Crisis in the courts: the data we need to tackle the court backlog
This post is the latest from our project to map and fill data gaps in criminal justice.
Few would dispute that courts in England and Wales are in crisis. Above all, the court backlog has grown enormously, not helped by the pandemic. Over 340,000 cases are awaiting trial in magistrates’ courts and 60,000 in Crown courts. Behind each of these is a defendant and victim with their lives on hold.
If the Government is to reduce this backlog, it needs to understand it. In particular, it needs to know what the nature of the delays are, and how effective its interventions are. And so do those who scrutinise the Government’s work.
We’ve taken a deep dive into published data on the courts backlog to see if it helps answer those questions. We found some detailed information - total backlogs, the flow of cases coming into courts, and whether hearings run effectively.
But we also found many areas where stakeholders have been unable to obtain data, and some surprising gaps in statistics, such as the time taken to process cases at individual courts, or for different crimes.
Using our data gaps mapping approach, we’ve identified two areas where it should be both feasible and valuable to improve the public data.
1. What are the nature of the current delays?
The Government has lots of data internally about how courts process cases. But it doesn’t always make this available - particularly not at the granularity that would allow for meaningful scrutiny and understanding.
This is a huge area. But we’ve identified a few areas where people have asked for better data, and where our research suggests it should be straightforward to provide it:
More meaningful information on how long trials take: Improving timeliness is one of the Ministry of Justice’s long-term objectives. But currently, there’s no public data in two areas that are crucial for understanding timeliness and performance:
At individual courts. The only case timeliness data is published at regional level. Some courts may well be struggling more than others with delays and staffing - identifying which courts these are would help to focus resources and attention. The state has long published basic delivery data for individual schools and hospitals, so it’s curious that similar data isn’t provided for our justice system. [UPDATE 27 March 2023: correspondence with the Select Committee and Minister has clarified that some timeliness data is published by court, but only for broad offence group - and not as official statistics. See our updated briefing note for details.]
For individual crimes. Currently timeliness data is only broken down by broad offence, such as ‘violence against the person’, which can range from common assault to murder. The Justice Select Committee has recommended the Government set itself timeliness targets for ‘specific offences’. This would enable that, and allow scrutiny of whether the system is working for victims of more serious offences.
The types of case in the magistrates’ backlog: Relatedly, cases held in the magistrates’ courts backlog cannot be broken down by offence type - so we know little about the types of cases that are currently awaiting trial there, including more serious cases.
The plea types in the backlog: The Crown Court backlog currently stands at over 60,000 cases - but this is likely to be disproportionately populated by jury trials (where the defendant has pleaded not guilty) which are more time-consuming. This means the backlog may be effectively even longer than it appears. However, MoJ data does not break down the backlog by plea type. Experts at the Institute for Government told us it would be useful to break down public backlog data by plea and offence, to better understand the true scale of the backlog and the response needed.
2. How well are interventions working?
The Government spent £477 million on emergency reforms during the pandemic to tackle the court backlog. These included expanding remote hearings; establishing Nightingale courts; and allowing Crown Courts to sit more often.
As these reforms were speedily implemented during the pandemic, plans for evaluating them were not clearly set out at the start. But as these reforms now look set to continue, the MoJ can commit to sharing data on how well they’re working.
Justice stakeholders have raised concerns that a lack of evaluation data will “undermine the ability of the department to understand what works, design effective policies and deliver value for money for the taxpayer”. Our briefing highlights areas where experts have called for better evaluation.
What next?
We believe that much of this data would be relatively straightforward for HMCTS and the MoJ to publish. Our research suggests that much of it is captured by courts’ digital case management systems already.
Data is by no means the only thing needed to tackle the complex, long-running crisis in our courts. But without meaningful public data on what’s happening and what’s working, our chances only get worse.
Download the full briefing note to read the findings in detail.
This is the latest in a series of deep dives from our justice data gaps project, and has been funded by the Justice Lab, an initiative of the Legal Education Foundation, as part of their ongoing programme of research and advocacy to improve the quality and availability of justice system data. Thanks to the Institute for Government for feedback on a draft of this briefing - any errors are our own. We would be delighted to receive feedback and corrections - please get touch at contact@centreforpublicdata.org.