(2) what percentage of defendants attending the Community Justice Centre in North Liverpool have (a) re-offended and (b) complied with their sentence since the centre opened;
(3) what assessment he has made of the effects of the pilot Community Justice Centre in Liverpool and the Salford Community Justice initiative on sentencing;
(4) what assessment he has made of the effects of the pilot Community Justice Centre in Liverpool and the Salford Community Justice initiative had on (a) public perceptions of the criminal justice system and (b) the re-offending rate;
(5) what the re-offending rates have been from the community court schemes in (a) Salford and (b) Liverpool;
(6) what the attendance rate by the accused (a) at court in England and Wales and (b) at each individual community justice court was for the most recent period for which information is available;
(7) how many qualitative evaluation reports of (a) the North Liverpool Community Justice Centre and (b) Salford Community Justice Centre he has received;
(8) where each of the community justice courts in England and Wales is located.
The latest adult reoffending statistics for England and Wales, ‘Reoffending of adults: results from the 2006 cohort', were published on 4 September 2008. These indicate that there has been significant success in reducing reoffending. Between 2000 and 2006 the number of offences committed by offenders commencing court orders under probation supervision has fallen 23.4 per cent. from 158.8 to 121.7 offences per 100 offenders.
Reoffending data for North Liverpool and Salford are not yet available due to the need for a large number of sentenced offenders (where enough time has elapsed since the sentence was given to measure reoffending) and time to collect the data. Data on the compliance with all sentences for the Salford Community Justice Initiative are not available for similar reasons.
Data on compliance with sentences for the North Liverpool Community Justice Centre are not available for similar reasons. However, anecdotal information published in an evaluation of the key components of the centre, published in October 2007, reported that staff at the centre perceived that the increase in support and the offenders' enhanced sense of accountability had improved compliance.
To date no assessment has been made of the effects of the Community Justice Centre in North Liverpool and the Salford Community Justice initiative on sentencing.
Evidence of public perceptions of the Criminal Justice System (CJS) in North Liverpool was published in October 2007 as part of a survey of local residents over the period June 2005 to January 2007. This showed that although confidence in the CJS had decreased, it had not dropped as sharply as confidence in the CJS recorded by the British Crime Survey for Merseyside as a whole over the same period. This suggests that the centre had helped to increase confidence locally so that the decline was not as large as it was in other areas. There has been no assessment of the effects of the Salford Community Justice initiative on public perceptions of the CJS.
The Criminal Statistics Annual Report published by the Ministry of Justice for 2007, gives the percentage of defendants bailed to attend magistrates' courts, who then failed to appear as 11 per cent. Attendance rates data are not available for the North Liverpool and Salford community justice projects.
The Ministry of Justice published three evaluation reports in October 2007. These were a qualitative evaluation of the key components of North Liverpool, a qualitative evaluation of the implementation of the Salford project, and the results of a survey, carried out in three waves over time, of the perception of local residents in North Liverpool. There are no evaluations or assessments of the 11 newer projects.
The 13 community justice courts in England and Wales are located at Birmingham, Bradford, Plymouth, Hull, Leicester, Merthyr Tydfil, Middlesbrough (Teesside Magistrates' Court), Nottingham, North Liverpool, Salford, and three locations in London, Haringey, Newham (Stratford Magistrates' Court) and Wandsworth (South Western Magistrates' Court).