The criminal justice system is ‘sluggish’, stifles innovation, and is both fragmented and bureaucratic. Agencies including the Crown Prosecution Service need to share resources and innovate to shorten the time between arrest and sentencing, and increase the number of early guilty pleas.

These are among the conclusions of a report on criminal justice by Dru Sharpling (pictured), HM inspector of constabulary.

The report, Stop the Drift: a focus on 21st century criminal justice, calls on policy makers and agency heads to ‘regulate the growth’ in the criminal justice system. ‘The CJS has grown in the absence of any systematic control,’ the report noted.

Sharpling’s focus in the report is on improved process rather than revolution. She criticised the fact that there are ‘around 1,000 different steps to deal with a simple domestic burglary’, and noted that some shoplifters were in court within two hours of being charged, while the average was 12 days. She also proposed that the CPS and the police, where they share building space, could also share more back-office functions.

The most controversial ‘process’ that Sharpling focused on was the need to ‘encourage’ early guilty pleas. ‘A majority of defendants plead guilty (67%),’ she wrote, ‘but 41% do so late in the day, when large quantities of paperwork have been prepared and duplicated by agencies’. She admitted there was no ‘obvious formula’.

Unprecedented budget cuts to criminal justice are the context of this report, but Sharpling also noted that quicker justice would improve public faith in the system.