Criminals exploit court delays 'doom loop' to avoid justice, warns KC

Growing numbers of guilty criminals are refusing to admit their crimes because they know that a “doom loop” of court delays and a lack of prosecutors means they might never face justice, a barristers’ leader has warned.

Sam Townend KC, the chairman of the Bar Council, said that the increasing chances of escaping conviction driven by a record trial backlog had to a “collapse in the percentage of guilty pleas” at a defendants’ first crown court hearings “from 84% in 2014 to 36% in the first half of last year.”

He said the overall proportion of guilty pleas had also dropped “markedly” to below 60% as part of a “serious and systemic behavioural change” that was putting the justice system under “unbearable pressure” and leading to even longer court delays and higher costs for the taxpayer.

He said the trend also meant that victims – who might previously have been spared by a guilty plea from giving evidence in court - were instead being forced to undergo the “harrowing experience” of testifying in trials.

“This is …. a ‘performance doom loop’ as it becomes more and more apparent that the system cannot cope and as young criminal men, who should be pleading guilty at an early stage, become more aware .. that their day of reckoning is getting pushed back further and further and perhaps may never come at all. This is not tough on crime, but the very opposite,” he said.

“My concern is of a complete collapse in public confidence in the system. One where victims and witnesses become ever more disillusioned or simply give up. Justice neither done, nor seen to be done.”

Mr Townend, who was speaking at London’s Lincoln’s Inn, added: “What we are witnessing is a breakdown in the compact essential to any effective criminal justice system: that perpetrators plead guilty early for a discounted sentence and start the process of rehabilitation.

“This saves the state the cost of trial and, most importantly, save victims and witnesses from the harrowing experience of re-living the crime when giving evidence at trial.

“If the compact is broken, it will put the criminal courts system, already running at close to boiling point, under unbearable pressure, accelerating the rate of increase in the backlog and pushing out further the time within which cases are dealt with.”

Mr Townend said that action to tackle the record Crown Court trial backlog, which stood at 66,547 in the most recent figures up to the end of September last year, and the shortage of prosecutors and other criminal barristers was needed.

But he accused politicians of failing to respond and said that they were instead seeking to place more pressure on the justice system.

“it is utterly disappointing that neither [of the main political parties] has yet committed itself to applying the resources needed and yet each keeps identifying more new offences and proposing greater demands on the criminal justice system. If you wish the ends you have to provide the means.”