1/ Today's worrying trend in our criminal justice system: the number of children who are being made subject to stringent pre-charge bail conditions for 6 months and beyond. I've come across two of our cases today where said children both have doorstep curfews of 9 hours plus. 2/ For context, an adult charged with an offence and placed on an electronically monitored tagged curfew for 9 hours a day or more for 6 months would have served the equivalent of a 3 month prison term for sentencing purposes. These pre-charge bail conditions for this long are

1/ Sunday morning and I should be enjoying a well deserved day off having already worked more than 60 hrs this week including being "on call" Friday night until finally informed outcome of last police station case this morning. Instead of mindfully having a nice coffee 2/ My mind is overwhelmed with how our firm will weather the coming weeks now that our friends at the Bar have been forced by this government's inertia into pushing the nuclear button of an all out walk out. We are 100% behind this strike. It's now or never to save legal aid.

And so it begins. The collapse of the solicitor police station advice duty schemes which practitioners have been warning would happen for *years*. And solicitors expected to give even more "good will" to help stop it 🧐

https://twitter.com/lawsocgazette/status/1563092493779865601

Funnily enough, after being treated with nothing but hostility and contempt by the government and its agents for many years and with no rise in rates since 1996, don't be surprised if solicitors don't really feel like doing them a favour. As the recruitment and retention crisis

Interesting that Raab perceives justice as being "held to ransom". As an owner of a firm who does 95% criminal legal aid, I feel like solicitors are being held to ransom. We are being backed into a corner to sign another legal aid contract which effectively ignores the current Crisis in the criminal justice system. The attitude is well either sign it as is or lump it. No other commercial contract would operate like this. For firms like ours, if we don't sign, we can no longer operate or provide a legal aid service for those that need us most. Sure, we

If the government thinks it can lie and gaslight its way out of a solid wall of united defence legal aid barristers who believe in justice for all and with nothing to lose, they're in for a surprise. The public are not stupid and will soon see beyond the spin and outright lies. It'll take more than a Daily Fail front page to turn the tide on this one. A fair and functioning criminal justice system is a fundamental pillar of our society and every legal aid lawyer will fight tooth and nail to save it. Only way to save it is investment, now. There is

Reasons there is no "wellbeing" for duty solicitors: started work at 8am. Full day of managing case files. On police station duty, meant to be 3pm to 11pm. Crime happens 24 hrs. Many are intoxicated on arrival or lack of officers/change of shifts means interviews go over to AM So after 15 hrs of work or being "on call" for imminent work, more often than not you then get woken up through the night by officers or detainees wanting updates. Then you end up doing the interview attendances well into the next day. This includes weekends.

All I am seeing at the moment is email after email from the LAA with duty rota amendments as more and more duty solicitors coming off the schemes. Why are alarm bells not ringing? There is nobody coming through the ranks to replace these solicitors. Is anybody looking at WHY they are coming off? Is it firms giving up Legal Aid contracts, individual solicitors jacking it in fed up with the hostile compliance hounding or the LAA removing people who have not been compliant? We need to know so it can be addressed. Quickly.

Example of the cross over between broken criminal justice system and broken healthcare system: defendant clearly mentally unwell. Caught on camera assaulting a police officer whilst unwell. Remanded in custody and case committed to Crown Court as cannot effectively take part in Mode of trial procedure. Put straight into healrhcare wing of prison. Long delays for prison visits over the summer. Several weeks pass by until a video link becomes available. Client too unwell to understand why he's in prison or our role as legal reps. Walks out of visit.

1/ So what we predicted is finally happening. One east London Crown Court appears to have lost all control of timely listing of cases. Just received the final listing for drugs matters. This is the 5th time it has been listed since early March for PTPH with defendants excused 2/ we have called & written to the court dozens of times asking for defendants to be produced or appear via video for guilty plea arraignment, & to fix the mistakes in the way the cases have been uploaded to the DCS which is making a complex case even more unnecessarily complex

What is actually going on in our CJS. 11 year old child in cells at a London police station right now. Been there at least an hour before solicitor called. Now told I cannot speak to him until hand over done & officer still has enquiries....no child should be in a cell. Period. Why do we keep allowing this to happen? Reps fall on deaf ears. Children in cells has become the "norm" in London. What can we do to start properly challenging this? His mother is there. It's not crime of the century either. No need for it.