Last year, I met Vicki Crawford. She is a remarkable woman whose resilience and determination in the teeth of endless court delays had helped convict Melvyn Little, the man who sexually abused her as a teenager in the 1980s.
It is because of cases like Vicki’s that the Government is now planning radical changes to the jury system.
Vicki waived her right to anonymity to tell me her story. After Little had been charged in 2021, it took three years for his trial to begin – it had been postponed on six occasions. The delays had brought 53-year-old Vicki to the brink of a nervous breakdown and she had come close to pulling out of the process several times. No one would have blamed her if she had.
But the legal delays that Vicki experienced are commonplace in Crown Courts across England and Wales.
In March, a report by the Victims’ Commissioner found that trial dates had been changed in almost half of cases, with a quarter of those switched four or more times. Some trials are not scheduled to take place until 2030.
Delays not only cause stress to victims, they add to uncertainty for defendants, who may be held on remand in prison, and jeopardise prosecutions, as memories fade and witnesses withdraw.
They are a cancer eating away at the criminal justice system.
Why so many cases are delayed
The underlying reason for delays is a lack of resources. From 2010 to 2019, the budget for the Ministry of Justice, which funds courts, was cut by 25 per cent, when adjusted for inflation.
There was little investment in crumbling court buildings and technology, limits were placed on the number of days that judges could sit in order to save money, the Crown Prosecution Service had to make cuts and legal aid rates were frozen, which led to a shortage of defence lawyers.
It meant that by the time Covid struck in March 2020 the backlog of Crown Court cases was already on the rise. It then sharply accelerated, with lockdowns, social distancing and court closures delaying proceedings, particularly jury trials, while a barristers’ strike in 2022 hampered efforts to get waits down.
The recruitment of an extra 20,000 police officers between 2019 and 2022 has also contributed to an increase in cases as more suspects have been arrested and charged. Trials are generally taking longer because of the growth of sexual abuse cases and those involving digital evidence which are more complex. The backlog now stands at a record 78,000.
The cases that could see trial by jury scrapped
The Government’s proposed remedy includes extra funding to repair buildings, allowing judges to hear more cases and increasing legal aid – but its most controversial element centres on reducing the number of jury trials.
At present, magistrates, who are volunteers drawn from the local community, deal with 90 per cent of the criminal caseload.
The most serious crimes, such as rape, murder and robbery, go automatically to Crown Courts.
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There is a tranche of crimes in the middle – known as either-way cases – which can be heard by magistrates or by juries – and it’s these cases that are expected to be affected under Justice Secretary David Lammy’s plans.
They include theft, drug possession and certain types of burglary.
Ministers hope that by restricting jury trial for these middle-ranking cases it will speed up proceedings for more serious crimes – and lessen the terrible burden of delay for victims of sexual abuse, like Vicki Crawford.
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