UK Edition
Up to 40 per cent of crown courts stand idle as crime rises, new figures reveal
Up to 40 per cent of crown courts in England and Wales are sitting idle as criminal cases have plunged to record lows despite rising crime, The Telegraph can reveal.
The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has cut the number of days on which it will fund judges to sit by more than 15 per cent this year because of a slump in cases coming before the courts.
It has resulted in between 25 per cent and 40 per cent of courts sitting empty on any one day as police forces solve fewer cases and crown prosecutors bring fewer to trial, according to data seen by The Daily Telegraph.
Jonathan Dunne, a criminal barrister who compiles data on idle courts, said it was a scandal that the MoJ needed to urgently address as it was denying victims justice through delays of up to two and half years in cases coming to court.
Some have even collapsed as witnesses gave up waiting while in two recent cases judges spared a paedophile and three men convicted of a violent assault from jail because of delays of over two years in bringing their cases to court.
Bob Neill, Conservative chairman of the Justice Committee, said it was “unacceptable” to deny victims and suspects swift justice and was symptomatic of successive Conservative and Labour Governments’ failure to invest in the criminal justice system.
On Thursday - the first working day of the New Year - only five of the 18 courts at the Old Bailey, Britain’s principle murder court, will be sitting with just one trial despite the record homicide rate in London.
Across London, there will be just four trials and only 20 of the 104 courts sitting. "On the first working day after the new year, they should be rammed with trials," said a senior criminal barrister.
Snapshots on December 2, November 13 and 28 showed between 33 and 36 of 135 courts in London not being used. A sample of just over a quarter of the court estate in September, showed 56 out of 139 available courtrooms empty, rising to 50 per cent in the summer.
“If 25 per cent of operating theatres were standing idle, there would be an outcry,” said Mr Dunne, who has set up a Twitter account, @courtsidle, to log the scale of the problem.
The controversy is compounded by a decision by the MoJ not to pay for opening up the spare court capacity to reduce a backlog of more than 30,000 crown court cases - which is up three per cent year on year - and 288,000 in the magistrates.
The decision was revealed by Lady Justice Macur, senior presiding judge for England and Wales, in a letter to the Bar Council. “I confirm that there has been a reduction in the allocation of Crown Court sitting days from 97,400 in 2018/19 to 82,300 in 2019/20,” she wrote.
“This figure was calculated by MOJ analysts as that necessary to maintain the number of outstanding criminal cases in the backlog at the same level and considering significantly reduced Crown Court receipts over the previous 12 months, and before that.
“The decision not to further reduce the backlog was a political decision.”
Senior barristers claim it is a cost-saving measure and to avoid increasing overcrowding on an already strained prison system. About 70 per cent of jails are currently full beyond their “normal” limit and if just another 2,000 were added, it would take the entire estate over its 85,222 operational limit.
The result, say lawyers, is a two-speed criminal justice system where more serious cases of suspects held in custody are fast-tracked - but others, where the offenders have been allowed bail, are facing delays of months and in some cases years, so denying victims fast justice.
“If you are in custody, you have to be tried within six months. If you are not tried within six months, you get released on bail. What politicians don’t want are stories about dangerous rapists being freed on bail because there is no court to try them,” said Mr Dunne.
Some bailed cases are taking more than two years to come to trial. “I have just done a case where the offence happened in May 2017,” Mr Dunne added.
“It was a guy arrested in the street having threatened someone with an imitation firearm and had a knife in his pocket, just the sort of case the public are frightened of but it took two and a half years to bring him to court.”
Other cases highlighted by lawyers include an alleged sex offender extradited from Australia and now living in a Travelodge hotel whose trial date has been delayed until at least Sept 21.
One of longest delays is a case of assault causing bodily harm delayed until January 2021 while an historic sex abuse case against an 81 year old man has been delayed at Maidstone until June 30.
Last month Martin McNair-Templeton, 23, who admitted having sex with a 13-year-old girl has been spared jail after backlogs meant his case took over two years to come before the courts.
And in August three men who left a former employee with serious injuries in a late night assault were spared jail by Judge Simon Carr after their trial was delayed for two years. He said the legal system was “beyond the point of collapse.”
Mr Neill said: “The delays are not acceptable because any proper justice system has to be funded to a level that enables cases to be disposed of swiftly. That is necessary in the interests of justice.
“Any penalty is more effective both for the public and for the miscreant. It is not fair for witnesses to be hanging around for a long time especially if they have been traumatised by an assault, say, in a burglary. And, thirdly, people’s memories will fade if things go on too long.”
The MoJ said it kept sitting days under constant review and had allocated an extra 700 days in November in response to increasing cases coming to court. It maintained the crown court backlog had decreased by almost 40 per cent since 2014 with waiting times for these cases at their lowest ever.