When the right to trial by jury is radically cut back later this year or early next, let’s not pretend it’s because anyone has come up with a better idea for handling criminal cases.
It’s because the rot has set in so deeply that now we can’t operate. Successive governments have starved the criminal justice system of essential funds, consistently put prosecution and courts low on the priorities list while pretending to be ‘tough on crime’, and then looked the other way as the roof caved in – sometimes literally.
