In the early 2000s, I was a young crown prosecutor in Nottingham Magistrates’ Court, discussing with colleagues the poor state of the criminal justice system. A colleague nearing retirement proclaimed: “These are your good old days.” We laughed then, but over the following 20 years, we would come to realise just how right he was.
Anyone who has worked on the front line of the criminal justice system knows that the crown court crisis has been long in the making. Years of underfunding, austerity, Covid and the changing nature of crime have compounded the issue. We now face a backlog of almost 80,000 cases, resulting in some being listed for trial as late as 2030.
The changes proposed by the government, whilst bold, are sensible and offer a pragmatic solution.
In 2024/5, 4,283 cases were sent to crown court because the defendant elected to do so. This is despite the court having ruled that, based on the prosecution’s case at its most serious, the sentence would not exceed the maximum powers available to the magistrates.
One may wonder why a defendant would seek to take his case to a higher court with greater sentencing powers. It is not simply because they wish to be tried by jury. Instead, it is often a calculated decision based on the scale of the backlog itself: defendants know that the longer the wait for a trial, the harder it will be for witnesses to have a clear recollection of what happened, making an acquittal more likely. Worse still, they hope that something happens in the years whilst the case is in the queue, such as the victim withdrawing from the case or, like my case, where a defendant was hoping the 96-year-old lady whose house he’d burgled would die before the trial was heard.
Removing the defendant’s ability to overrule the court’s decision will not only save taxpayers’ money but will drastically reduce the number of cases needlessly clogging up crown courts, enabling justice to be delivered more swiftly.
Others oppose the proposed changes from a matter of principle, suggesting it is wrong to change the fundamental basis of our criminal justice system. Clinging on to tradition at the cost of justice is not right and it is certainly not fair on victims. In any event, the system has always evolved to allow it to adapt to the challenges faced at the time.
The crown court itself came into being on 1 January 1972 and was established partly to relieve the workload difficulties faced by the old Courts of Assize and Quarter Sessions. In 1994, the committal process for cases to move from magistrates’ courts to crown courts was streamlined, meaning victims no longer had to give evidence twice and a system of giving defendants a discount off their sentence for early guilty pleas was introduced to tackle the growing court backlogs.
There have been claims that the proposed changes abolish the right to a jury trial, but this is not true; they simply adjust the threshold of when a case warrants a jury’s involvement. Magistrates across England and Wales hear cases every day and handle them with skill and careful consideration. They are absolutely capable of hearing cases commanding a sentence of up to two years; in fact, they already do in the case of youth defendants.
And for those decrying that some cases in crown courts will be heard only by a judge, this already happens in the magistrates’ courts when a district judge sits alone.
Meanwhile, others suggest that greater investment and efficiencies are the alternative. It is true that more investment is needed; I can’t count the number of times I’ve walked around a bucket in a court building collecting rainwater from a leaking ceiling or been frustrated at delays bringing a defendant from prison to court. But as Sir Brian Leveson reports, “it is important to highlight that greater financial investment on its own, without systemic reform, cannot solve this crisis”.
The government has pledged to tackle violence against women and girls, and as a result, we hope that more victims will be empowered to come forward. This will only happen if they have confidence in our criminal justice system. We must earn that trust by making sure that not only do we tackle the immediate crisis, but that we adapt the system so that victims can always receive the swift justice that they deserve. The changes proposed by the government are a pathway to both.
