“Justice delayed is justice denied” goes the old legal maxim – one that has captured the state of the court system in England and Wales in recent years.
The backlogs caused by the coronavirus pandemic are only one of the ways in which the justice and policing system has changed over the last 14 years – from cuts to legal aid and policing, to a more positive story on crime levels, much has changed since 2010.
The Guardian will spend the next six weeks analysing the data on how 14 years of Conservative party rule has changed Britain. In this first instalment, we look at how crime and punishment has fared since 2010.
A record backlog in the courts
In recent years, partly thanks to closures during the pandemic, the court system in England and Wales has seen record decreases in case timeliness. The proportion of cases taking more than a year in the crown court has increased from 7.2% to 28.3% in April-June last year.
Although the backlog in the magistrates court has dropped since mid-2020, the crown court now has a record number of outstanding cases. More of these cases require a jury trial, which the Institute for Government thinktank has calculated in effect increases the backlog by 40%.
This has a knock-on impact, with victims more likely to forget details, or withdraw from cases, and an increase in the number of people in prison despite not yet being convicted.
A collapse in charge rates for rape before a small recent recovery
Longer waiting times and changes to disclosure in the last decade (with more trials relying on evidence from victims’ mobile phones) have led to a rising number of rape cases being discontinued because of victims withdrawing from the process.
Charge numbers fell between 2015-16 and 2019-20, even as the number of reported cases rose. In April-June 2014, 27% of rape outcomes ended with a victim deciding not to continue. This more than doubled to a peak of 59% in July-September 2022 – a statistic which was likely, in part, down to Covid-19 court backlogs.
Recent years have seen the charge rate for rape start to recover – with the raw number charged in the latest quarter the highest since December 2015 (though a doubling in the caseload means the percentage is still far lower).
Large cuts to legal aid
Heading into the 2010 election, both main parties promised to review or find savings in legal aid – the system set up in 1945 “to provide legal advice for those of slender means and resources, so that no one would be financially unable to prosecute a just and reasonable claim or defend a legal right”.
In the end, the coalition government chose to cut it – with spending falling by 38% in real terms between 2010-11 and 2015-16.
The results: an increasing number of unrepresented defendants, threatening the timeliness of court cases, and insufficient legal aid providers in many areas of law, with the cuts disproportionately affecting vulnerable women.
A struggling prison system
Eyes were back on the prison system in England and Wales last year after a dramatic prisoner escape at HMP Wandsworth. But figures show that prison conditions – including overcrowding – have been an issue since at least 2010, and the system is struggling to retain staff.
The number of “certified normal accommodation” places (those which have a good, decent standard of accommodation, ie. are not overcrowded) was already insufficient for the prison population, and provision has only increased by 2% since June 2010 while the prison population has risen by almost 3% to 87,481. The Ministry of Justice’s higher population projections suggest it could reach more than 100,000 within two years.
Staff retention is a large problem. Almost half the officers (47%) who left the service last year had been in the role for less than three years.
A decade of cuts to frontline policing
The Conservative government broadly met its 2019 manifesto pledge of hiring 20,000 more police officers in England and Wales by March 2023 – increasing the officer workforce by 18,320 since March 2020.
However, when put in a broader context, that success looks rather small: the March 2023 figure represents an increase of just 2.6% on 2010 – and across the UK as a whole, numbers are still down slightly (policing is a devolved matter in Scotland and Northern Ireland).
The figures reveal that officer numbers decreased every year the Conservatives were in power until 2018, when they slowly began to rise again.
A mixed story on knife crime
Police forces have greatly improved recording practices in the last 14 years, which makes comparing recorded crime statistics over the period difficult. However, in England, NHS figures on knife crime date back to 2013.
The figures show a rising rate of hospitalisations from stab wounds until the pandemic, when the figure started to fall again – possibly aided by rising officer numbers. Since 2012, each police force has elected its own police and crime commissioner (with these functions performed by local mayors in some areas), who have political oversight of the local force.
But a positive story on headline crime
While the justice system is under immense stress, the story on crime overall has continued to be a positive one.
The ONS crime survey for England and Wales is considered the best way to measure changes in crime over time (due to the previously mentioned improvements in police figures making it look like crime has gone up). It shows the level of crime is falling.
Under Labour, headline traditional crime estimates fell 44% – from 17,168 in December 1997 to 9,544 in March 2010. Since then, traditional crime has more than halved, to 4,340 as of December last year. The new issue is fraud and computer-related crimes – but these have also declined by 25% since they were first measured in 2017.
