The interim chair of the under-fire miscarriage of justice watchdog has announced a ‘full professional inspection’ of the body’s case work by the inspectorate of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).
The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) has come under fire in recent years for failures to get to grips with high-profile miscarriages of justice and long delays to investigations of applicants’ claims. Dame Vera Baird KC took over in June after a shocking collapse in the number of cases the CCRC was referring to the Court of Appeal, and their disastrous handling of the case of Andrew Malkinson. The previous chair, Helen Pitcher, claimed she had been ‘scapegoated’ for the organisation’s mistakes.
Today the CCRC has announced that His Majesty’s Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate, a body familiar with the importance of good casework, will conduct a ‘comprehensive and in-depth inspection’ of the way their cases are handled.
Dame Vera said: ‘It is important that all our stakeholders, Westminster, the public and particularly our applicants and potential applicants, can have confidence in the work we do. We know that we need the assurance of an inspection to prove that point or to make clear that we still have improvements to make.
‘I am very pleased that I have been able to engage the experienced HMCPSI, who do a range of inspections by invitation and have wide experience of casework systems. This step should help to reassure everyone that we will strive to deliver the highest standards. ’
She added that this review of their work shows the CCRC ‘intend to be transparent’ and ‘open to learning’. This follows comments by the Justice Select Committee in May, prior to Dame Vera’s appointment, that the body ‘has shown a remarkable inability to learn from its own mistakes’.
Dame Vera has made clear her intention to change the culture she inherited, one in which staff, including senior leaders, routinely worked alone and from home. The head of the HMCPSI attended the CCRC’s office’s in Birmingham to announce the inspection, and she commented on this: ‘we will be doing more to bring our people more frequently together… Everybody I spoke to told me how much they enjoyed and benefitted from feeling more closely part of a team.’