UK Courts Service 'Covered Up' IT Bug That Lost Evidence (bbc.co.uk) 20
Bruce66423 shares a report from the BBC: The body running courts in England and Wales has been accused of a cover-up, after a leaked report found it took several years to react to an IT bug that caused evidence to go missing, be overwritten or appear lost. Sources within HM Courts & Tribunals Service (HMCTS) say that as a result, judges in civil, family and tribunal courts will have made rulings on cases when evidence was incomplete. The internal report, leaked to the BBC, said HMCTS did not know the full extent of the data corruption, including whether or how it had impacted cases, as it had not undertaken a comprehensive investigation. It also found judges and lawyers had not been informed, as HMCTS management decided it would be "more likely to cause more harm than good." HMCTS says its internal investigation found no evidence that "any case outcomes were affected as a result of these technical issues." However, the former head of the High Court's family division, Sir James Munby, told the BBC the situation was "shocking" and "a scandal." Bruce66423 comments: "Given the relative absence of such stories from the USA, should I congratulate you for better-quality software or for being better at covering up disasters?"
An oldie but a goodie! (Score:1)
Should have hired me instead, assholes!
YOU MUST AQUIT! (Score:3)
YOU MUST AQUIT!
It's okay they can still just convict everybody (Score:3, Insightful)
What I like about criminal justice systems is that they are all absolutely fucked up and terrible but they each have their own unique flavor of fucked up and terrible.
That's what happens when you focus on punishment instead of harm reduction. But a lot of people find punishment fun and not in the kinky fun way in the sadistic way.
Re:It's okay they can still just convict everybody (Score:5, Informative)
Like they did with those postal workers.
For the sake of accuracy, the people affected by the travesty that was the Horizon scandal weren't what you would consider to be "postal workers". The Post Office collect mail but have no role in delivering it. Before everything went online and direct deposit the Post Office in the UK was a mix of post offices as you would understand them, social security offices, DMV offices, passport offices and so on. For a long time the PO was owned and run by the state so it made sense to have them deal with forms and payments for a number of government services. When Horizon happened Post Office Ltd. was a private company and Post Offices were more like franchises. The heinous injustices that the victims suffered happened mainly because PO Ltd. was able to bring prosecutions against people directly because the organisation was formerly an organ of the state. It was a legal holdover that absolutely should have been done away with years before.
What I like about criminal justice systems is that they are all absolutely fucked up and terrible but they each have their own unique flavor of fucked up and terrible.
Here are two things that the UK system of justice doesn't have:
1. Monetary bail. If an accused is deemed a danger to the community they're remanded into custody. Everyone else is granted bail. Some may have to wear an ankle tag and adhere to a curfew, or surrender their passport, or agree to keep away from someone/somewhere but no-one is made to pay money to stay out of prison pending trial. That means no bail bondsmen, and no people losing their jobs because they can't afford to post bail.
2. No plea bargains. If you're charged with murder it's because the prosecutor believes they can prove it, not because they want you to plead guilty to manslaughter and save the court some time. On top of that the prosecutor has no say whatsoever in what sentence a defendant will face. A judge may give a shorter sentence if the defendant pleads guilty but it will be a plea of guilty to the crime that was actually committed.
Some errors (Score:4, Informative)
1) 'The Post Office' and 'Royal Mail' were once a single unit, with a telecoms unit stuck on that was sold off, as British Telecom, in the first round of privitisations under Thatcher in the 1980s. Then later Royal Mail, the delivery service, was separated and also privitised, leaving the Post Office still in state hands. This runs main Post Offices, doing the things listed, and what is in effect a network of franchises run by 'sub-postmaster' doing those things but in the context of a shop also doing other things; think of a counter in a convenience store. This means that it will be the taxpayer paying out the compensation to the wrongly accused sub-post masters, though there is some hope that the computer firm responsible for Horizon may end up paying a lot of the cost.
2) The appalling software error of the Horizon project resulted in sub post masters being charged with fraud because money that the system claimed had been paid in at the counter wasn't there when the auditors came round. This is not a new problem; the post office in the village I grew up in had that problem, for real, some 50 years ago. Particular features of the scandal were:
a) The law didn't allow the data from the computer system to be challenged at the trial
b) People who pleaded 'guilty' at the trial didn't receive a custodial sentence, resulting in a strong incentive to do so even if not guilty.
c) The Post Office, as an arm of the state, was indeed in charge of the prosecutions. This is part tradition and part due to the fact that private prosecutions - i.e. not the state but a private individual - are still a possibility in the UK criminal justice system. They are however very rare, and sometimes result in the state 'taking over' the prosecution and shutting it down when it is judged to be unreasonable.
3) Monetary bail is still a possibility in the UK but is almost never resorted to. So we don't have the US' system of bail bondsmen tracking down those who fail to attend court. This recognises the fact that the average criminal is unlikely to have assets worth seizing.
4) The usual rule is that a guilty plea at the earliest opportunity - usually defined as at the time of arrest - attracts a one third discount on your sentence; later in the process gets a smaller discount. The prosecution presents all the information to the judge when there is a guilty plea, along with a assessment from a probation officer. This may include a statement that the offender helped ensure others were also implicated. The defence also presents its case. The judge is free to make any decision they want, though there are strict guidelines about what an offence will usually get. There is no explicit bargain available. Of course prosecutors may charge with a lesser offence when a more heinous one might also match the situation.
Re: (Score:3)
This sort of thing seems to be fairly routine, if you start to dig into it. There was an example recently where the police raided someone's business and took a load of lithium batteries, which they warned them were volatile. You can guess what happened. Caught fire, destroyed a load of other evidence along with them, police now trying to blame the business owners (who were not charged or doing anything wrong).
Another very common one is losing CCTV evidence, often because the police don't request it before i
Which outsourcers developed the software? (Score:2, Informative)
"the MoJ told us several organisations had been involved in the design and development of the software but did not supply a list."
Technical details of the faults (Score:5, Informative)
* Lose uploaded documents, making evidence and filings inaccessible during live cases.
* Overwrite or corrupt files, so some case records showed only partial or incomplete evidence.
* Fail to notify users—judges, lawyers, and the public—that data was missing or files had not uploaded correctly, leading to decisions on incomplete case records.
* The systems affected include those managing benefit appeals, family cases, and sensitive tribunals, resulting in broad impact across justice proceedings.
* Data corruption and missing evidence occurred over several years, with undetected errors during live operations.
* Lack of notifications left caseworkers unaware of missing or failed uploads.
* Partial or incomplete internal review, focusing only on a short sample window instead of the full period affected, undermined the reliability of justice outcomes.
Making it public would do more harm then good (Score:4, Insightful)
\o/ (Score:2)
Can we take the courts service to court?
If this were possible, presumably they would be administering their own case.
If evidence were to go missing this might help - how convenient.
There's something beautifully circular about this like a time loop or arresting somone for resisting arrest.
We found no evidence that this caused any problem (Score:1)
"We found no evidence that this caused any problem"
Did you look for it?
"Well, no."
Certain to not find any evidence that way.
Re: (Score:3)
Yeah, that's a change from the usual joke, and not in a good way: "We didn't investigate ourselves and found nothing wrong."
Re: (Score:2)
Missing evidence of missing evidence (Score:2)
Person wearing wig and robe. Actor or Judge? (Score:2)
UK's justice system makes US justice system seem almost respectable.
Almost.
I call BS (Score:2)
US Fed parallels? Not really (Score:4, Informative)
In the past, each federal court district was entirely self-contained data wise, with nationally managed backup systems. Over the past decade, it has become just another cloud-based service-by-contractor, with the best security and resilience promises can buy.
Given the constant budget cuts and increasing federal fondness for outsourcing and contractor reliance, I'm sure it's just a matter of time before headlines are made. With the entire federal court system now in a single (replicated) basket, the risk of data loss or exposure is greatly magnified. While a previous problem might have affected only the Northern District of North Dakota, for example, it's now all or nothing.
Don't tell Malcolm Tucker (Score:2)
Massive irretrievable data loss really sets him off https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]