This year sees the 30th anniversary of the establishment of the last Royal Commission on Criminal Justice. That commission was chaired by Viscount Runciman of Doxford, whose death was reported in December. As we wait for the establishment of the next Royal Commission, announced by the government in 2019, with a remit to ‘review the efficiency and effectiveness of the criminal justice process’ it may be a good moment to look back at Viscount Runciman and his colleagues’ ‘Report of the Royal Commission on Criminal Justice’ to reflect on how they changed and shaped the criminal justice system into the one we have today.
The 1991 commission was established in the aftermath of a number of appalling miscarriages that had come to light in previous years. Its remit was a wide one: ‘…to examine the criminal justice system from the stage at which the police are investigating …right through to the stage at which a defendant who has been
