Court delays return as emergency measures are deployed to stem prison overcrowding
The legal sector was thrown into a state of chaos and confusion this morning after the government deployed emergency measures to delay court cases in response to prison and police cell overcrowding.
The government measures, known as ‘Operation Early Dawn’, come into force today and will cause delays for many magistrates’ court cases in England. The operation will not affect courts in Wales.
It involves an assessment being made each morning by prison staff on which prisoners can be transferred from police cells and taken to courts to ensure there is a safe and secure location if they are remanded in custody.
Legal groups, however, were outraged at the measures after receiving no warning about the operation and only minimal details of how the new measures will work and how long they will last for.
“Victims, witnesses, defendants and lawyers will today turn up at magistrates’ courts across England only to find out that their cases have been delayed due to a crisis in prison and police cell capacity outside of their control,” Nick Emmerson, the president of the Law Society of England and Wales, said in a statement.
The Criminal Law Solicitors Association (CLSA) said the conditions in UK courts and prisons was the result of years of the criminal justice system being neglected and underfunded by successive governments.
“We are appalled by the state of our criminal justice system,” a spokesperson for the CLSA said in a statement. “This is a symptom of a systemic problem caused by more than 40 years of neglect of our criminal justice system.”
The group called on the government to invest in the justice system “as a matter of urgency”.
New figures published by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) in March showed that the magistrates’ court backlog stood at 370,731 cases in December, up seven percent on the previous quarter. The crown court backlog, meanwhile, reached 67,573 at the end of last year, up eight percent on the same time in 2022.
A spokesperson for the Criminal Bar Association (CBA) said today the number of people remanded in custody has reached “around 16,500” as a result of “worsening trial and sentencing delays due to underfunding and chronic shortages of criminal barristers”.
But the MoJ sought to blame the pandemic and the recent barristers’ strikes for the deteriorating situation.
“We continue to see pressure on our prisons following the impact of the pandemic and barristers’ strike, which is why we have initiated a previously used measure to securely transfer prisoners between courts and custody and ensure there is always a custody cell available should they be remanded,” a spokesperson for the MOJ said in a statement.
The CBA strongly rejected the government’s explanation that criminal barristers were partly to blame for the chaos in the country’s courts and prisons.
“Prisons are full because for 18 months criminal barristers have done what is required prosecuting and defending, getting trials done. That’s why the sentenced prisoner population is up 5,000 to over 71,000,” a CBA spokesperson said. “The criminal bar will continue to do what is required in order to ensure justice is delivered in as timely manner as possible for defendants, complainants, victims of crime and their families.”