Andy Slaughter – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Attorney General

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Andy Slaughter on 2016-01-07.

To ask the Attorney General, pursuant to the Answer of 5 January 2016 to Question 20564, how many people were charged with jury (a) intimidation and (b) tampering in each of the last five years.

Robert Buckland

Section 51 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 creates two offences:

S.51(1) creates an offence directed at acts against a person who assists in an investigation of an offence or who is a witness or potential witness or juror or potential juror whilst an investigation or trial is in progress

S.51(2) creates an offence directed at acts against a person who assisted in an investigation of an offence or who was a witness or juror after an investigation or trial has been concluded.

The records held by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) identify the number of offences in which a prosecution commenced and reached a first hearing in the magistrates’ courts, rather than the number of defendants prosecuted. A single defendant may be prosecuted for multiple offences.

The number of offences charged under s.51(1) and s.51(2) are as follows:

The proportion of CPS cases that result in a guilty plea has increased from 67.2% in 10/11 to 74.5% in 14/15 which means that there are fewer cases that are likely to be subject to the sorts of acts covered by s.51(1) during the course of the prosecution.

Also, s.51(1) covers intimidation of juror or potential jurors. The number of crown court trials have also been reducing over the period in question by 9.5%, again resulting in fewer cases where S.51(1) offences are likely to apply.