Government looking at longer opening hours for courts

A government minister has said that courts may be forced to work longer hours, including weekends to try and make them more effective.

The minister for policing and criminal justice, Damian Green, said that Magistrates courts might open on a limited number of occasions at evenings and weekends as part of efforts to shake up the criminal justice system. The idea for late-night and weekend sitting for some courts stems from the riots in the summer of 2011 when hundreds of suspects rapidly came before the courts to deal with the problem at that time. The Ministry of Justice was impressed enough to recommend, in its white paper “swift and sure justice”, more weekend court sittings.

Green says the government is piloting the idea in some parts of the country, but it may be that there will instead be more sittings at either end of the working day. He said that, while courts currently sit during the central part of the working day, for many witnesses, especially those who work, coming to court at 6pm rather than 3pm would be more convenient. He added that the expansion of video links between courts, police stations and prisons would also add to the greater flexibility required in the criminal justice system. Solicitors had been critical of the possibility of greater weekend working, with many arguing that it would not be cost-effective to have court staff, police, prison officers and lawyers having to work extra hours on weekends.

Damian Green also said he is in favour of seeing greater neighbourhood justice in 2013, including restorative justice and neighbourhood justice panels. He denied these were a soft option and claimed there had been an 85% satisfaction rate from victims who had been through this process with a 14% reduction in the frequency of re-offending.