CJI’s method of working

The aim of all CJI’s activities is improvement. Its inspections will examine the strengths and weaknesses of organisations with a view to identifying the scope for improvement. It may make recommendations designed to help an organisation to improve in any aspect of its performance.

CJI will take that in two stages:

1. Collecting data in advance, and forming provisional judgments as to the strengths and weaknesses of the organisation.
   Testing those judgements in the inspection, finalizing them and turning them, where appropriate, into recommendations.
   
2. CJI does not believe that the most productive way to promote improvement is by ‘naming and shaming’ agencies. There will be occasions when the work of an agency is of such a poor standard and when it shows neither the will nor the capacity to improve, when the Inspectorate will have no option but to state publicly that the position is unacceptable. But most of the time the CJI will work in partnership with the agencies, on the basis that the agency managements share the common aim of improvement.

Inspections will be based on a so-called ‘Common Core’ of standards, composed of:

• Openness and accountability
• Partnership with other agencies in the criminal justice system
• Promotion of equality and human rights
• Being a learning organisation, responsive to customers and the community
• Delivering results in relation to the Government’s objectives

Each inspection starts by seeking the views of the agency’s partners in the criminal justice system and the community on the agency’s performance. This is followed by inviting the agency itself to self-assess against the common core framework, identifying as honestly as possible its own strengths and weaknesses – not to be used against it, but as a token of its commitment to inspection as an aid to improvement.

Undertaking honest, critical self-assessment is not easy for public organisations, which are used to being defensive about their practices and their performance. When the CJI put the proposal for self-assessment to the criminal justice agencies in March they asked for help in preparing themselves for it, so CJI arranged a training day in Belfast in June 2004 for 24 senior agency staff.

The training material produced for the event by Dr Marilyn Dyason, an acknowledged expert in the field, can be obtained free of charge from CJI.

The following documents are available for download:

CJINI Prospectus

The Common Core

Inspecting the Inspectorates