Thousands of defendants a year could be deprived of the historic right to a jury trial under extreme proposals.
The Justice Secretary ordered an assessment that outlined many steps to reduce the backlog in the Crown court.
It also proposed increased use of ‘out of court’ punishments – frequently dismissed by critics as a mere ‘slap on the wrist’ – for lower-level criminals.
As revealed by The Mail yesterday, the review stated that criminals who plead guilty should receive up to 40 per cent off their jail terms, up from the current maximum of one-third.
Under its central proposal, instead of suspects’ guilt or innocence being decided by a jury, they would face trial by a judge sitting with two magistrates in a new kind of court.
The major, 380-page report by retired senior judge Sir Brian Leveson stated that the move would save 9,000 Crown Court sitting days a year, freeing up space for more serious cases to be heard in jury trials.
The report did not say how many cases would change to the new court – to be called the Crown Court Bench Division (CCBD) – but it is likely to be thousands each year in England and Wales.
Jury trials would be removed for more than 170 kinds of criminality, including sexually assaulting a child, causing death by careless driving, incest, firearms offences and importing drugs including Class A substances like heroin.
The CCBD would be estimated to deal with cases 20 per cent more quickly than a regular Crown court trial, Sir Brian said, and it would have the same sentencing powers.
His report added: ‘Only through the combined impact of these measures can government start to overcome the current crisis and reduce the risk of total system collapse.’
The current Crown court backlog stood at a record 76,957 cases at the end of March – with trials now being listed to take place in 2029 – while in magistrates’ courts, 310,304 cases were awaiting a hearing.
The review called for ‘greater use’ of out-of-court resolutions such as cautions, community punishments and fixed penalty fines.
Police and prosecutors should even review the current court backlog to see if cases would be suitable for out-of-court punishments, it said.
‘It’s not soft on crime at all. It is trying to tackle those areas of crime that are not presently being tackled,’ Sir Brian said.
He said the Government should find money to increase the number of Crown court sitting days by 20,000 a year to 130,000 to ‘maximise the effectiveness’ of his proposed reforms.
It would cost £1 billion by 2029-30, the report said.
A review published in May by former Tory justice secretary David Gauke – and accepted in principle by Labour – proposed permitting some criminals out of jail after serving just a third of their sentence.
Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick said: ‘Taken together, the Leveson and Gauke reviews will see criminals like burglars and even some killers serve just a fifth of their prison sentence.
‘That makes a mockery of our justice system.’ Victims’ Commissioner Baroness Newlove welcomed the report’s ‘bold, radical proposals’ but added: ‘For many victims, plans to increase sentence discounts for guilty pleas and expand out of court disposals will feel like justice being diluted once again.’
Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood said she will consider the recommendations before publishing legislative changes in the autumn.
Building more jails is what they must do since failing to do so will increase crime and the backlog of cases.
Everything about the system that is meant to keep us safe is broken and ineffective, and the government are ignoring the will of the majority and frittering our taxes away.
The legal system gives more privileges to convicted criminals than to ordinary law-abiding citizens. Foreign criminals aren’t being deported and certain communities are getting a free ride.
While wasting money on rainbow crossings and bike lanes that no one wants, local governments are neglecting to offer fundamental services.
Because politicians have been ignoring the public for decades, society is collapsing and the police will look into non-crimes but not real crimes.
Serious discontent will be the only way to save our nation from the elite that appears to despise and destroy it, and we are very close to that tipping point.
Trial by jury is the only thing that gives the accused some semblance of a balanced trial. Without it, they can arrest you, accuse you, decide your guilt and then imprison you. It’s nothing short of communism.
Is this anything to do with the reality that jurors have to have been resident in the UK from the age of thirteen I wonder – I suspect there are not many people in this country to ask now. We are losing our country day by day.
Our leaders’ haughtiness, dishonesty, and indolence over unchecked migration have caused our judicial system, like all other services, to be overburdened.
In a proper political response, the options are straightforward: either we send the migrants back or we keep attempting to stretch and distort what we have in order to adapt, which will ultimately lead to a broken system. The system simply cannot handle the quantity of migrants that are here. Politicians, of course, have opted for simplicity.
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 