The MoJ’s quarterly splurge of statistics is designed to obscure inconvenient facts. But they are these:
🛑The backlog of Crown Court cases has soared to over 37,000
🛑The median time taken between an offence being committed and a court case concluding is up 21% since 2010
🛑The backlog of Crown Court cases has soared to over 37,000
🛑The median time taken between an offence being committed and a court case concluding is up 21% since 2010
🛑The backlog and the delay are increasing *despite* the fact that there are 9,000 *fewer* cases per year coming to the Crown Courts since 2010 (due largely to cuts preventing the police and CPS doing their jobs).
🛑These statistics do not fully reflect last year’s savage cuts to Crown Court sitting days, which artificially restrict the number of days that courtrooms are allowed to be open. The effect of this will be shown in years to come.
🛑These facts are deliberately obscured by the MoJ’s insistence on citing wholly misleading “average” waiting times that include cases which don’t proceed to trial (and so which involve little to no waiting time at all).
“Look, the average wait is only 5.7 weeks!”
Dishonest.
“Look, the average wait is only 5.7 weeks!”
Dishonest.
🛑For various reasons, there is an increasingly large proportion of guilty pleas in the Crown Court. If you include these in the overall average completion time for criminal cases, it will massively skew the average downwards.
The MoJ know this. Yet still they do it.
The MoJ know this. Yet still they do it.
🛑The reality, I regret to say, is that if you are accused of a crime or are a victim of a crime, the average (median) wait for your case to conclude, from offence date to final court hearing, is 443 days, around 14 months. And that median figure *includes* guilty pleas.
🛑Not all of that delay is in the courts - a large part is in the investigation stage, due to police cuts and the use of “Release Under Investigation” which means suspects are released without conditions for months, even years, while the investigation pootles along.
🛑But this truth is buried in the MoJ’s thoroughly dishonest spin, which gives the wholly false impression that your journey through the justice system is likely to take weeks, not years.
The public deserves better.
The public deserves better.
