UK Justice Policy Review

The House of Commons Work and Pensions Committee has criticised the Department for Work and Pensions for hampering its inquiry into the roll-out of the Universal Credit. According to the Financial Times (free registration required), the Department failed to provide 'accurate, timely and detailed information' to the Committee.

A new report from the House of Commons Public Administration Committee claims that there is strong evidence that the police are under-recording crimes, with numerical targets giving officers a perverse incentive to mis-record offences.

The government's troubled families programme is likely to miss its target to 'turn around' 120,000  so-called troubled families, the influential House of Commons Public Accounts Select Committee argues in a new report.

Police in England and Wales used tasers more than 10,000 in 2013, The Guardian reports, an increase of 27 per cent in a year.

Figures from the annual Police use of taser statistics also show that taser use has increased dramatically year on year since 2009, when they were used just over 3,000 times.

A new joint report by the Probation and Police Inspectorates on integrated offender management (PDF, new window) has concluded that it is 'a promising approach'.

In their joint forward Paul McDowell and Tom Winsor, HM Chief Inspectors of Probation and Constabulary respectively, wrote:

The Department for Work and Pensions has today announced the cancellation of the troubled Atos Work Capability Assessement contract via Twitter.

Today we are announcing we are seeking a new provider to replace Atos for the Work Capability Assessment

— DWP Press Office (@dwppressoffice) March 27, 2014

A critical report by HM Inspectorate of Constabulary says that victims of domestic violence faced a 'lottery' in the way they are treated. Theresa May, Home Secretary, has called for a 'radical change', saying that she would chair a group to consider the findings of the report, and the way only 8 police forces out of 43 responded well to women, according to BBC News.

Following a Freedom of Information request, BBC Radio 4 reports that the amount spent by councils on services for young people fell, in real terms, from £1.2bn in 2010-2011, to £791m in 2012-2013. The decision to move responsibility for young people from the Department for Education to the Cabinet Office was a ‘retrograde step’, according to Conservative MP Tim Loughton, who was Children’s Minister up to September 2012.

Fiona Black, Chief Executive of the National Youth Agency, was quoted as saying:

On Monday we published UK Justice Policy Review 3, the latest edition in our annual series, supported by The Hadley Trust, tracking tracking year-on-year criminal justice and social welfare developments across the UK.

We've received lots of positive responses, including on Twitter. Here's a selection: