Rewiring the Rulebook

REWIRING THE RULEBOOK How video enablement is transforming the experience of criminal justice in the UK Her Majesty’s Courts & Tribunals environment for key users including custody Service (HMCTS) is responsible for officers and legal bench managers. A further the administration of criminal, civil barrier was a lack of an agreed operating model between the key agencies—namely courts, and family courts and tribunals in police and prosecutors—together with other England and Wales. In HMCTS’s view, critical actors such as defence and probation. the use of video in justice will become a key component of how justice will Accenture, working in partnership with the be delivered in the future, enabling Police and Crime Commissioners programme courtroom processes to be carried team, adopted a human- and user-centric approach to design and build new digital out more cost-effectively and speedily— tools. Starting with Kent Police and its partner while also improving the experience forces, Accenture designed the solution to for all involved. reflect the way the users actually work—enabling VEJ to be delivered in a way that optimises The Sussex Police and Crime Commissioner, the experience for all concerned, encouraging in collaboration with Police Digital First and and incentivising uptake and usage. HMCTS, is now working with police forces in the South East of England to embed video Alongside the issues around user experience, solutions into magistrates’ courts. Video Enabled other challenges arise from the fact that VEJ Justice (VEJ) has the stated goal of delivering a has very different requirements from a typical transformed, modern justice experience for all business video conference. At the most basic users of the courts and benefiting the taxpayer. level, a VEJ solution has two key elements. The first is automatically co-ordinating the Accenture is the technology partner helping appearances by the witnesses and the defendants to develop, deliver and implement a consistent to fit into the hearing slots provided by the court. VEJ solution to achieve this ambition, working The second is managing the on-the-day activities, with three police forces at present—Norfolk, including connecting the endpoints so the links Suffolk and Kent—and soon to include Sussex between the court and the video suites are and Surrey. Accenture is also working with established at the right time. A vital success Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service factor is the ability to be flexible in terms of when to facilitate the use of video for remanded the call goes ahead—a requirement that’s in stark prisoners to attend hearings from prison via contrast to most business video conferences, video link. When fully operational, the solution which have fixed start and finish times. will support prison-to-court video links, virtual court appearances for first appearance and A further, overarching challenge is the need bail applications, live-link court appearances for the organisations involved to work in a for police witnesses, and victim and witness collaborative and “boundaryless” way, sharing live-link court appearances. information and processes with other parties in the criminal justice ecosystem. Making VEJ “For a vulnerable victim, giving evidence via work effectively requires collaboration between video link can completely reduce the emotional several agencies that are very different in terms stress when they’re involved in the court of their programmes, policies and constitutional system. If you’ve ever had to go as a victim or positioning. Getting those partnerships to run witness to court, you will often have to travel smoothly while respecting the different interests long distances and wait in areas accessible to of the participants requires significant effort family and representatives of offenders, media and a new, more open mindset. and so on—and that in itself is an amazingly stressful situation. To be able to give evidence THE SOLUTION: START SMALL from a discreet location somewhere completely —AND THEN SCALE UP different via video link is really powerful.” Accenture began by engaging with all Katy Bourne, Sussex Police and Crime the other participants to establish an agreement Commissioner to work together collaboratively. This agreement was soon struck between the Sussex Police Crime THE CHALLENGES TO Commissioner, the Courts, the Probation Service, DELIVERING VEJ AT SCALE the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and the VEJ has been a policy proposal in the UK justice Police Forces involved. With this commitment system for many years. But, to date, there have in place, a strategic decision was taken to start been major challenges in delivering VEJ at the project small and scale it up over time. an industrial scale large enough to realise the The chosen approach was to focus initially full potential benefits. An important barrier was on the summary courts, taking tools already the lack of technology to create a user-friendly deployed in the US and upgrading them to be fit for purpose for the UK criminal justice system. A multi-skilled, 20-strong Accenture team set “I’ve seen great improvements in the way that to work, using Agile methodology to iteratively hearings are being held and the consistency land new versions of the software, demonstrate of those hearings. We’re starting to see some prototypes, get feedback and evolve new real benefits in terms of getting cases dealt versions. The clients and users contributed with promptly and effectively. Police Forces ideas continually, helping to ensure their have had to change how they work to make sure needs would be met. Throughout, the citizen the files get there on time, so there are a lots of experience remained front and centre of the other things we’ve identified that weren’t part design process, alongside the potential to of the programme’s scope, but which—when we reduce the time and costs of delivering justice. looked at it —we found needed fixing anyway. So we’re sweeping those up as we go along, The solution is currently in its initial roll-out making sure that the right defendants appear phase, and is up and running in Medway by video, and that the ones who are vulnerable Magistrates Court in Kent, where the first and need to have an in-person hearing are remand hearings are now being linked up. identified and brought to the courts.” This will mean defendants in remand hearings and police witnesses in summary trials can Tony Blaker, Deputy Chief Constable, Kent attend court via video link, saving a lot of Police and VEJ Senior Responsible Officer transport time and cost in police travel and Katy Bourne, Sussex Police and Crime ferrying defendants to and from court. The Commissioner, assesses the scale of the benefits include less detention time in police potential time savings for police officers. cells, less need for contracts for transporting “Currently, officers devote an average of defendants, savings on accommodation about 5.5 hours to each court case,” she in court cells, and less wastage of valuable explains. “But they may only actually be giving police time waiting for court appearances. evidence for half an hour of that time. On top Over the next year, the project will continue of that, they often have to travel to and from to expand. Additional releases of the tool the court, with all the time and bureaucracy will be rolled out to handle scheduling and that involves.” However, she adds that the on-the-day video links, allowing other focus has now widened towards expanding participants to take part along with prosecutors VEJ to include other parties, from the CPS and defence lawyers. The solution will then to the defence to prisoners on remand. be embedded into the remand and summary “We started by just looking at police officer courts of the South East region, opening the time. But eventually we would like to extend way to wider uptake by other courts and this and make it possible for the CPS to regions across the country. prosecute via the video link as well. Defence An important by-product from the project solicitors could also give defence support via has been the creation of a ‘justice dashboard’. video link and ultimately a prisoner on remand In developing the VEJ system, Accenture could do so too. So while using video link isn’t built a new dashboard that manages and monitors new, this is about taking that technology and cases from event to outcome, and can track the making it even more efficient than it already is progress of specific individuals through the justice —making the entire system a lot more efficient.” system. This means it provides unprecedented Katy Bourne, Sussex Police and Crime insights into attrition rates, sentencing, Commissioner and the use of bail decisions in relation to different crime types and social factors. In any country, the criminal justice system is actually made up of several different systems REAL BENEFITS STARTING working together. At its root, the VEJ joint TO EMERGE project supported and delivered by Accenture is about making all these components—and the The results are already beginning to flow. data that flows through them—collaborate and Stakeholders are already pointing to better, interact more efficiently and effectively, from faster handling of cases, a more responsive end to end. Which means lower cost, higher approach to the needs and experience of adaptability and speed, and a better experience citizens, and further benefits around the for everybody involved. efficiency and speed of related processes such as case file management. Tony Blaker, Deputy Chief Constable of Kent Police and the Senior Responsible Officer for the VEJ programme, comments: “Lots of surrounding issues have been dealt with on this journey— and we are in a really strong place now with a good partnership and evolving technology.” AUTHORS ABOUT ACCENTURE James Slessor Accenture is a leading global professional Industry Lead, Global Public Safety, Accenture services company, providing a broad range of services and solutions in strategy, consulting, jslessor digital, technology and operations.

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