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Speaker 1: On another subject altogether.

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Speaker 2: The Chief District Court Judge has a plan for dealing

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Speaker 2: to the backlog that we have in the courts at

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Speaker 2: the moment. He's introducing time frame goals to try to

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Speaker 2: speed things up. So he's going to divide charges into

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Speaker 2: a bunch of categories, and each category has a time

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Speaker 2: frame that it must now be dealt with in Steve

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Speaker 2: Cullen is a criminal lawyer and is with us.

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Speaker 1: Now.

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Speaker 3: Hey Steve, oh good afternoon.

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Speaker 1: Can you support this idea?

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Speaker 3: Oh, it's a really good idea. We have had our

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Speaker 3: charges divided up into categories to quite some time camel

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Speaker 3: with a Criminal Procedure Act. What we have now are

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Speaker 3: guidelines been distributed by the Chief District Court Judge saying well,

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Speaker 3: let's try and work towards speeding everything up. Yet again,

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Speaker 3: they're done phenomenally well in a post COVID world. We're

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Speaker 3: up the eighty one percent of cases at the moment

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Speaker 3: comply with these guidelines that the Chief District Court Judge

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Speaker 3: is issued, and the target now is to get that

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Speaker 3: up to ninety percent.

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Speaker 2: So the least serious category, category one is where there

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Speaker 2: is no risk of imprisonment and the example use it.

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Speaker 3: May be on the Yes, it may be on the books.

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Speaker 3: For example, you may have a three month next month

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Speaker 3: gyms imprisonment such as aplies to drink driving in various

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Speaker 3: other what used to be called summary matters, but nobody

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Speaker 3: ever is going to be jailed for a first offense

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Speaker 3: of that type. Yeah, those matters are dealt.

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Speaker 2: With, and that has to be dealt with within six months, right,

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Speaker 2: And the example being used is Kerry Allen's case. But

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Speaker 2: Kerry Allen's case wasn't dealt with within six months, was it?

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Speaker 3: No? And the difficulty is you're hurting cats. You're dealing

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Speaker 3: with people in the criminal sphere who often have reasons

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Speaker 3: to want to delay, whether it be the tact that

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Speaker 3: they've got other cases on foot, or they've got their

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Speaker 3: own personal issues that mean they don't want the matter progressed.

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Speaker 3: There are a lot of complexities and that's why the

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Speaker 3: judge said, has honor said that, well, there may be

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Speaker 3: some difficulties in some cases, let's try and work towards

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Speaker 3: speeding them up.

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Speaker 1: Is that so? Yeah?

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Speaker 2: I was going to say, I mean, he obviously doesn't

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Speaker 2: have control of everything what Kerry Allen did in the

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Speaker 2: delaying in that particular care case.

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Speaker 1: Is that unusual? That's not the norm.

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Speaker 3: No, that's not unusual at all. There's multiplicity of reasons

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Speaker 3: why people can te let them have a new job

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Speaker 3: and they don't want to be disqualified immediately when they're

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Speaker 3: only two or three months into a new job and

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Speaker 3: come and crying and say I need to buy a

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Speaker 3: little bit of time zone. So it's normal, it's normal

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Speaker 3: to have part Yes.

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Speaker 1: Well then how do you get around that?

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Speaker 3: Well, you you implement protocols, you push people, and you

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Speaker 3: just try and prod people in the appropriate cases.

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Speaker 2: Okay, Category two offenses which carry a maximum of under

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Speaker 2: two years in jail. That's dealt with the nine months

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Speaker 2: Category three, where the prison sentence can be over two years.

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Speaker 2: Like somebody, I don't quite serious stuff, that's fifteen months.

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Speaker 2: It's fifteen months reasonable to be dealing with potentially something

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Speaker 2: as big as they.

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Speaker 3: Yes, because those are heading down the jury trial paths regularly.

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Speaker 3: They're not always, but they can be, and that inevitably

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Speaker 3: causes further delace because it's more complext Do we mean.

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Speaker 1: Do we need to be doing something similar in the

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Speaker 1: High Court?

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Speaker 3: Well, the High Court is doing quite well. I think

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Speaker 3: it seems to be keeping up with what was a

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Speaker 3: COVID backlog. They've pushed them through. They had the jurisdiction

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Speaker 3: to move some categories of cases down to the Districtorden

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Speaker 3: fetem months for example, used to clog the High Court terribly,

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Speaker 3: though they're dealt with routinely district court. It's to do

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Speaker 3: with the judicial resources, the court resources, and what priorities

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Speaker 3: are given to what range of cases.

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Speaker 2: I wonder, Steve, I mean all of these. A goal

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Speaker 2: is a lofty thing, but it's utterly pointless unless there's

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Speaker 2: an incentive or a punishment. I wonder if we should

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Speaker 2: be introducing one of those two.

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Speaker 3: Well, the difficulty is if you're punishing the client often

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Speaker 3: they've got no money.

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Speaker 2: If you can to punish them with a little bit

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Speaker 2: of an extra bit a tire in the slammer.

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Speaker 3: Well then you've got to spend enormous amount of money

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Speaker 3: building more prisons to try and it's counterproductive. We're already

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Speaker 3: doing that, saying we need a caravan a stick. I

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Speaker 3: hear what you're saying, Steve.

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Speaker 2: Thank you, I really appreciate your time. As always that

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Speaker 2: Steve Cullen, criminal lawyer.

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