Chair Criminal Cases Review Commission. Member Women’s Justice Bd.
Ex Victims’ Commissioner, Solicitor Gen & PCC. Fellow St Hilda’s Oxford. Writer. Labour Party
Welcome and thank you for taking the time to look at my personal website. Here you will find a range of information on the work I do and my many other interests, such as VAWG, my role as Patron of Respect and Operation Encompass to name but a few.
Vera is a member of the Fabian Society
We have referred a second Post Office ‘Capture’ conviction to the Court of Appeal. You can read more here 👉
#Appeal #miscarriagesofjustice
Confirming to the Bill Committee that – contrary to what some people are saying – that jury trials aren’t being taken away. Jury trials will remain for the most serious charges, including murder, robbery and rape.
Odd that the Bar says Mags Ct backlog is worse than the Crown. It is 350,000: Mags do 1.7M cases a yr. Crown Ct backlog is 82,000: it does only 110,000 cases yr. Mags backlog is 1/5 of its annual disposal: Crown is 4/5 of its. Pretty obvious which is worse.
Good to tell the Bill Committee, from experience as Victims Commissioner, how letting defendants in smaller cases demand jury trial, blocks the lists for traumatised victims who we’ve already wronged by not protecting them from crime
Odd that the Bar says Mags Ct backlog is worse than the Crown. It is 350,000: Mags do 1.7M cases a yr. Crown Ct backlog is 82,000: it does only 110,000 cases yr.
Mags backlog is 1/5 of its annual disposal: Crown is 4/5 of its. Pretty obvious which is worse.
Massive delays from defendants in smaller cases demanding jury trial can only be stopped by this proportionate restructuring proposed by Leveson
Watch Sir Brian Leveson highlight the pressures facing the criminal justice system and why the Courts and Tribunals Bill proposes reforms to the threshold for jury trials 👇
Watch @sarahsackman and Attorney General Doug Downey of Ontario discuss how judge-alone trial reforms in the Courts and Tribunal Bill could support timely justice for victims 👇
Crown court backlog hits new record:
We have always said we will not know the whole truth about Hillsborough until we know the truth about Orgreave.
Same police force.
Same tactics.
Five years earlier.
We are grateful to the Government for delivering on its manifesto promise. 🙏🏻
Voices not always heard – brought into the room today while giving evidence at the Courts and Tribunals bill committee stage. I shared words from Victoria, Sarah, Charlotte S, Jane and Charlotte W-B on court delays – for every victim. Because this isn’t abstract. It’s lived.
Clumsy drafting of the Sentencing Bill may increase the number of women sent to prison Earlier this year, David Gauke’s Independent Sentencing Review was published making a range of recommendations aimed at reducing the size of the prison population, which has caused alarming overcrowding. However, there is a big problem for women with its interpretation
Rianna Cleary, an 18-year-old care leaver, was pregnant when she was remanded to prison, on a charge of robbery. She went into labour when locked in her cell, and, though she rang desperately for help, nobody came. When she rang a second time, the officers turned her bell off. She gave birth to baby Aisha,
Prosecuting perpetrators for manslaughter when domestic abuse leads to suicide In January, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) failed in the manslaughter prosecution of Ryan Wellings, a domestic abuser, whose victim, Kiena Dawes, killed herself. It was only thethird prosecution of this kind that the CPS had ever attempted, and they have lost two. That is
Our criminal justice system imprisons twice as many women now, as it did in the nineties. No increase in the quantity or gravity of female crime has happened, to justify this. Harsh penal policy, directed at tougher sentencing for men – who are 96% of the prison population – seems simply to have carried women
