Justice and corrections

The suppliers, products and customers in this chapter are in the landscape database, filtered to justice, with known spend and sources. The graph shows how they connect.

Sector overview

Justice digital splits across three operational areas: HM Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS), HM Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS), and the broader MoJ digital estate. The sector has been the subject of two of the largest UK government digital programmes of the past decade: HMCTS Reform (multi-billion-pound modernisation of the courts) and the Common Platform criminal-case-management system. Both have had significant delivery problems.

Major systems

Lock-in observations

The civil-and-family digital services (online divorce, probate, money claims) follow the GDS pattern and are mostly publicly built. Common Platform is publicly owned but supplier-led, and has had serious delivery problems. NOMIS is a 1990s mainframe estate and is as difficult to replace as other systems of that age.

Court video and virtual hearings have become a significant sovereignty exposure since remote hearings increased during the pandemic. The default tools are Cisco and Microsoft. Digital evidence in court increasingly arrives through DEMS systems already covered in the policing chapter.

Replaceability

HMCTS civil/family digital services D

These services are publicly built and well architected. The CIC should contribute to them.

Common Platform C

The programme is in progress and is being modernised internally; replacement is not the relevant question.

NOMIS / prison case management C

A long-running modernisation is in progress. This is not a CIC opportunity.

Delius / OASys B

Probation case management is functionally similar to social-care case management. The probation reorganisation (NPS / CRC unification back into HMPPS) created a clearer single-customer market. It is tractable in the long term but is not a first priority.

Legal-aid claims B

Statutory rules-based claim assessment with structured data. This suits an open replacement, but the LAA has limited capacity for further change.

The human dimension

Court staff and judiciary report mixed experiences with digital tools. The civil-and-family online services receive consistently good user feedback. Common Platform has been the subject of staff industrial action and significant published criticism over usability and reliability. Probation officer surveys regularly flag Delius and OASys workflow burden; the systems work but the click-counts per case are high.

Hands-off

Sector summary