A man bursts out of a courtroom, shouting expletives. The judge has just ruled that his brother-in-law will not be going to prison after sexually assaulting his two young daughters.
“The justice system is a fucking joke,” he bellows, pacing ahead of his family. Another male relative mutters darkly: “We’ll find him.”
The trial at Leicester crown court has already been delayed from January to November because no prosecution barrister could be found. It was about to be put off for a second time before the family complained and got the case relisted.
The girls, one of whom is barely out of primary school, have watched the sentencing unfold and stand in the corridor weeping. In an impact statement read in court, their father said the delays had left him feeling angry and that “we were having to put our lives on hold”.
Speaking afterwards, the girls’ grandfather says of the wait: “They don’t realise what it’s done to us as a family.”
Though the delay has caused distress, this is one of the court’s faster convictions. The man’s most recent offence was in May 2022 and lawyers say the case has been relatively efficient. Others here wait four years for justice and trials set for 2026 are common.
The backlog in crown court cases in England and Wales is expected to reach 100,000 if the government does not take radical action. A chronic shortage of barristers and judges – as well as a cap on the number of days that judges can sit – are all exacerbating the problem.
Last year, 61 ready-to-start sexual offence trials in the Midlands were adjourned on day one as there was not a single criminal barrister available to prosecute the trial. That did not happen in 2017 or 2019, and happened just once in 2018.
The prosecutor in the girls’ case, Andrew Wilkins, says that in January 150 different barristers’ chambers were contacted to try to find alternative counsel for the trial, but nobody was available.
“It used to never happen,” he says. “It used to be if someone was in a car accident on the way to work or something. Now I’m personally apologising to the court – it feels like about once a fortnight – telling them that we can’t get anybody.”
Issuing a two-year suspended sentence to the girls’ uncle, the judge, Keith Raynor, says apologetically that “delays are now absolutely commonplace in the criminal justice system”.
The man’s suspended sentence, which includes community service and stringent conditions, is in line with guidelines. The victims were touched through clothes, it was a first offence, and he has a mild learning disability. But in deciding not to put him into custody immediately, Raynor also acknowledges that he had to be mindful of “the extent of the prison population”, with jail wings so full that inmates are having to be released early to cope with rising numbers.
The girls’ grandfather says: “I thought he’d walk. There’s no room for him.”
Now a convicted paedophile, the girls’ uncle waits until the court building is completely quiet before picking up the suitcase he packed for prison and making his way out into the darkness.
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While many of England’s courtrooms lie empty owing to the scarcity of professionals, one of Leicester’s is resolutely busy. Court 99 appears on the morning list most days, sometimes with dozens of cases on its slate. There’s just one catch: this court does not exist.
Court 99 has become a clerical dumping ground for cases that were due to be heard that day but can no longer be accommodated. It is a way of helping administrators and lawyers keep track of cases that might otherwise disappear into thin air.
Mary Prior KC, the chair of the Criminal Bar Association, says: “There’s a huge backlog of cases here … It’s quite common that by the time you get a prisoner here who’s to be sentenced, they’ve already served the equivalent of a sentence they would have received.”
Prior handles some of the country’s most complex murder cases. At 9am she is in the court’s robing room, after an early start. “Our average day at the moment starts at about 4am,” she says. “I got a lie-in this morning – I got up at 4.30.”
“The alternative to that is asking for time, and there is no time,” she adds. “There are very few court sitting days and we have to make the best of every day that there is because we know that some other person, whether it’s a victim or a person in custody waiting for the trial, needs to come on.”
Her day ahead is relentless. “This morning I’m representing a 17-year-old boy who stabbed another 17-year-old boy, and then in the afternoon I’ll be defending an adult male with schizophrenia who stabbed his mother in the street. That’s my day. I’ll finish morning court at 1.30pm and at 1.30 I’ll go and see my client.”
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It has been more than two years since M, a man in his 30s, first appeared in court charged with sexual activity with a child, grooming, and making indecent images. He has high hopes that he can loosen his bail terms – but justice is still a long way off.
He has already changed his address without first informing the court, but he is in luck. With the trial date now delayed until 2026, his application is well received by the judge, who notes: “It’s not the defendant’s fault that this trial has gone off.”
The complainant was a girl who was 15 at the time of the alleged crime in 2021, and M is expected to argue that he believed she was 18. The delays mean that by the time the case comes to trial she will be older than that, making the job of the jury harder.
The trial was originally listed for April last year but no court room was available. Two more trial dates have come and gone and the case is now listed for January 2026. Because M is not in prison, where time limits would apply, his case is not a priority.
Cases where the defendant is in custody are typically first in line – but as the backlog grows, even prisoners on remand are waiting years.
The Ministry of Justice points out it inherited a system in crisis with a record and rising crown court backlog. A spokesperson said that while the government was bound by its financial inheritance, the department was “committed to delivering swifter justice,” adding 500 sitting days in the crown court and extending magistrates’ sentencing powers.
Optimism about the system is in short supply. Katya Saudek, a part-time judge and barrister, says: “The vast majority of my trials have not been reached this year and have been pushed back until 2026. The single biggest factor is underfunding. That impacts on how many judges they’re paying to sit, how many barristers, and the fabric of the court building.”
Two days earlier, one of Saudek’s clients was acquitted of rape after spending more than a year on remand in prison. His first trial date was abandoned because no prosecutor was available, a second failed because the judge did not have enough time, and the third could not go ahead because counsel were unavailable after a listings mix-up. On the fourth attempt, the trial finally materialised.
The alleged crime had taken place in 2020 when a woman had visited him at home in the Midlands and claimed they had sex. According to Saudek, her client’s accuser was “someone who made a lot of false claims in the past”.
The man had returned home to Poland during the pandemic before he was charged and had to be extradited to await trial, leaving behind a young child. He spent two months in prison in Poland and another year in prison in the UK waiting for the trial.
“For him it was 14 months out of his life and then he was unanimously acquitted within two hours,” Saudek says. “He was released yesterday without any means of getting back to Poland. Having extradited him here, they didn’t help him go back.”
For her clients on bail, the waits are even worse. “I’ve got a young kid who’s accused of a rape a few months after his 18th birthday,” she says. “He’s now 24 and just had his trial adjourned to next year when he’ll be 25. He will have missed what’s meant to be the best years of his life. He’s on bail but had his life destroyed because allegations like this stick.”
The trial has been delayed three times because of a lack of available courts. “Rape cases are supposed to get priority but the court just doesn’t have room,” she says. “There aren’t enough court rooms, there aren’t enough judges and there aren’t enough barristers.”
Philip Gibbs, who has been at the criminal bar for more than 30 years, is also disconsolate. “I think the system’s given up,” he says. “This week I had a case that involved somebody being knocked unconscious at a wake in 2022. They sustained brain damage and can’t give evidence.”
The defendant is on bail, accused of hitting his partner’s relative, and the case has just been delayed for a third time because there is no available prosecutor. It is now listed for February 2026.
“There were 11 live witnesses. One has died,” says Gibbs. “It will never be a priority,” he adds. “It’s not the most serious case, and that’s the problem. He’s got no previous, he’s in his 30s, he’s on bail but he’s got no markers to make his case listed faster.”
In the meantime, Gibbs says, “his life is on hold … The whole family is ripped asunder and there’s no chance of a trial for four years.”
It is dark outside now and the building is almost empty. Prior is hoping to catch her client in the cells to discuss the possibility of an appeal. She still has not had lunch.
She says that if the government does not put more money into the system, “there won’t be people like me to do these cases. They’ll give up and do something that pays twice as much for half as much work. There are so many less traumatic ways of earning money.”
