Responding to today’s reactivation of Operation Early Dawn (the emergency measure to deal with prison overcrowding by delaying cases in the magistrates’ courts), Tom Franklin, the Chief Executive of the Magistrates’ Association, said:
“We have seen the reports that the Lord Chancellor is – as the previous government did in May this year – implementing Operation Early Dawn. We understand the measure is, for now, limited to the north of England and is partly in response to the numbers of people being jailed following the recent rioting and violent unrest.
“Operation Early Dawn means there will be delays for some people who are charged with an offence coming to court, because if they were to be remanded in custody the prison service couldn’t guarantee a place for them. We have been assured this is a temporary measure, and we know that pressures on prison places will ease on 10 September (when thousands of people in prison who have served 40 per cent of their sentence will be eligible for release under the government’s new ‘SDS 40’ programme).
“However, we are very concerned about these further delays being imposed on cases reaching magistrates’ courts. Every case that is delayed has real-life consequences for victims, witnesses and defendants – and leads to magistrates and court staff sitting around waiting, rather than administering justice. That is a waste of resources, at a time when there are already large backlogs.
“This emergency measure – while it is necessary – also demonstrates the parlous state of the criminal justice system and the need for an injection of more resources at every stage of the justice process.
“The system has been lurching from crisis to crisis for years now, often unseen by the public. The civil disorder over the past weeks has brought into public consciousness how important it is that we have a well-funded and well-run justice system for public wellbeing, and the need for a public conversation about what is needed to fix it.
“As well as considerable investment in the whole criminal justice system – including the courts, many of which are simply crumbling – we need a holistic long-term approach to the problems in the criminal justice system, where all parts are considered as one system, and a discussion about the purpose of prison and indeed other types of sentences.”
