Efficiency of prosecuting criminal cases through the sheriff courts (published 24 September) – podcast transcript
I’m speaking today with Mark Roberts, senior manager at Audit Scotland, about our latest report, which looks at how efficiently criminal cases are prosecuted through Scotland’s sheriff court system. 
Mark, can you talk me through what the report is about? 
Every year thousands of people are in contact with the sheriff court system, whether it’s as victims, as witnesses, as the accused, as professionals who work within the sheriff court system, and of course, as sheriffs themselves.  
Four years ago, in 2011, we published a report which looked at the criminal justice system as a whole and one of the recommendations within that focussed on, kind of, the challenges that were being faced by the performance of the sheriff courts in terms of looking at summary cases.
So what we’ve done is go back and look at that in more detail in this report.
And what did you find? 
What we found was that the sheriff court system is under mounting pressure. There’s two main drivers for that:
Firstly, the fact that like many parts of the public sector, the bodies involved in the sheriff court system are facing reducing budgets, and at the same time they’re having to deal with more complex cases entering the sheriff court system, in particular cases associated with historic sexual abuse, and also domestic abuse cases, which are far more complex and are playing a larger and larger part within the business of the sheriff court system. 
What we found is that the average time for cases to pass through the sheriff court system has increased over the last five years. In the last year for which we have data there was a greater number of cases going to trial, there were a greater number of cases outstanding at the end of the year.
And there’s one target which gives an overall picture of the sheriff court system, which is the number of cases which are concluded within 26 weeks, and there are a slightly falling number of cases which are meeting that target. It’s now just under two-thirds of cases that are concluded within 26 weeks.
What we also found there are still a large number of cases which are repeating stages within the sheriff court system, what’s commonly known as ‘churn’, and we’ve made an estimate of how much that churn costs, and we think that’s about £10million a year.
So, what are the biggest challenges facing the sheriff courts system in terms of how it measures its performance?
One of the key challenges that the sheriff court system has is that the various bodies involved in it have to operate independently. 
The police have to make an independent decision as to whether or not to prepare a prosecution report, the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service has to make an independent decision as to whether to take a case to court, or whether it’s not in the public interest to proceed.
And then within the sheriff court system itself, sheriffs, and in some cases the juries, have to make an independent decision as to what the outcome of a case ought to be.
And our legal system requires that all of those components have to operate independently but they are also all part of a system so the effects of one decision can have impacts further on through the rest of the system.
Which is why we want them to work together to manage the business of the sheriff court system. 
We see some evidence of that happening at a national level; the Scottish Government’s Justice Board has improved joint working at a national level. What we want to see is that replicated at a more local level. 
We’ve also made a recommendation about trying to get a broader picture of performance across the sheriff court system. At the moment there’s only one indicator of performance, which is the 26 week indicator so the number of cases which are concluded within 26 weeks. 
There’s lots of other management information that the various bodies have. We want them to make that more available and give a kind of broader picture of the performance of the system as a whole.
What does Audit Scotland needs to happen next for all of that to happen? 
We’ve made four recommendations in our report.
Firstly, to review the performance indicators that are used and make those publicly available to give a wider, broader picture of performance of the sheriff court system as a whole. We want the sheriff court system to try and replicate the better joint working that exists at a national level, at a local level.
And we also want there to be, kind of, much more sharing of planning in terms of what’s going to go on in the future so that information and resources are shared between public bodies so that they can plan for the future, and therefore better manage the flow of people through the system. 
Mark, thank you. 
And the report is available to view on our website www.audit-scotland.gov.uk