At the start of the year, we were given an insight into the direction of travel of Boris Johnson’s promised royal commission on criminal justice. In a word, backwards. ‘Prosecutors could be given the power to direct police investigations under plans for a “once in a generation” overhaul of the criminal justice system,’ reported The Times which also revealed that the royal commission could start as early as next month.
As I have written previously in NLJ, the PM (pictured) has long trumpeted his clampdown on ‘soft justice’ and plans to expunge ‘the Leftist culture’ from the criminal justice. Alongside the heavily trailed law and order proposals (longer sentences, more prison places, 20,000 more police officers on the streets etc), the royal commission could see fundamental structural reform such as (according to The Times) merging Crown and magistrates courts in an attempt to make our justice system more efficient.
Expect the PM’s commission to give full expression to his populist tendencies emboldened by his majority government. Only last month
