The government is to provide £800m of additional funding
for criminal justice IT systems.
The extra funding comes on top of £1.2bn already committed to
create integrated systems across the police, Crown Prosecution
Service and the courts. The Probation Service and Prison Service
have also been promised case management systems.
"All criminal justice staff will be able to communicate swiftly and
efficiently through a single, linked IT infrastructure," the Home
Office said in a strategy document published last week. "Electronic
case management systems will have transformed case handling between
the police and prosecution team, in the courts and in the
management of offenders."
The Home Office also announced the National Offender Management
Service, which will use electronic case management to assess the
risks posed by offenders and share its findings with all those who
need them. For example, when a prisoner is released on licence, the
probation officer will have the information needed to supervise
them properly. Also the police will be able to let probation
officers know swiftly about breaches of community penalties.
The courts will have electronic access to the case information they
need from the police, CPS and the National Offender Management
Service. Court officers will have electronic links to the other key
players in the court process, speeding up and simplifying, for
example, liaison over hearing dates and case preparation, the
government said.
New technologies being considered including the introduction of new
offender tagging systems with satellite tracking.
Critics have often pointed to a lack of integrated IT across the
UK's criminal justice agencies as a cause of inefficiencies in the
criminal justice system.
A report by the Audit Commission in 2002 said inadequate IT was
contributing to inefficiencies across the system. And Tony Blair
has admitted that many of the UK's criminal justice IT systems were
"still in the dark ages".