trial and the investigation is postponed until after the appeal or, if it is carried out before the appeal, the report of the investigation is not made available to the appellant's solicitors. Further representations have been made on this matter and the Home Secretary has informed Lord Gardiner that the guidelines for the new procedure will recommend greater flexibility in the timing of the investigation in cases in which appeals are outstanding. This is a partial concession but it does not meet the urgent need for disclosure.
Boards of Visitors
The Home Secretary announced in November of last year that he had decided not to accept the recommendation of the Joint Working Party of JUSTICE, the Howard League and the National Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders that Boards of Visitors should cease to exercise disciplinary powers and be concerned only with the welfare and fair treatment of prisoners. Following the reports of the riots in Hull Prison, and of the treatment of prisoners involved in them, the three bodies sent a joint letter to The Times regretting the Home Secretary's decision and stressing their view that, by reason of their dual function, Boards of Visitors provide a wholly inadequate instrument for protecting prisoners against oppressive treatment and for remedying their grievances.
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The recently published JUSTICE report Our Fettered Ombudsman, deals with this question in detail and urges that the Parliamentary Commissioner should actively exercise his jurisdiction to enquire into any aspect of prison administration, and that any prisoner should have the right to send him an uncensored letter.
The Prosecution Process
The possibility of introducing a system of prosecution similar to that of the Procurator Fiscal in Scotland is still being actively discussed. Its object is to secure that decisions to prosecute are not made by the police, but by an independent authority. Opinion generally appears to be swinging in favour of the proposal and the question is whether the remaining opposition--which is mainly on the grounds of alleged expense--can be overcome. We argued the case strongly in our report The Prosecution Process in England and Wales (1971) and will continue to press for this important reform.
Criminal Justice Committee
The members of our Standing Committee are: Lewis Hawser, Q.C. (Chairman), C. R. Beddington, Laurance Crossley, Peter Danks, Stuart Elgrod, Mrs. Daphne Gask, J.P., Glyn Hardwicke, Tom Harper, Alec Samuels, Tom Sargant, Michael Sherrard, Q.C., Charles Wegg-Prosser, F. Morris Williams and Allan Levy (Secretary).
Decriminalisation
During the year, the first phase of the research commissioned by this Committee has been largely completed. With the help of a grant
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