Fundamental reform
New minister says we must do more to address court backlogs
“Demand on the criminal courts is increasing at a faster rate than the actions we are able to take,” the new justice minister Sarah Sackman KC told MPs yesterday, “and we must therefore go further.”
What might she be referring to?
“This government understand the scale of the problem and are ready to confront it with the fundamental reforms that will be necessary,” the minister added.
“It is not simply enough to increase court sitting days,” Sackman stressed. “We have to look at fundamental reform to address the serious backlogs we have inherited from the Conservative government.”
Fundamental reform? As I wrote here on Monday, we already have early release for prisoners, a review of sentencing and a plan to increase the number of prison places.
But Shabana Mahmood, the justice secretary, told MPs yesterday that “even with the new supply that we are building, we will still run out of prison places, as the demand in the system is much greater than the building planned”.
And she admitted in a pre-recorded interview for this morning’s Today programme that dealing with prison capacity was only “the first step in turning things around” and not the only solution.
“We will run out,” she said. “Demand is still rising faster than any supply could possibly catch up with.”
“We’re very honest and transparent in the strategy itself that building alone is not enough because the demand is rising more quickly,” she added.
So there must be something more — but Mahmood does not appear to have been asked in her BBC interview what that might be.
The Telegraph reported at the beginning of this month that the justice secretary was under pressure to introduce an intermediate court. This was not quite what was recommended by Lord Justice Auld in 2021 — he favoured a unified system — but it could mean that some people who are currently tried by a judge and jury in the Crown Court would in future be tried without a jury — either by a judge and two lay magistrates in the Crown Court; or by a district judge in the magistrates’ court; or by lay justices.
A source told the Telegraph that Mahmood was “not ruling out” intermediate courts. And limiting the right to jury trial if necessary was supported by the former lord chief justice Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd in the Guardian yesterday and by the former justice secretary Alex Chalk KC in my interview with him last week.
But something as radical as this cannot be accomplished without independent endorsement.
The lady chief justice Baroness Carr of Walton-on-the-Hill told MPs last month she was encouraging the government to “take a deep breath and make bold decisions” on reforming criminal justice. She said the judiciary was prepared to “engage, support and consider” provided any reform was “well-evidenced, well thought through” and not rushed.
Carr told me in March that limiting a defendant’s option to choose jury trial could be introduced only after some sort of independent inquiry. The government would have to appoint a senior judge like Auld or — more likely in my view — a retired senior judge with a lifetime’s experience of the criminal justice system from the bar to the bench.
As I said on Monday, Mahmood must now announce a fundamental review of how the criminal justice system works. And it seems from what her new minister has said that something along these lines may be imminent.
The Crown Court trial queue needs to be cut urgently and experienced trial resources already exist . Isn’t it time for magistrates to be empowered to direct summary trial if they determine that their 12 months sentencing powers are sufficient if the defendant is convicted?
Keep, of course, the existing right to appeal to the Crown Court judge sitting with lay magistrates. (Not too dissimilar to an intermediate court).
By reserving jury trials for those facing 12 months+, the queue with its remand prisoners and waiting victims will bring a balance of justice by the change.
Hi Malcolm. I rather agree.
You may recall I fought against any reduction to the right to elect trial by jury when I was chairman of the Criminal Bar Association over 20 years ago when several attempts were made to do precisely that. At that time public opinion and a more considered approach led to those proposals being defeated. The arguments for keeping trial by jury are as good if not more important than ever. Despite this, by a process of attrition the criminal justice system has now been placed in an intolerable position. The delay is caused by disgraceful underfunding the system consistently for years (which you seem to suggest may be deliberate), and by poor decision-making or deliberate inaction by some of the recent Lord Chancellors ( I specifically acquit Alex Chalk of this charge). The result is that some revolutionary and imaginative action is now needed.
Lord Timpson has suggested that one third of prisoners did not have been sent to prison. This would almost certainly have been the case had there been practical and imaginative alternatives to prison available. Sentencing guidelines although well reasoned have allowed sentences to creep up in a way that I suspect none of us might have anticipated. This is an obvious case for study. In order to make alternatives more readily available , we must ramp up our rehabilitation services, improve the state of our prisons, and concentrate more on creating decent citizens rather than damaging their chances forever. It is nonsense to say that prison works. It is just a necessity in the case of serious offending and for those for whom rehabilitation has failed. I certainly think that some kind of intermediate court may be worth looking at. I am however not convinced by some of the current arguments to justify it. These seem to be a little more than a response to the truism that ‘something must be done’. We can all agree with that. There are so much to say on all of these subjects. There is also so much evidence already available to inform a new approach. We do need a retired senior judge assisted by a carefully selected body of reforming individuals to have a look at this whole question as a matter of urgency. It should however be done quickly. These kinds of investigations have taken too long of late. I am delighted that Lord Timpson has taken some of this burden on the shoulders of his department. He seems the kind of man who might affect some sensible reforms. There is an appetite for it across the country, I feel. We must now get on with it.