Justice Permanent Secretary Peter May

report justice Digital justice: An opportunity Causeway

Permanent Secretary of the Department of Justice, Peter May, discusses the ongoing digitalisation of justice, the impact of Covid-19 and the opportunities for advancement under the Digital Justice Strategy 2020–2025.

May begins by emphasising the unique nature of the operating system within justice and pinpointing the operating environment as the greatest challenge of transformation within the sector.

The highly complex system involves a range of different organisations, many of which are independent in terms of their decision-making. In IT terms, this means a range of operating systems and as May outlines, progress requires a collective will.

“To be truly effective and for the system to be effective, all organisations have to work in close collaboration as the actions taken by one partner impacts on another. Users of the system, including victims, witnesses and those accused, experience justice as one continuum and not a series of separate experiences, so we need a system that recognises the independence but also the inter-dependence of all partners if it is to work.”

The challenges of agencies’ inter-dependence in relation to digital, is aided by a mature datasharing hub in the form of Causeway. The Causeway system at the heart of the criminal justice has evolved from its original case management format in the noughties to one which enables enhanced management information capabilities and sharing between five major criminal justice agencies.

May believes that the system, which handles over 12 million messages annually, is the only system of its kind in Europe. Outlining its two major design principles, May says that system ensures that information is captured once at the point it enters the justice system, enabling it to be shared and reused electronically. The second design principle is the onus on agencies to not only retain and manage their own business systems but critically, to follow defined business processes and to meet common data, communication, and security standards.

The Justice Permanent Secretary outlines multiple benefits attained from the Causeway system including greater accuracy, cost saving and faster justice but explains that a fundamental benefit has been a better end-to-end Setting the context for the Strategy’s ambitions, May highlights the existing effort to digitise. He points to the launch of the new Probate Portal and the new digital Legal Aid Management System (LAMS) recently as exemplars. Additionally, May explains that Covid-19 has accelerated massively the use of digital, including video technology. Offering an example, the Permanent Secretary explains that a pre-Covid average of 100 remote connections for courts is being dwarfed by current monthly averages of around 600,000. At the same time over 60,000 remote digital visits have taken place across Northern Ireland’s three prisons.

The Strategy was developed with three key principles of citizen engagement, collaboration, and modernisation. Alongside the principles, May

“To be truly effective and for the system to be effective, all organisations have to work in close collaboration as the actions taken by one partner impacts on another.”

understanding of the criminal justice system, enabling partner organisations to better understand the implications of their actions on each other.

It is for this reason that the system formed a central pillar of the Digital Justice Strategy 20202025 approved by the Criminal Justice Board in May 2020. “Developed collaboratively with criminal justice partners, the strategy did not seek to replace the digital justice strategies of individual agencies but instead build on them to ensure a co-ordinated approach to digital developments and to maximise opportunities to deliver a more effective justice system,” May explains. outlines the key themes included as:

• digital communication and skills: “How do we increase public confidence in the justice system by communicating more effectively with those that come into contact with it”;

• a more effective justice system: “One of our most enduring challenges is delivering justice in a faster, more effective way while retaining fairness and we want to use advances in technology to help with this”; and

• innovation: “To look for the new approaches that would make the biggest impact for the future”. 4

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Causeway benefits

“The challenge we are tackling is respecting the independence of all of the justice organisations but also ensuring we work together to produce something that is more significant than the sum of its parts.”

Turning to what this means in practice, May outlines some of the digital programmes currently being developed under these key themes:

Digital communications and skills: My Justice Journey is the provision of tailored information in one place for all who come in to contact with the justice system, being developed with the needs of victims and witnesses at the core. Additionally, the theme looks at capability and skills, recognising that any transformation is fundamentally about people and the existing need to invest in training and development for all of those using the system. Project-related digital skills will be a workstream within each of the digital justice projects.

A more effective justice system: Sharing digital evidence electronically, between justice agencies and ultimately with the defence including for body worn video and CCTV, will contribute to a faster system with information security benefits.

Innovation: The PPS and the PSNI are leading on examining how technological advances could be used to improve disclosure of information in criminal cases and have recently published a Disclosure Improvement Plan. Additionally, in relation to data analytics, the Strategy aims to improve analysis of the vast array of data held by the Causeway system, offering a better understanding of the nature of crimes being reported and using this to drive further efficiencies and effectiveness in the justice system.

Concluding, May reiterates that the main challenge is our operating environment and its complexity. “The challenge we are tackling is respecting the independence of all of the justice organisations but also ensuring we work together to produce something that is more significant than the sum of its parts. And fundamentally, to improve how that works for those who come into contact with the justice system.

“We are seeking to build on the progress we have made in relation to the Causeway system by taking the benefits and adapting from Covid in a way that allows us to progress on the Strategy’s key principles.”

The Probation Board for Northern Ireland: Working with communities to change lives

The aim of the Probation Board for Northern Ireland (PBNI) is to change lives for safer communities.

PBNI is distinct from many other criminal justice organisations because we are involved at all stages of the criminal justice process. We work in courts providing pre-sentence reports to assist judges to make decisions. We work with communities supervising sentences that must be served in the community. We work in prisons, preparing prisoners for release subject to licences. We also work directly with victims of crime through the Victim Information Scheme.

All probation officers are social work qualified staff, professionally trained in the assessment and management of risk and are registered with the Northern Ireland Social Care Council. This provides us with the right skills to effectively tackle the underlying causes of offending behaviour.

Those causes include addictions, poor mental health, lack of family and peer support and lack of education, training and employment. Unsurprisingly, many of these issues have become more prevalent throughout the last two years of the Covid-19 pandemic. A total of 76 per cent of people under probation supervision in Northern Ireland have an alcohol or drug-related problem. There is a well-established link between drugs, alcohol and crime and one of the most significant factors that influences whether someone will reoffend is their use of drugs and alcohol. The assessments, interventions, and programmes that we provide aims to tackle all of these issues. Much of that work we carry out is in partnership with community and voluntary groups. Indeed, the heart of PBNI’s work lies in the community.

We have links to a large and wide variety of groups and organisations and encouraging people who have offended to participate in these groups is among the most effective ways of rehabilitating them into the community. We also have a community-based board which provides a level of independence, accountability, oversight and strategic thinking which is to the benefit of probation practice and delivery and enables us to have the confidence of local communities.

As we look ahead to the next business year, we will begin our consultation on a new Corporate Plan for 2023–27. We will work closely with the Department of Justice to ensure our strategic priorities align to departmental priorities. We have a key role to play in tackling domestic abuse, sexual and violent crime. We are committed to our statutory partnerships in this area of work and to ensuring people who pose a risk to the community are being effectively managed by probation’s professional staff who are trained in the assessment and management of risk. We will also continue to work with partners diverting and supporting young people who are at risk of becoming involved in criminality and paramilitary activity.

We have much to do over the coming year and our consultation will inform our planning. Central to this will be working in partnership and within our local communities.

Together we can help reduce reoffending, reduce the number of victims and change lives for safer communities.

Contact: T: (028) 9052 2522 E: info@probation-ni.gov.uk W: www.pbni.org.uk Twitter: @PBNINews