Better courts that aim to keep the most vulnerable safe

Phil Bowen Director Centre for Justice Innovation

Despite overall falls in crime our criminal courts are facing new challenges the most serious of which is the rise in a number of complex and serious types of crime like sexual offending and domestic abuse. As our new report outlines these crimes have always posed challenges for our criminal justice system: the harm caused is high the reporting of the crime to the system is low and its prosecution let alone its resolution is hard and resource intensive.  

The current challenge before us on domestic abuse is multi-faceted. The welcome rise in reporting of it to the police inevitable creates demand on the system. And unlike a crime like a burglary a one off incident the nature of domestic abuse means that the reporting of one incident to the authorities is usually the latest offence in a wider longer-term and extensive pattern of abuse. And that pattern of abuse in turn raises more than just issues around innocence or guilt in a criminal justice sense — it raises...

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