Higher judiciary “insufficient resources to provide leadership”

Byrom: Support for leadership judges is not fit for purpose

The senior judiciary has “insufficient resources and support” to fulfill the leadership functions for which they are responsible, a Nuffield Foundation report has found.

The comments came in a report that identified current problems with access to justice in England and Wales, as well as the structural problems “undermining our collective ability to address them”.

Dr. Natalie Byrom, director of Justice Lab, said that while justice system leaders “expressed strong support” for digital and data-driven technologies, there was no “robust ecosystem of organizations” or agreed-upon standards to help consumers assess them.

In her report Where has my righteousness gone?she highlighted shortcomings in the data available to understand people’s journey into and through the justice system, as well as “more than 80 key evidence gaps and priority research questions” that affected each stage.

“Overall, this document serves both as a call to action and as the basis for an agenda that, if presented by researchers and implemented by policymakers, would transform the experience of the justice system for those who rely on it,” she said . said.

Addressing this required “both political will and consistent, credible action on the part of policymakers and leaders of the justice system, including the senior judiciary.”

It also required research funders to be “prepared to invest widely in developing the infrastructure to support evidence-based policy and practice”.

Dr. Byrom, seconded to the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) between 2018 and 2020 as an expert advisor on data related to the court reform programme, detailed the many problems with the justice system, noting that “problems caused by The structure, culture, leadership and funding of both the Department of Justice and its constituent agencies have undermined efforts to develop solutions to sustainably address access to justice challenges.”

She also found that “existing structures to support the senior judiciary in fulfilling their leadership and management functions are not fit for purpose”.

She continued: “Members of the judiciary responsible for fulfilling leadership roles are expected to do so in addition to managing cases, adjudicating and writing judgments.

“In short, under existing arrangements the higher judiciary does not have sufficient resources and support to fulfill the functions for which they are responsible.”

Dr. Byrom said it has been argued that department leaders at the Ministry of Justice “tend to focus on prisons and criminal justice at the expense of other policy areas”, particularly access to civil and family law.

“In particular, the experience of attempting to implement the £1 billion program of digital court reform initiated in 2016 has revealed shortcomings in the framework agreement between the judiciary and the Ministry of Justice that hamper effective governance of the courts.”

The reform programme, which has been subject to significant delays and reductions in scope, was delivered by HM Courts and Tribunal Service (HMCTS), an executive agency of the Ministry of Justice that is “formally jointly accountable” to both the executive and the judicial power.

“However, experts have argued that in practice the partnership weighs more in favor of the executive than the judiciary, due to the differences in responsibility and accountability for funding and management of resources.

“Despite, or perhaps because of, this imbalance, upward stakeholder management takes up a disproportionate share of the HMCTS executive’s time (about 70%), undermining operational efficiency.”

In the context of the “highly ambitious” court reform program, structural issues “wasted time, created confusion, reduced transparency, delayed decision-making and undermined the efficient implementation of the program.”

Legal system leaders expressed “strong support for an expanded role for digital and data-driven technologies” in the delivery of legal services and the justice system.

However, unlike the healthcare sector, the legal system “does not benefit from a robust ecosystem of organizations charged with ensuring the quality of these tools or agreed standards” to enable consumers to assess and compare performance.

“Gaps in existing regulatory frameworks mean that many products and tools do not fall within the scope of the Legal Services Act 2007, leaving consumers without access to crucial protections.

“The current context led the House of Lords Justice and Home Affairs Committee to conclude that the implementation of these instruments in the criminal justice system is akin to a ‘new Wild West’.

“Investments are urgently needed in both research to develop quality standards and advocacy to promote better regulation of these products and devices.”

Sir Ernest Ryder, the former senior president of tribunals, noted in a speech at the Nuffield Foundation’s justice conference this month that leaders of legal systems, including the judiciary, were obliged to “take into account the way in which their leadership of those systems affects access to justice. ‘, but ‘no one can operate the levers of institutions, especially institutions as complex as legal systems, without tools’.

“The lack of research and funding of research into reforms and also into the previously existing non-digital or analog methods of making decisions is striking.”