Committee Corridor: A criminal justice system in crisis?
16 March 2023
Is the criminal justice system in England and Wales in crisis? This is the question at the heart of the latest episode of the Committee Corridor podcast, out today.
Host and Chair of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, SNP MP and KC, Joanna Cherry, is joined by renowned justice correspondent, Joshua Rozenberg; Chair of the Home Affairs Committee and Labour MP, Dame Diana Johnson; and Chair of the Justice Committee, Conservative MP, Sir Bob Neill.
The Justice Committee has conducted a number of inquiries looking in detail at the current state of the justice system, including Court Capacity and the role of adult custodial remand. The remit of the Home Affairs committee includes oversight of policing, with a current inquiry examining how the police service can reform to meet future challenges.
The episode opens with Joshua Rozenberg, who found that the justice system had gone through a tough time, with barristers on strike and members of the Criminal Bar Association refusing to take cases, and was still struggling. He warned that further problems lay ahead:
“There aren't enough lawyers doing criminal law, and that's not just bad for people who need defence lawyers, and even prosecutors, it's bad for the long-term progress of the judiciary because the judiciary is drawn from practitioners… So, unless you are bringing people up through the legal profession, you are not going to get the judges of the future, and you are not bringing people out through the legal profession because young people simply can't afford to practise as criminal barristers.”
The Crown court system continues to have severe issues with case backlogs, with 62,766 outstanding cases at the end of September 2022, which was higher than its previous peak of around 61,000 in mid-2021. Mr Rozenberg found that there would not be an easy fix for this problem:
“The Government should be putting in all the resources it possibly can to reduce the backlog, while bearing in mind that although we talk about the criminal justice system, it's not really a system, it's a series of interconnected parts, and each depends on the other. You need police, you need prosecutors, you need defence lawyers, you need judges. And if one part of the system isn't performing, then you have problems.”
The podcast highlights that issues in the court system go beyond its systems, and includes severe issues with the physical court estate, as Joshua Rozenberg described:
“In every criminal court in England or Wales Bar one that's the old Bailey, which is funded by the corporation of London, the city of London, the physical facilities range from bad to appalling. There are buckets under, there’re leaks in the roof, all the carpets are rotten, things are worn out.”
In the second panel, Bob Neill found that Government attempts to reduce the court backlog had not gone far enough:
“Although there has been some improvement in the backlog in criminal cases, there's still a very long way to go. I don't think the Government's target for reducing the backlog to 50,000 odd, is anything like ambitious enough. We are still seeing serious cases, often involving complex issues being listed 18 months, two years in advance, that's not satisfactory.”
He warned that criminal law still faces serious challenges in being a viable option for those beginning a career in law:
“I spent most of my career as a barrister doing criminal work. I'm not sure, frankly, as someone who didn't have any sort of private means to rely upon, I'm not sure I could take that chance, now if I was starting out in the way that I could then, because although I'm very pleased that there's been an uplift in legal aid defence fees, it's still only running to catch up.”
In light of long-standing concerns around the ability of the criminal justice system to charge and successfully prosecute cases of rape, Diana Johnson said more specialised police officers were needed and better support for victims. She also criticised the impact of court delays:
“If you have specialist rape, serious sexual assault units within police forces, you are going to get a more thorough investigation of the allegation, you're going to have better communication with the person who's made that allegation, you are more likely to be able to move that case along to the CPS and hopefully, get it to court."
“For a person who's had this awful trauma of rape or serious sexual assault to then have to wait months if not years, to get to court. For some, they decide enough, I'm not willing to wait around for so long.”
On wider policing issues, the Home Affairs Committee chair warned against the dangers of short-term thinking when trying to ensure the police service was fit to meet future challenges:
“What we should be thinking about in terms of policing is what do we actually need? Do we need 20,000 police officers on the beat walking the streets or are we looking to what policing needs in the next 10, 20 years? Do we need specialists? Do we need people who have a great deal of knowledge say around fraud and IT and digital?”