Criminal courts have a productivity problem. Scrapping jury trials will make it worse |
The government is pushing ahead with its plans to halve jury trials and reduce rights of appeal in criminal courts.
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It has justified these reforms on the grounds that the backlog of cases in the crown court – which deals with the most serious criminal offences – is now so high that it requires “nothing short of throwing the kitchen sink at it”, according to courts minister Sarah Sackman. That means more investment, increased productivity, and fewer jury trials. But there’s a problem. The reforms to jury trials are likely to harm productivity – and so possibly even make the situation worse.
There are two big structural reforms planned. The first is hearing many more cases in magistrates’ courts, which deal with most offences and can hand out a maximum sentence of 12 months in prison – already twice what it was until 2024. The government proposes to raise that further to 18 months or even two years. At the same time, it will remove people’s right to choose to have a jury trial rather than a magistrates’ court trial, if their case could be heard in either. Instead, the courts will decide where to hear the case.
The other change is setting up a new branch of the crown court, where a judge will decide on both verdict and sentence, with no jury. This branch will handle all cases expected to get a sentence of up to three years in prison. That will include offences like burglary and some violent and sexual offences, but not rape, murder or manslaughter.
These are big changes, involving new structures and radically changing how thousands of cases are handled. This kind of change has costs, even before the new arrangements are in place. It takes up time and attention; people worry about whether their jobs are safe, and they are focused on figuring out how the new systems will work – not on how to make the existing systems work better.
And the existing systems really are not working well. Thousands of trials – almost a quarter – end up rescheduled on the day they are meant to start, and more time is spent on interim hearings because it takes so long to get to trial. This all means that courts are getting through fewer cases each day they are sitting. If the structural changes distract from efforts to improve this, things are likely to keep getting worse.
These changes are also deeply unpopular with criminal lawyers, who are already in short supply. The reforms would mean fewer people get public funding if they are accused of a crime; even people working full-time on minimum wage are often not eligible for legal aid in magistrates’ courts. That means less money in the system and lower wages for criminal lawyers, who already earn much less than lawyers in other specialities. If even a few reduce or stop their criminal work, that again risks making things worse rather than better.
Delays in the crown court are devastating and the government is right to take action. But there is a real risk that these reforms will only serve to make a dire situation even worse.
Cassia Rowland is a Senior Researcher at the Institute for Government.
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