handed out for an offence from six to 12 months, helping a system
Magistrates could give longer sentences under new proposals Read More »
It cannot have gone unnoticed, that sentence lengths in the Crown Court have increased exponentially in recent years. Sentences of over 30 years for drug convictions were, only five years ago, almost unheard of. Not so now. Figures released in 2024 show that there has been an average sentence length increase from 14.5 months to
Is There to be a Reversal in the Trend of Huge Sentence Increases? Read More »
Courts will reportedly sit for 24-hours a day in the wake of far-right violence sweeping across the country. Ministers met with senior members of the judiciary for emergency talks on Saturday as the far-right clashed with police and counter-protesters in major UK cities and towns. Violence broke out between groups in places such as Sunderland,
