Your Court Date: 37th of Never
A key aspect of the rule of law is that there should be access to justice and that access should be timely. In that sense, the UK is failing, and it is victims of crime who are suffering the most while defendants also linger in a legal purgatory.
The latest figures from the Ministry of Justice, published last week, highlight just how bad things continue to be and how reforms have proven ineffective at addressing this systemic problem. The number of outstanding cases in both Magistrates’ Courts and Crown Courts have risen by 3%. More than a quarter of those proceedings have been open for more than a year at this point.
The spike that you see in the charts above can be attributed to Covid-19. Undoubtedly, the pandemic threw a ratchet into the criminal justice system as it did in other areas of public life, but the fact that courts have not even nearly begun to recover from those peak delays two years ago provides a damning insight into the way that things are run.
Covid-19 explains the spike but to understand why the spike has stabilised and become a ‘new normal’ requires a little more analysis.