Open Justice Initiative — APPEAL

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Top Highlights

• Violations of disclosure rules by police are occurring in 40.7% of cases, according to Inspectorate reports

• number one cause of miscarriages of justice

• The criminal justice system has no effective mechanism to assess the accuracy of its results.

• Trial transcripts cost tens of thousands of pounds, meaning innocent people can't afford to prove what went wrong at their trials.

• And too often, police won't allow access to evidence for new forensic science testing, or evidence is destroyed before it can be retested.

• often its matter of lack of resources or training

• police should not be the ones to decide what gets turned over to the defence,

• are so under-resourced they don’t have time to investigate disclosure issues by using their powers to read police files

• The law as its stands says lawyers like us can’t have access to the information unless we can show what it will prove – a perfect Catch 22.