Scrapping jury trials for some offences may be only way to clear court backlog, says CPS watchdog chief

“Removing the right to trial by jury” and “intermediate courts” may be the only way to clear the crown court backlog in England and Wales, the chief inspector of the Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate has said.

Speaking exclusively to Sky News, Anthony Rogers says “radical action” is needed urgently.

“The number of cases waiting to be heard in the crown courts is the highest it’s ever been.

“It’s bringing significant pressure into the whole system. Those we inspect, the Crown Prosecution Service, are under the greatest pressure I’ve ever seen in 25 years of the existence of the inspectorate.

“The thing that worries me more is I can’t see an end to it. I can only see an increasing backlog.”

There are 73,105 outstanding criminal cases waiting to be dealt with in the crown courts, according to the Ministry of Justice.

Mr Rogers says: “If you’re going to fix a problem on this scale, it needs a radical solution.

“It could be anything from removing the right of election to jury trial.

“It could be looking at an intermediate court between the magistrates court and the crown court, radical could literally mean changing the way that we look at the criminal justice system.”

Both suggestions are being considered under a ‘once-in-a-generation’ independent review announced by the government last week.

Former High Court judge Sir Brian Leveson is leading the major justice review in an effort to tackle the delays.

The government says “nothing is off the table” as jury trials could be scrapped for some offences and “intermediate” middle-tier courts, made up of a judge and two magistrates, are being looked at.

Both are suggestions Mr Rogers says he would support.

“If you did that you would take 20,000 or 30,000 cases out of the backlog.

“You could start by having the simplest cases in the magistrate court, the more serious cases with probably a judge and two lay members in an intermediate court and then have the crown court reserved for the most serious offences like rape, murder, manslaughter, terrorism for example. That is radical, that would solve the problem.”

‘It was like the court was a circus and he was the ringmaster’

It’s a problem Vicki Crawford knows all too well.

Ms Crawford reported historic sexual abuse to the police in 2018. She reached out to Sky News after she waited five years and eight months for her trial to go ahead.

A gruelling wait, she bravely opened up about it.

“With every hearing and every court date, I was nervous and anxious. I had a headache, I felt sick, I couldn’t sleep. The run up to it was awful. I had nightmares. In the middle of the night, I would wake up having panic attacks. I just couldn’t eat, I just felt awful.”

Ms Crawford’s abuser was jailed for seven years after the trial eventually went ahead in March this year.

She explained to Sky News it felt like he was profiting from the constant adjournments, while she was being tortured by it.

“It was like the court was a circus and he was the ringmaster.”

On at least one occasion the trial was adjourned because her perpetrator claimed to be unwell.

“For me, it felt like he had a lot of control over what was going on during the court process. And it was quite frustrating to watch somebody consistently say I can’t come to court today. For such a serious load of charges, I couldn’t quite understand how he was allowed to get away with that, like so many times.”

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Read more:
Inside the UK’s ‘wild west’ court system
Lawyers warn against more powers for magistrates
Backlog of rape and sexual offences in courts ‘totally unacceptable’

As a survivor of sexual abuse, Ms Crawford is entitled to anonymity for life but told us her reason for waiving it.

“The reason I’m waiving my anonymity is because there are thousands of people just like me, look like me, talk like me, think like me, have the same experiences that I’m having in the court system. And nobody puts a face to those people, so, this is me.”

Watchdog warned of delays since 2019

Mr Rogers told Sky News that inspectors have been warning about delays since 2019.

The crisis in the criminal justice system is mirrored in almost every crown court in England and Wales.

In Leicester, Sky News spent time with barristers and court staff and observed delay after delay.

We heard from a judge so exasperated at cases being pushed back to 2026, witnessed crumbling court infrastructure, spoke to barristers fed up with constant adjournments and spoke to victims stuck in the middle.

An overhaul of the criminal justice system is coming – and for many, it can’t come soon enough.