Improving policing is not all we need to work on

The new revelations about the poor performance of London's prosecutors suggest that the traditional focus on improving policing should not be the only priority of those in charge of law enforcement in the capital.

This is because, as many police officers would no doubt happily testify, there is little point in catching criminals if the case against them is wrongly allowed to collapse because of inadequate paperwork or half-baked briefing to the barristers responsible for securing a conviction

Similarly, if prosecutors take too long to bring a case to court because of disorganisation and unnecessary delays, there is an increased risk that key witnesses will struggle to remember what they saw sufficiently well or fail to turn up in court to testify at all.

Again, both these factors can allow a person who should be found guilty to go free, leaving the public at risk of further re-offending and preventing the imposition of rehabilitative court punishments that might ultimately reform an offender's conduct There is also the wider issue of the waste of public money which results from excessively protracted cases and prosecutions which fail unecessarily.

In their defence, it is true that prosecutors in London face some challenges which make their job particularly difficult. One is the transient nature of much of the capital's population and problems with trial scheduling which can create further additional delays or lead to hearings being moved across London, all of which can make it harder to prepare cases adequately and ensure that witnesses testify in court.

Nevertheless, as the investigations by HM Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate make clear, these difficulties are not sufficient to explain the wide gap in performance between London's prosecutors and those elsewhere and urgent improvements are now needed.