The North Liverpool Community Justice Centre
The North Liverpool Community Justice Centre
The Community Justice Programme
Community Justice is an innovative programme bringing together the justice system and people within the local community to solve problems, reduce crime and strengthen the community. The programme is a key part of the UK Government’s plans to tackle anti-social behaviour and the crime that goes with it.
The Centre
The official opening of the UK’s flagship Community Justice Centre (‘the Centre’) in November 2005 was a milestone within the programme. Based in North Liverpool, the Centre combines the powers of the courtroom with a range of community resources that are available to local people, victims, witnesses and the offenders themselves. The Centre aims to break down the barriers between various elements of the justice system, the voluntary sector and the community in the handling of criminal cases, so that they can tackle the underlying causes of crime together whilst also streamlining the process of dealing with cases.
The Centre uses a unique approach in dealing with crimes that affect the local community’s quality of life (such as vandalism, prostitution, abusive behaviour and motoring offences). At the heart of this approach is the idea that information regarding an individual from all relevant agencies and social bodies needs to be available whenever that individual enters the justice system. The ‘Defendant Centric, Multi-agency Tracker’ system (‘Tracker’), developed by EzGov Europe for use by the Centre, provides a focal point for this information.
The success of the Centre has meant that the programme is expanding swiftly – in 2008 10 more community justice centres were set up as part of phase two of the overall programme.
EzGov’s Tracker solution
Tracker allows all stakeholder agencies (including the Merseyside Police, the Crown Prosecution Service, the Probation Service and Youth Offending Teams) within the centre to view and contribute to a repository of information associated with the defendant, including information regarding each of the defendant’s individual hearings at the Centre. Tracker also captures and stores data from separate systems such as the Police National Computer (PNC) and Youth Offending Teams (YOTS), in addition to supplementary information gathered throughout the community justice process. It makes all of this information available to stakeholders (including the Judge in the courtroom) in a secure and controllable manner.
Tracker is also unique in that it has been designed to enable multi-agency working in a dispersed environment, by facilitating the collection of information from disparate organisations and data stores, including information previously only available on paper.
Ultimately the Tracker system ensures that decisions regarding defendants are made in the light of all relevant information, including the defendant’s previous case history, and also makes the handling of cases much more efficient. Around 650 defendant cases each month are recorded by the system, by roughly 25 users from 10 different stakeholder agencies.
As with all EzGov-developed applications, Tracker was designed, developed and integrated in a very short time-frame (13 weeks in total) and was delivered on time and to budget. Tracker reflects EzGov Europe’s ability to deliver complex web-based systems to central and local government that quickly deliver tangible benefits to government bodies and the communities they serve.
About EzGov Europe
Headquartered in London, EzGov Europe is a worldwide leader in innovative solutions that enable e-Government. A pioneer in the business of putting government services online, EzGov Europe provides the expertise, services and technology to deliver successful online transactional applications for government. Its customers are central, regional and local governments around the world, where its solutions drive more than 100 mission-critical transactional applications. Its track record is unmatched in the delivery of web-based government solutions on time and to budget. EzGov Europe has offices in Amsterdam, London and Birmingham.
About the North Liverpool CommunityJustice Centre
The Community Justice Centre, North Liverpool, is a pioneering initiative aimed at bringing justice closer to the community. It is the first of its kind in England and Wales. The centre, based on Boundary Street, Kirkdale, works with local residents to tackle crimes and anti-social behaviour, which affects the quality of life of residents in the local authority wards of Anfield, County, Everton and Kirkdale. It provides access to a range of support services for those living and working in the area as well as enabling residents to identify their priorities for the work of the centre and the services it provides.
