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Hamlet without the prince

On 6 March, John Patten announced the setting up of 24 criminal justice liaison committees in England and Wales to "promote better understanding, cooperation and coordination in the administration of the criminal justice system". The members will include probation, prison and police officers, the CPS, clerks to justices, magistrates, barristers, solicitors and social services directors. They are to be set up by May. But judges will not be present on the committees, after Lord Lane, the now departed Lord Chief Justice, decreed that they should not participate, although two senior judges will sit on the national Criminal Justice Consultative Council.

The decision to exclude judges at a local level has been greeted with dismay by some critics. Lord Justice Woolf proposed the setting up of the Council and the local committees in his report on the Strangeways prison riot in February 1991. He said that the forums which he described as an early warning system for failures in the criminal justice system, should be chaired by a senior judge, or it would be like playing Hamlet without the prince.

Lord Lane's ban on the participation of judges at local level was on the grounds of judicial independence. Critics hope that the new Lord Chief Justice Peter Taylor, will reverse the ban, since judges are seen by many to be out of touch with reality and the forums would at least bring them out of their isolation.

The exclusion of community and voluntary sector groups from the committees has also been strongly criticised. It is their campaigning which has exposed miscarriages of justice arising out of police malpractice and judicial complacency, so their absence does little to encourage a belief that the consultative mechanisms are designed to tackle real problems in the criminal justice system.

Commons Hansard 6.3.92 cols 300-301; Independent 13.3.92.