14/03/2022
Police Oracle
Work with offenders on the Public Accounts Committee report which revealed a 340% increase in the Crown Court backlog
In its report the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee says the Ministry of Justice’s “meagre ambition” to reduce the Crown Court case backlog – which has nearly doubled since March 2019, to 59,928 – by “less than 8,000 by March 2025” is “unlikely to address unacceptable delays to justice for victims, witnesses, and defendants”. Since March 2020 alone, the number of Crown Court cases waiting longer than a year has increased by more than 340%.
Details of the backlog
In the year to 30 June 2021, criminal courts dealt with 1.24 million cases, including more than 90,000 in the Crown Court. Cases enter the system when a defendant is charged with an offence and are allocated a court date through a process called ‘listing’, which is a judicial function. The backlog includes all cases awaiting trial, being tried and those awaiting sentencing.
By the end of June 2021, there were around 61,000 cases waiting in the backlog in the Crown Court, and more than 364,000 in the magistrates’ courts. The COVID-19 pandemic significantly affected the work of the criminal justice system and necessitated extensive changes in criminal courts to keep judges, court staff, and users safe. This caused the backlog, particularly in the Crown Court, to rise sharply.
The Committee makes it clear, though, that although the pandemic aggravated problems, there were serious concerns well before the advent of COVID. In the year leading up to the pandemic, the number of cases in the Crown Court backlog increased by 23%, from an all-time low of 33,290 in March 2019 to 41,045 in March 2020.
The onset of the pandemic meant that Crown Courts closed for two months and, once they reopened, they needed to implement social distancing to operate safely. As a result, the Crown Court backlog has continued to rise, increasing a further 48% from March 2020 to 60,692 cases in June 2021.
As the backlog has increased, so has the time that defendants, witnesses and victims have waited for their case to be completed. Between March 2020 and June 2021, the number of cases waiting longer than a year increased by 302%, from 2,803 to 11,379. These delays do, of course, have a range of serious impacts. The psychological toll on victims of serious crimes (which Crown Courts deal with) has been raised several times by the Victims’ Commissioner, Dame Vera Baird. Also, inevitably, many cases are eventually abandoned as witnesses become frustrated and withdraw their co-operation with the result than many perpetrators avoid justice and many victims are denied it.
The Committee found that victims of rape and serious sexual offences had been particularly affected by the pandemic. These difficult and complex cases are more likely to need a jury trial, which need space to accommodate the jury, a challenge under the pandemic with the requirements of social distancing. As a result the number of these cases waiting longer than a year increased by a massive 435% between March 2020 and June 2021
A critical report
The Committee is forthright in its criticisms, saying:
“victims of rape and serious sexual offences are facing unacceptable delays to justice” which “compound and extend their suffering and lead to too many cases collapsing”.
The number of these cases waiting longer than a year to be heard has increased by more than 400% since the onset of the pandemic. As waiting times increase, so does the probability that a case collapses as witnesses and victims withdraw from the process.
The Committee says it remains unconvinced of the MoJ’s commitment to tackle the problem and that there are “significant, systemic challenges” to clearing the backlog, including the numbers of trained judges, legal professionals and local staff to support criminal courts.
On a parallel but different issue, the Committee also raised concerns that the prison system will be unable to cope with the projected big rise in the prison population over the next three years.