ABSTRACT
In keeping with the book’s focus as set out in the introduction, this chapter pro vides an overview of some key alterations that are currently occurring in the lower criminal courts. Transformations within the courts have been various and multiple, and have been found in the different criminal justice agencies whose work intersects with the criminal courts: the police, the prosecution service, the legal defence profession and probation services. Summary justice alterations have been in a transformative state for some decades, but this chapter addresses changes in the present period which are fundamentally changing the way justice is delivered. The chapter frames these changes within themes of public service modernisa tion and ambitions to run a criminal court system operating to the demands of the twenty-first century, which includes building streamlining and efficiency savings into the system. The changes described are the defining features of man agerial justice. Managerial justice is the dominant model we have seen unfolding in the UK and elsewhere, and is evidenced in the many cost and efficiency savings being made to criminal court service delivery (Ministry of Justice, 2011b; The Conservative Party, 2010, 2015; O’Malley, 2008; Bohm, 2006; Freiberg, 2005; Raine and Willson, 1993). The changes discussed in this chapter are the different speedy justice initi atives implemented over the years in efforts to quicken the pace at which cases move through the criminal court system: the amalgamation and closure of crim inal courthouses as part of a court rationalisation project since 2011 and the introduction of virtual courts and the increasing use of live link technology in courtroom hearings (Ward, 2015; Mulcahy, 2008, 2011). The chapter focuses on changes within the English justice system, but similar modernising, streamlining and efficiency developments have been emerging in other jurisdictions (Haarhuis and Niemeijer, 2006), which are similarly located within models of managerial justice and reformed public service management. This can be seen in the growth of out ofcourt administration offences in continental European countries, where some lower-range offences are assigned to office-based and online administra tion systems (Jehle and Wade, 2006), virtual court and live link developments in the Netherlands etc. It is not possible in this book to review the patterns of change in other jurisdictions, although reference is made to some throughout.
