Court backlogs have reached unprecedented levels, and ‘the system is overwhelmed’, the Victims’ Commissioner for England and Wales, Baroness Newlove of Warrington, has said in a report. The human cost of these delays is far too high to ignore, she wrote in a foreword to the report, ‘Justice delayed’.
The report pointed to the Crown Court system ‘experiencing an unprecedented backlog meaning victims commonly face delays and adjournments’. Of those victims who had been given a trial date, nearly half (48pc) had this date changed at some point in their ‘criminal justice journey’. The backlog ’caused immense stress for victims, prompting a deterioration in physical and mental health. Some victims resorted to drug and alcohol use or self-harm to cope, while other victims reported attempting suicide’. Victims of rape and serious sexual offences reported that they were often advised not to access therapy until after trial, ‘further delaying their recovery’.
“Where victims persevered with the criminal justice process, they often felt justice did not prevail,” the report stated. It pointed to cases where the delay before the trial meant the defendants’ sentence had already been served, on remand or due to bail conditions; or the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) dropped charges due to cases no longer being ‘in the public interest’ and where defendants had died before a trial. For many victims, ‘their experiences of the Crown Court backlog left them unwilling to engage with the criminal justice system’, according to the report. Many adjourned trials were at very short notice ‘and with minimal or no explanation’. As for how long cases are now taking, the report gave an example of a report of a sexual offence in 2019 that ended in a crown court sentence in 2024; and a doemstic abuse report to police in 2019 that ended with a crown court sentence in 2023.
Among 19 recommendations, the report called for emergency funding to victim support services, ‘to help them cope with increased caseloads arising from the court backlog crisis’. The report noted also ‘slow police investigations and CPS decision making’. One police witness care officer told the report authors of how ‘we constantly have to deliver bad news to people which results in aggressive conversations from unhappy victims’.
As victims progress through the criminal justice system their case moves from one agency to another, but it is not always clear which agency is responsible for delivery of their rights under the victims code, according to the 72-page report, that you can download from the Victims’ Commissioner’s website.
Comment
For the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners (APCC), joint Leads on the Criminal Justice System, Donna Jones and Danielle Stone, said: “We welcome the Victims’ Commissioner’s report highlighting the additional trauma being caused to victims because of court delays and adjournments. As PCCs we have long called for focused intervention to tackle the failings that cause such delays. Each of us, through the local victim services we fund and through our leadership of our Local Criminal Justice Boards, hear similar stories of victims being let down by our criminal justice system.
“We all need to come together to drive improvements that see a steady fall in the backlog of cases. Our criminal justice system depends on victims coming forward to give evidence. We risk offenders walking free if the system continues to let victims down.”
