The criminal justice system must be modernised in Northern Ireland to stop victims of crime waiting years for justice, Simon Byrne has said.
The PSNI chief constable said it often took four to five years just to get a case to trial.
A recent report from the Chief Inspector of Criminal Justice in Northern Ireland, Jacqui Durkin, said there had to be a “fundamental reset” within the police and prosecution service to tackle delays in the system.
Ms Durkin called for improvements in the quality of prosecution files and the speed of case progression.
Mr Byrne said everyone recognised that there was too much delay in the criminal justice system.
He said: “I think it just takes too long to go from the police charging station at the custody suite and into a court and actually to get justice.
“There are two sides to this, if you are accused of a crime, sometimes people are acquitted and they are innocent. They may have this burden hanging over them for years.
“Typically, if you are a victim of crime at the moment, a serious crime, you are looking at four to five years often before your case gets to court, with numerous delays where you have to recount your experience and you have to have it explained to you why something has changed.
“I do support calls for modernisation of how we work the justice system.”
The chief constable said the justice system had suffered the most serious under-investment of any part of the public sector.
He added: “I regularly meet the head of the Public Prosecution Service, I am part of the Criminal Justice Board, where senior professionals from across the system meet to try and work this out.
“We are throwing technology at this, we are throwing innovation at this, we are performance managing this but obviously the system just takes far too long for victims at the moment and we recognise that.”
