1
Jul
2015
By Calvin at 09:11 GMT, 8 years ago
Here’s a link to an interesting piece from Victim Support
They’ve conducted a little analysis of figures released by the Ministry of Justice to find out how long victims are now waiting for their cases to come to court and it turns out that we’re now waiting longer than at any time during the past 15 years.
Here are some of the figures:
- It takes an average of 29 weeks for a contested case to be listed for trial at Crown Court (Up from 18 weeks in 2000)
- The average time taken from the commission of the offence to the completion of a trial is 10½ months and over 12 months for serious offences that are contested
- Currently there are 54,000 outstanding cases; up 75% from 31,000 cases in 2000 (which would take 18 months to clear if no more cases were added to the list)
Mark Castle, Chief Executive of Victim Support quite righty criticises somebody (I’m not sure who - (The Courts? Ministry of Justice? Justice Secretary? The government’s austerity measures and budget cuts? All of them?), because “much unnecessary anguish and anxiety is caused by court delays” He goes on to say “These delays make it harder for victims to recover from their ordeals and may diminish the quality of evidence which witnesses are able to provide, making it harder for the courts themselves to deliver justice”
I absolutely agree with Mark Castle; this is a shocking state of affairs, but it’s not new.
When I was involved in trials at Crown Court back in the 70s and 80s you knew then that it was going to be around 6 months before a trial began. Very often you would turn up at court and find that the trial had been cancelled for all manner of reasons and then you’d have to wait for a new date that would suit the police, the legal people the witnesses and the victim(s) - a nightmare of an administrative job.
That’s the problem with trials; there are just so many people that have to be in the same place at the same time for things to happen. I’m sure things can be improved, but I doubt it will ever be to the satisfaction of victims and witnesses who simply want to get this horrible experience over and done with as soon as possible. I’d like to see a norm of three to four months tops between offence and Crown court completion and I don’t think that’s too much to ask for.
Source Victim Support: https://www.victimsupport.org.uk/about-us/news/victim-support-research-finds-victims-crime-are-waiting-longer-ever-their-cases-come
