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<p>Alongside the closure of courts, the government suspended all but exceptional visits
to prisons in March 2020. This was to ensure the safety of both prisoners and our
staff through the pandemic.</p><p>HM Courts and Tribunal Service and HM Prison and
Probation Service are working closely to reduce the backlog of court cases. As a result,
crime recovery work is now moving at pace and we are operating jury trials in 41 crown
courts. This has been a significant achievement, involving close working with public
health partners. Further crown courts will be resuming jury trials throughout the
course of this month. Throughout the pandemic, crown courts have continued to deal
with pre-trial preparation hearings, case management and sentencing custody cases,
among other hearings.</p><p>Despite the absence of physical visits, prisoners do maintain
the right to access legal advice, and we have looked to ensure that prisoners continue
to have the tools to make contact with their legal representatives via telephone,
video link or written correspondence.</p><p>Since the outbreak of the pandemic we
have enhanced the capability of prison videoconferencing facilities, particularly
to support priority court work such as sentencing hearings and prisoners approaching
their parole hearing dates. We have made use of the additional 1,250 mobile phones
issued to prisons without in-cell telephony in order to facilitate private conversations
with legal advisors, alongside encouraging governors to ensure prisoners can have
conversations with their representatives in confidence.</p><p>We are also taking steps
to increase the available capacity of video conferencing across the estate through
increased operating hours to include longer hours during the weekdays, and at some
locations on Saturdays. This will sit alongside renewed guidance to all governors
on the importance of making sure that adequate time for legal advice is made available
to prisoners where possible. Alongside this work, we are increasing the physical number
of video link outlets at some critical sites where capacity is limited, as well as
to support specialist courts, including youth and women’s prisons, together with the
re-purposing of some unused spaces within prisons for more video link capacity.</p><p>As
stated in our National Framework for recovery in prisons, we are adapting aspects
of prison regime, in consultation with trade unions and health partners, to restart
key services. We are consulting representatives of the legal profession on the resumption
of legal visits so that they can resume in a safe manner.</p><p>The measures set out
above seek to minimise potential delays or adjournments due to defence counsel being
unable to receive instructions from their clients and therefore minimise the impact
on victims caused by delays in their cases being heard in court.</p>
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