Summary of Performance and Achievements
Aim
The CPS works in partnership with the police, courts, Home Office, MoJ and other agencies throughout the Criminal Justice System (CJS) to reduce crime, the fear of crime, and its social and economic cost; to dispense justice fairly and efficiently and to promote confidence in the rule of law.
Vision
The CPS is a prosecution service that is confident and independent, efficient and effective – becoming truly world class. Everything that we do aims to deliver justice for all and to make our communities safer.
CPS Strategy
The CPS subscribes to the Attorney General's Vision for the Law Officers' Departments and is working to become a world-class, independent prosecution service that delivers a valued public service. This will be achieved through the delivery of the Service's six priority programmes:
- Improving performance in the magistrates' courts;
- Completing and embedding the Advocacy Strategy;
- Focusing support to victims and witnesses;
- Playing its part in achieving the agreed PSA targets for 2008-11;
- Restructuring the delivery model to improve performance, particularly on serious cases, and improve value for money; and
- Ensuring that it leads and manages well to get the best from all CPS people, and that it engages with them, its partners and communities to improve the Service.
Cases for advice and prosecution
- In 2008-09, the CPS provided 532,427 pre-charge decisions, completed 928,708 cases in the magistrates' courts and a further 103,890 in the Crown Court. This compared with a 2007-08 workload of 547,649 pre-charge decisions, 966,626 cases in the magistrates' courts, and 96,992 cases in the Crown Court.
Case results
During 2008-09, 810,605 defendants were convicted in the magistrates' courts and 84,000 were convicted in the Crown Court. The CPS made a substantial contribution to the CJS target of narrowing the justice gap.
- The percentage of cases discontinued in the magistrates' courts continued to fall, from 12.7% in 2004-05 to 8.7% in 2008-09.
- Unsuccessful outcomes in the magistrates' courts fell from 19.4% of all outcomes in 2004-05 to 12.7% in 2008-09.
- In the Crown Court, unsuccessful outcomes fell from 24.9% of outcomes in 2004-05 to 19.1% in 2008-09.
Overall, unsuccessful outcomes fell from 19.8% of all outcomes in 2004-05 to 13.4% in 2008-09.
% Unsuccessful Outcomes
People
At the end of March 2009, the CPS employed a total of 8,256* people, fewer than at the same time the previous year. It included 2,700 prosecutors and 4,994 caseworkers and administrators. More than 92% of all staff are engaged in, or support, frontline prosecutions. The CPS has 1,025 prosecutors who can appear in the Crown Court and on cases in the Higher Courts, and 430 Associate Prosecutors able to present cases in magistrates' courts.
*Full time equivalent figures. Data are provisional and subject to change. The figures quoted here were correct at 1 April 2009.
Criminal Justice System performance
Public Service Agreement targets
The PSA targets for the CJS from CSR 2007 for 2008-11 are:
PSA 23 - Make communities safer; and
PSA 24 - Deliver a more effective, transparent and responsive CJS for victims and the public.
These targets are the joint responsibility of the CPS, Home Office and MoJ; the CPS works in partnership with the police and courts to deliver them.
Departmental Strategic Objective (DSO)
The CPS's DSO for the period is:
To bring offenders to justice, improve services to victims and witnesses and promote confidence, by applying the Code for Crown Prosecutors (the Code), adopting a proportionate approach to determine which offenders should be charged and which should be diverted from court, and by firm and fair presentation of cases in court.
Efficiency savings
CSR 2007 requires the CPS to deliver £69 million in efficiency savings by March 2011 (comprising £66 million resource and £3 million capital).
