Achievements
Public Confidence
The latest British Crime Survey released in September 2004 shows public opinion of the performance of the Hertfordshire Criminal Justice System increased for 2004. Hertfordshire now shows higher levels of confidence on 5 out of 6 categories compared to the national average. The one category that was not above the national average was 'effectiveness in dealing with young people accused of crime.' Work is currently being planned to investigate how this issue can be tackled.
The graphs below show how well Hertfordshire is performing against the national average in England and Wales in the public perception of how well the Criminal Justice System: is 'Effective in Bringing Offences to Justice', is 'Effective in Reducing Crime' and 'Meets the Needs of Victims' .
Effective in Bringing Offences to Justice
A strong performance in the public perception on how effective we are in Bringing Offences to Justice in 2003 has continued into 2004 and we have maintained the excellent score first registered in September last year of 49%. This is much above the average for England & Wales which has crept up to 42% in June, and again no other cjs area is showing a better score than Herts.
Effective in Reducing Crime
Hertfordshire has shown a slight improvement here this quarter to 37%, and has outperformed the E&W average this time. Although this is not a significant statistical change, it is encouraging that there is movement in the right direction both locally and nationally.
Meets the Needs of Victims
Herts has slipped back (35%) since the peak score achieved in September 2003 data (39%). Overall figures confirm that we have a long way to go here despite local performance still being slightly ahead of the average in E&W.
Bringing More Offences to Justice
Hertfordshire was set a target of a 5% increase in the number of offences which result in either a caution or summons, a conviction or having offences taken into consideration (TIC).
This year has seen Hertfordshire achieve an excellent performance with a total of 18,548 offences brought to justice, an increase of over 36% against the government-set baseline in the number of offences that have resulted in successful outcomes.
This is the best performance of ANY criminal justice area in England & Wales.
Persistent Offenders
Hertfordshire has achieved an outstanding performance for 2003/04 with a total of 1370 offences committed by Persistent Offenders brought to justice, an increase of 38% against the baseline set by the Home Office.
This is again the best performance of ANY criminal justice area in England & Wales.
Persistent Young Offenders
A Persistent Young Offender is a is a young person aged 10-17 years who has been sentenced by any criminal court in the UK on three or more occasions for one or more recordable offences and within three years of the last sentencing occasion is subsequently arrested or has an information laid against him for further recordable offence.
3 years ago the government set a target to halve the number of days taken to deal with these young offenders from the average then of 142 days from arrest through to sentencing down to 71 days.
An excellent performance in Hertfordshire from all those involved with young offenders - from the multidisciplinary Youth Offending Teams through to the Courts and Crown Prosecution Service - has meant that Hertfordshire has consistently improved on the national performance against this pledge across every quarter of the year during 2003-04.
At the end of 2003 the average time taken to deal with Persistent Young Offenders from arrest to sentence was 62 days in Hertfordshire.
Effective Trials
This year the target for our Magistrates Courts was to achieve a reduction of 10% in ineffective trials, down to less than 28.5% by the final quarter of the year.
The final quarter saw this target exceeded with a 26.1% ineffective trial rate.