Incentivise defence solicitors for early guilty pleas, DPP tells MPs

Letting the prosecution proactively approach the defence and incentivising lawyers for early guilty pleas could make a significant dent in the Crown court backlog, the head of the Crown Prosecution Service has told MPs.

Director of public prosecutions Stephen Parkinson told the House of Commons justice select committee yesterday that 70% of cases going through the Crown court eventually end with a guilty plea, but guilty pleas are entered at the first substantive hearing (known as the plea and trial preparation hearing - PTPH) in only 36% of cases.

‘If we can squeeze out guilty pleas at a much earlier stage, we will save four hearings,’ Parkinson said.

Prosecutors are serving their full case for the PTPH ‘but it’s not having the effect we would like to see. It’s nudging up that early guilty plea rate a bit’, Parkinson told the committee - and highlighted two potentially ‘transformative’ measures. 

He said: ‘One is to take something which is already present in the Attorney General’s guidelines dealing with serious and complex fraud cases, which enables prosecutors to proactively have a conversation with the defence. Generally, the rule at present is you wait for the defence to come and approach you. But under these not-very-well-known guidelines, prosecutors are able to proactively have that conversation, and where it’s possible agree a common basis of plea in terms of the facts and a common understanding as to where in the sentencing guidelines, if there are any, the case should land for the judge…

‘If we can have, in appropriate cases, and obviously with due consultation with victims, a conversation with the defence which enables us to go to court with a common understanding, that might give defence lawyers and their clients the confidence to put forward a guilty plea, with all the discounts which are available as a result of an early guilty plea.’

Payment for the defence was an area ‘that really requires attention’, Parkinson added.

The committee heard that a defence solicitor gets a ‘guilty plea rate’ if the client pleads guilty at the PTPH. If the client pleads not guilty but later pleads guilty, the lawyer gets a ‘cracked trial’ rate.

‘The cracked trial rate is substantially more than the guilty plea rate. It’s even more notable with barristers,’ Parkinson said.

In a Class A drug supply case, Parkinson said the defence solicitor gets a £639 guilty plea fee and a £815 cracked trial fee. Barristers get a £3,370 guilty plea fee and a £6,739 cracked trial fee.

For burglary, the solicitor gets a £212 guilty plea fee and a £267 cracked trial fee. Barristers get a £460 guilty plea fee and a £920 cracked trial fee. ‘The conclusion I draw from this is that we’re not incentivising the defence to give early attention to papers,’ Parkinson said.

Wanting to pilot different scenarios, Parkinson said: ‘If we don’t start doing things differently, the problems are just going to get worse.’