Info & Resources - Briefings

Child Protection and the Criminal Justice System in Relation to Child Abuse Cases.

This briefing paper written by Margaret Jervis examines what is wrong with the child protection system. It discusses its mistakes and flaws over recent decades in the context of multi agency, system failure and 'group think' dynamics. The papers highlights a number of flaws in the system relating to the decisions to prosecute, evidential reliability, the need for trial safeguards and defence hurdles which need to be overcome. The paper which can be downloaded here in pdf format concludes with an agenda of what needs to be done to improve the system.

Please note: this is a long document, only available in PDF format