The ACT's top prosecutor has warned that without extra funding he will have "no capacity" to match the increased workload when Canberra's new courtrooms open next year.
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In the ACT Director of Public Prosecutions' annual report published Monday, director Jon White SC, called on the government to immediately and in the long-term inject extra resources into the DPP.
Mr White said the DPP's perennial funding pressures have also been made worse by the increasing number and complexity of trials.
He said he did not have enough senior prosecutors to keep up with the workload, and had difficulty recruiting and retaining senior staff members.
The number of jury trials run by the office increased by nearly a quarter on the year before, from 47 to 64, the DPP's 2016/17 annual report says.
Of those, 23 were sexual offence trials, which Mr White said are complex for a range of reasons, including because of pre-trial applications and evidence, the need for expert evidence and issues around consent.
There was a 33 per cent increase in appeals to the ACT Court of Appeal, a total of 44, the annual report said.
Last year, it was the appointment of a fifth judge to the ACT Supreme Court that caused Mr White to warn that without a concurrent increase in funding for his office it would struggle under the additional burden.
This year, it was the ACT government's $150 million new justice precinct. The precinct is expected to be at least partially complete by next year, and the new ACT Supreme Court will include eight courtrooms - five of which will be jury courtrooms.
It means the court will be better placed to run several jury trials at once, a situation presently juggled with some difficulty by court staff and lawyers.
But the opening of the new courtrooms would "exacerbate the [DPP's funding] situation greatly", Mr White said.
"Put simply, the capacity of the courts to hear more matters will overtake my Office's capacity to prosecute them," he said.
"The Supreme Court's capacity to hear concurrent jury trials will be greatly increased, however I will have no capacity to meet that increase without a significant increase in resources.
"I can only hope at long last my plea for additional resources will be met."
Mr White also referred to increasing pressure on his office from changes in community expectations.
He said the office had responded to community expectations for the justice system to be more accommodating of the needs of witnesses with special vulnerabilities, which required a specialist approach.
"Such matters require not only greater sensitive by DPP prosecutors and witness assistants, they also require greater resources," he said.
Late guilty pleas continued to pressure the office.
The annual report says people sentenced either after a plea of guilty or after a breach increased by 17 per cent from the previous financial year, "again another significant increase in light of no increase in prosecutor resources."
The annual report also said the office has paid two barristers outside the office more than $600,000 to prosecute David Eastman in a retrial for the alleged murder of police chief Colin Winchester.
The DPP has received additional funding for the retrial, which is currently set down for next year.
The full report can be found online here.
