Positives in justice: David Ford interview
More work is needed to reform criminal justice but Northern Ireland is leading the way in probation, youth justice and community policing. Justice Minister David Ford discusses law, order and the security situation with Peter Cheney.
Northern Ireland can take satisfaction in its successes in criminal justice as reform continues across the system, David Ford contends. The Justice Minister, though, warns that major changes are still needed (not least in legal aid) and street disorder is taking up police resources which could be better used elsewhere.
Three years into the post, he sees “a big reform job now significantly under way but a machine that takes a lot of turning round.” The Minister compares reform to changing the course of an oil tanker. Justice devolution’s first year was taken up with reviews and now that the responses are published, “it’s implementation time.”
Over the next year, the prison reform programme will continue to be a “very significant” part of the department’s work but reforming youth justice system is just as much a priority, despite its lower profile. The review of youth justice reported in September 2011 and called for a greater focus on early intervention and prevention of crime, supported by an Executive-wide strategy.
“Instead of moving from a situation that was universally described as bad, we are moving from a good system to make it significantly better,” he says of youth justice. The most recent re-offending rate for young offenders in Northern Ireland (covering 2005-2007) is 32 per cent, compared to 50.4 per cent in England and Wales and 55 per cent in Scotland.
The overall re-offending rate was 19 per cent after non-custodial sentences, much lower than England and Wales’ 49.1 per cent and Scotland’s 60.1 per cent. The Probation Board for Northern Ireland is “probably amongst the top, if not the top” probation service in the UK.
Ford also views the PSNI’s community engagement work as a major success. “I mean, I have met people over my time in office in the neighbourhood policing team in South Armagh, in South Fermanagh, in the Lower Falls,” he relates. “To talk about neighbourhood policing in communities like that a few years ago, you’d be laughed at and yet you see exceptionally good work being done.”
Pressed on whether this is working in reality, not just on paper, Ford replies: “I certainly believe it is. It’s engaging with local people. It’s discussing their concerns and not just firing in on a Land Rover.”
The Minister is pleased with the progress being made by the policing and community safety partnerships (PCSPs), established last April, which hold the PSNI to account and promote co-operation between different agencies. For example, the Omagh PCSP met shortly after the murder of Jason McGovern to work out how specific agencies could deal with night-time disorder in the town.
“We still have significant financial problems to face,” he emphasises. “Obviously, everybody has a difficult budgetary situation. Even allowing for the extra security money we got, there are difficult times and that is particularly being shown at the moment on the legal aid budget.”
After reforming criminal legal aid, Ford is now moving to cut the cost of civil legal aid; a consultation on his proposals closes on 8 March. The budget for criminal legal aid has fallen from £59.9 million in 2009-2010 to £45 million in 2011-2012. Meanwhile, the civil legal aid bill increased from £36.9 million to £48.7 million in the same period.
The Bar Council has insisted that barristers are needed in many civil legal aid cases, to represent vulnerable people against the state e.g. in proceedings involving children in care.
Ford, a former social worker, is unsympathetic. “I have said on a recent television programme that if you want to care for vulnerable children, you need good social workers and good health visitors, not to pay QCs significant sums of money when things have gone wrong,” he states.
During his former career, some wardship hearings did not even have a solicitor on each side of the case but now “very significant legal teams” are deployed. If a solicitor knows the case, he questions why other lawyers need to be brought in “to build up the team.” He suggests: “Obviously, we want to see people getting access to justice but that doesn’t always involve paying lawyers in an adversarial court system.”
The current Criminal Justice Bill was introduced last June and has been broadly accepted by the Justice Committee. The Bill updates the law on sex offender notification, sexual offences prevention orders, human trafficking and biometric information i.e. fingerprints and DNA.
Ford remarks: “My officials listen to the committee and I think the committee listens to us as well and we’re able to agree very nearly everything which, when you consider how contentious justice is, is a tribute to committee officials and I like to think the Minister has a small role to play.”
Committee Chair Paul Givan takes a hard-line approach, and opposes plans to favour community sentences over custodial sentences for less serious offences. Regardless of MLAs’ individual views, he quips that “when the committee puts its mind together, it’s actually quite positive.”
The Alliance Party has a manifesto commitment for a ‘Faster, Fairer Justice Bill’ which is due to be introduced in April 2013. The version agreed by the Executive would establish a single court jurisdiction for the whole province (replacing the present seven county court and 21 magistrates’ court divisions). The Minister is proposing case management procedure rules to bring cases to the Crown Court more quickly.
In addition, the Public Prosecution Service would be able to impose a prosecutorial fine as an alternative to bringing minor cases to courts. Fines could also be deducted from defaulters’ incomes and enforced by civilian staff rather than police officers. The proposed victims’ charter would also be placed on a statutory footing.
It is put to him that this Bill should have been introduced first, given that it is more comprehensive than the current Bill.
Legislation, the Minister replies, can only be introduced after an appropriate consultation process and some of these consultations are on-going. Separately, a single court jurisdiction appears to be a simple concept but this proved “extremely complicated” at the draftsman’s stage.
Security
At the time of the interview, the flag protests had continued for 42 days. The Chief Constable had assured him that “at present” he had the necessary resources to deal with disorder. Matt Baggott, though, has also commissioned an assessment of the PSNI’s resilience and its ability to meet future demands. A large number of officers are due to retire in 2013 and recruiting new officers is “quite a complex business.”
“We are in the position where, at present, we’re okay,” he says, “but clearly if street disorders were continuing on the level we’ve got, there will be an issue and there is a potential budgetary issue even in this year.”
The violence has involved paramilitaries and the Alliance Party manifesto calls for an Executive-wide focus on tackling their influence. Ford notes that deciding whether or not a paramilitary organisation is on ceasefire is up to the Secretary of State “who has access to national security material which I don’t.”
Responsibility for meeting the needs of deprived areas, in which paramilitaries operate, is shared across the Executive. The Department of Justice has a specific responsibility to help reduce tensions around interfaces and has seen “a fair amount of progress” in some locations in North Belfast e.g. opening up the gate in the Alexandra Park peace wall.
“All of that can only come by working with local groups seeking to build confidence,” he comments, adding that people need to understand that security means more than having those physical barriers in place.
“I’ve always been an optimist. I wouldn’t be the leader of the Alliance Party or Minister of Justice if I wasn’t an optimist,” Ford continues. “I do think we are going through a short-term period of some difficulty. I think it is not helped when some people have chosen to tell working class unionists that they have no hope and life is dreadful for them.”
The argument “that there’s nothing for anyone in East Belfast” doesn’t stack up when local people look at the opening of the Titanic Building and Belfast Met campus at the Titanic Quarter, and job announcements by Bombardier and other businesses.
Educational under-attainment is a serious problem but should be addressed through an education system that meets everyone’s needs “and building up the kind of work that Stephen Farry is doing around employment and skills training.”
The Department of Justice’s own policies are assessed through a shared future policy proofing tool, and the Community Safety Strategy which aims to build safer, shared and confident communities.
Ford wants to see a “much better joined-up response” by the parties within the Executive, so that government has “constructive engagement” with those communities, but he also warns against “buying off” paramilitaries.
The threat of terrorism remains severe but is being “contained” by good policing, he adds. The £245 million counter-terrorism investment has been “put to good use” but the PSNI’s community policing also helps to reduce the threat “by showing people the positive side of moving forward.”
Looking ahead, he remarks: “I don’t see that we’re going to see a significant diminution [in the threat] in the immediate short-term future but I do think that the long-term trends are positive. We do need to see the political leadership about building a shared future which will reduce any of the opportunities which are currently given to terrorists by current political difficulties.”
