Crown court updates Victorian jury selection

The Lord Chancellor's Department is rolling out a computerised jury selection system to replace a system that has been dubbed "Victorian" by a Home Office minister.

A Central Summoning Bureau, based at Blackfriars Crown Court in London, will use an Oracle database running on Windows NT4 servers to select jurors at random from electoral rolls.

Home Office minister David Lock said, "This replaces a Dickensian system, with jury summoning officers in courts across country selecting names at random from paper copies of the electoral register and laboriously producing individual summonses."

Texas-based outsourcer EDS, which runs the IT for Lord Chancellor's Department, will operate the system at a cost of £6m over three years.