Criminal Justice System Flowchart Website

This series contains dated gathered versions (or 'snapshots') of the Criminal Justice System Flowchart website. [Please note: These records may be accessed via the UK Government Web Archive].

Please see information at Divisional level

See also Criminal Justice System website in MJ 41

Topics

Official publications

The Criminal Justice System (CJS) is one of the major public services in the country, with over 400,000 staff across six agencies: the Police Service, the Crown Prosecution Service, HM Court Service, the National Offender Management Service (comprising prisons and probation) and the Youth Justice Board.

Within central government, three departments are jointly responsible for the Criminal Justice System and its agencies. They are:

The Ministry of Justice (MoJ), which is responsible for criminal law and sentencing, for reducing re-offending and for prisons and probation. The MoJ also encompasses the responsibilities of the former Department for Constitutional Affairs (DCA), overseeing Magistrates' Courts, the Crown Court, the Appeals Courts and the Legal Services Commission;The Home Office, which is responsible for crime and crime reduction, policing, security and counter-terrorism, borders and immigration, passports and identity;The Office of the Attorney General, which oversees the Crown Prosecution Service, the Serious Fraud Office and the Revenue and Customs Prosecutions Office.

The government body responsible for co-coordinating the efforts of all these organisations is the Office for Criminal Justice Reform (OCJR) which was set up in 2004 as a trilateral organisation to spur and join up improvement in the Criminal Justice System. OCJR is a cross-departmental organisation, which means that it reports to ministers in all three government departments mentioned above.