Former CPS head calls for 'proper resourcing' for criminal justice system

Max Hill says summer riots show need for more funding to be directed to police, prisons, prosecutors and courts

Max Hill Photo: CPS

By Jim Dunton

23 Aug 2024

Former Crown Prosecution Service head Sir Max Hill has said this year's summer riots should prompt "reflection" in government about the need for greater resourcing for the criminal justice system.

Hill, who stepped down as director of public prosecutions in October, praised the way the police, prosecutors and the judiciary responded to the multiple flare-ups across the nation, sparked by July's Southport stabbings, which left three children dead.

But he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that with hundreds of suspects already charged in relation to the riots, ministers now had the opportunity "to really think about how to resource right across the criminal justice system".

"Everybody coped incredibly well, in my view, with the overstretch in the last month," Hill said. "But that overstretch, although it was admirable, involved taking the troops from one part of the jungle to another to fight the fire. You can't do that all of the time.

"The only way out is greater resourcing, so let's have a pause and reflect and make sure that everyone, from prisons, probation, court service, police and prosecutors is properly resourced so that they'll be ready the next time there is a pressing issue."

Hill's comments are likely to have particular resonance for new prime minister Keir Starmer, who was head of the CPS from 2008 to 2013, at a time when the criminal-justice system is widely seen as one of the most under-funded and under-pressure parts of the public sector.

Even before the riots, the government's first major crisis was prison overcrowding. On 12 July, justice secretary Shabana Mahmood announced that from September some categories of prisoner would be eligible for release after serving just 40% of their sentence to free up space for newly-convicted offenders.

According to current CPS head Stephen Parkinson, 474 summer riots suspects had been charged as of last weekend. While many offenders have already pleaded guilty and been jailed, others are further behind in the process.

In a sign of the potential impact on the nation's prison's crisis, senior presiding judge for England and Wales  Lord Justice Green wrote to magistrates on Wednesday asking them to consider delaying sentencing of convicted rioters until after 10 September "where appropriate" to alleviate pressure for jail places.

Hill said this morning that he believed the move, timed to coincide with the introduction of the revised early-release rules, was "extremely rational".

"Let's be very clear about this, it's not the judiciary's fault that the prisons are full," he said.

Hill added that the proposed delay in sentencing was "short term" and would not lead to the release of violent offenders onto the streets.

He said: "These are individuals already under the control of our courts who may have been convicted, but who magistrates have decided can be bailed pending their sentencing hearing. But where there is a significant risk that at that hearing they're going to be imprisoned, a two or three week delay will cause no harm.

"There will then be greater capacity in the system. So it's a necessary short-term step."

Online giants 'need to up their game'

Despite being sparked by the Southport stabbings, the summer riots were not directly related to the atrocity. Online agitators are blamed for using the killings as a launchpad to fuel anti-Muslim and anti-immigration sentiment.

Hill told the Today programme the riots had been a "vivid instance of online incitement" with a "very clear line between what people were saying and writing online and what people were doing on our streets".

He said: "What more evidence do you need that this was crime on online platforms? It's got nothing to do with free speech. There has to be a gear-change to intervene and to stop what we saw a month ago happening again on our streets."

Hill said "this is the moment" for social media giants to self-regulate, using the new Online Safety Act as a "stepping stone".

He said that the legislation, which became law last year, was a helpful "nudge in the right direction" that mandates all companies to take robust action against illegal content.

But he added that if social media giants did not introduce better self-governance he would be in favour of further revisions to the Online Safety Act. Hill pointedly would not name individual social-media platforms.

"We have been witnessing crime – 21st century crime – happening on these online platforms," he said.

"Every time, whether through the Online Safety Act or through other means, people try to tell companies to do more, they're met with twin objectives or twin complaints: firstly you're interfering with free speech; secondly you're interfering with commercial interests and privacy.

"Let's be very clear, crime is not free speech. Riot is not lawful protest. And it cannot be in the commercial interest of tech giants to provide platforms that amount to incitement to crime. We've seen that vividly on our streets, incited online in the last three weeks."

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