Court backlogs are forcing alleged offenders to spend up to five years in jail awaiting trial and driving innocent people to plead guilty, two prison watchdogs have revealed.
Charlie Taylor, the chief inspector of prisons in England and Wales, said some of the 17,000 prisoners on remand had waited nearly five years for their cases to come to court.
Adrian Usher, the prisons and probation ombudsman for England and Wales, said inmates waiting lengthy periods for a trial were changing their pleas to guilty after being advised it would mean they could leave jail immediately.
The disclosures are part of a Guardian investigation into the state of the courts system in England and Wales, amid warnings that the backlog in crown courts could hit 100,000 without radical action.
The backlog means one in five prisoners are now on remand awaiting trial: they have been charged with a crime but not yet found guilty, though it is deemed too risky to release them on bail. The remand population of England and Wales has risen 87% since 2019 and stands at a record high.
Those who are eventually found guilty normally have their remand time deducted from their sentence. But those found not guilty get no compensation for their spent time in jail, unless their case has been seriously mishandled.
In an interview, Taylor said he had personally met several prisoners involved in complex cases who were facing four years on remand, and had been told of others waiting up to five years.
“I met a guy in Hewell prison, just south of Birmingham, who’d done three years, and he’d been given a provisional court date of April the next year. So he will have been held for four years before his case is tried … It isn’t rare,” he said. “Charities I have spoken to have found prisoners who have served five years on remand.”
A large remand population produces “huge pressure” on the prison system and on the prisoners, Taylor said.
“Remand prisoners are more likely to be violent, more likely to be a victim of violence, more likely to take their own life. They carry a lot more risk than the general prison population does.
“In general, they’re being housed in old Victorian reception prisons: Wormwood Scrubs, Pentonville, Birmingham etc. In effect, you’ve got your most vulnerable population in some of the worst and the most overcrowded accommodations. Most of the men in the remand population will be locked up with others in a cell that was originally designed for one person, and locked up for up to 22 hours a day.”
Even if they are found not guilty, remanded prisoners are more likely to return to prison because they are not offered the resettlement services given to convicted prisoners, Taylor added.
“If you’re remanded prisoners, you walk into court, you’re either found not guilty, or if you are found guilty it is increasingly likely that you are released on time served.
“So you leave, without housing, or advice, or proper counselling,” he said.
Usher, whose office examines deaths in custody and complaints from prisoners, said: “I have met prisoners who have said to me they’ve been waiting for three or four years for a trial, and they are going to change their plea to guilty.
“They have been advised by their lawyer that as soon as they get a trial for the offence for which they’re in prison, they will be released if they plead guilty, because there is no way they are going to get a sentence longer than they’ve been waiting.”
“Now in some cases, of course, that may mean that we have innocent people who are pleading guilty because they know they will walk away from court that day, and that is a concern for me. They’re on remand because they’re pleading not guilty in almost all cases.”
He urged the government to extend the sitting hours of courts to get through the case backlog. “Courts sit, in most cases, for eight hours a day. Well, why is that? We have buildings lying empty for 16 hours a day that could be, with the right resourcing, processing cases,” he said.
Court case delays also mean there is less time for probation officers to prepare for the release of prisoners, who are therefore more likely to breach the terms of their licence, the probation watchdog said.
Martin Jones, the chief inspector of probation in England and Wales, said victims of crime and criminals were being let down by the system.
“If somebody’s spending six to nine months on remand and receives a two-year sentence, then, in essence, they leave custody straight away. It limits time for planning, limits time to sort out any intervention and rehabilitative work, and then that person’s very quickly returned to prison,” he said.
Jones, a former chief executive of the Parole Board, said victims were being let down by court delays and then by an effort to rush cases before offenders can be assessed. “I’ve spoken to hundreds and hundreds of victims in my time working in the system, and what most victims want is justice and for there to be fewer victims in the future.
“If, as a result of delays in the system, as a result of fewer pre-sentencing reports, the sentence is not as effective as it can be, then you’re not closing that loop, and you are letting the victims down,” he said.
A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said the Labour government “inherited a criminal justice system in crisis with a record courts backlog – meaning people are spending far too long awaiting trial in dangerous and overcrowded prisons”.
They added: “We have already taken urgent action to save the prison system from the point of collapse. We have also taken initial measures to address the remand population in our prisons, doubling magistrates’ sentencing powers to ease the pressure on our jails and deliver swifter justice for victims.”
