Challenges in Criminal Justice

Description

This collection examines contemporary challenges to the criminal justice system in England and Wales. The chapters, written by established academics, rising stars and practising lawyers, seek not only to highlight these challenges but to offer solutions. The book examines issues with legal assistance in the police station, concerns relating to juror decision making and problems in and presented by both virtual hearings and the advent of the Single Justice Procedure Notice. The work also examines challenges surrounding vulnerability in the criminal justice system. Here, diversity includes vulnerability in the criminal trial, neurodivergence as well as issues with diversity and marginalisation in the criminal justice system as a whole. The book also discusses matters centred around sexual offending – including the attrition rate in rape cases as well as the recent development of ‘vigilante’ paedophile hunters and their acceptance as a viable limb of the criminal justice system. Finally, the volume looks at the post-conviction stage and examines recent prison policy through the lens of the human rights of the prisoner. The closing chapter examines the independence of the Criminal Cases Review Commission and highlights how recent changes have undermined this. While focused on England and Wales, the topics discussed are of wider international significance and will be of interest to students, academics and policy-makers. Cover Half Title Series Page Title Page Copyright Page Table of Contents List of illustrations Acknowledgements List of contributors Table of cases Table of legislation 1. Introduction 2. Legal assistance at the police station: Shifts and contradictions in the context of Covid-19 3. Jury decision making in the criminal trial 4. The jury on trial: Guilty or not guilty? Investigating jury trial issues through a comparative approach 5. Contemporary issues in criminal court procedure 6. Vulnerability in the criminal trial 7. Caught in the net: Police powers of investigation and the risks for autistic individuals 8. Diversity in the criminal justice system 9. Listening to ‘Leading Voices’: Using expert insight to identify challenges to, and suggestions for the improvement of, rape investigation and prosecution in England and Wales 10. Paedophile hunters and the road to injustice 11. Prisoners’ human rights in England & Wales: Zigzags, flatlines and missed opportunities 12. ‘Regulated from a spirit of hostility’: Independence and the Criminal Cases Review Commission Bibliography Index