The criminal justice system is failing to provide value for money with victims facing delays, collapsed cases and a postcode lottery, the spending watchdog warns today.
A victim of crime in north Wales has a seven in ten chance that a trial will go ahead at crown court on the scheduled day, compared with two in ten in Greater Manchester.
In all, as many as two in three cases fail to progress as planned and the Crown Prosecution Service spent £21.5 million preparing cases that were not heard in court, the National Audit Office (NAO) says today. About £5.5 million related to cases that collapsed because of “prosecution reasons” such as non-attendance by prosecution witnesses and incomplete case files, its report for 2014/15 finds.
Backlogs in crown courts increased by 34 per cent between March 2013 and September last year, while the waiting time for a hearing grew by 35 per cent from 99 days to 134.
The number of trials being heard in England and Wales was down 24,481, or 11 per cent, compared with 2010-11, yet an extra £44 million was spent on crown court hearings owing to their increasing length. Amyas Morse, the comptroller and auditor general of the NAO, said: “Delays and aborted hearings create extra work, waste scarce resources and undermine confidence in the system.”
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Delays were “getting worse against a backdrop of continuing financial pressure”, with the government spending about £2 billion a year on the system — an increase of 26 per cent in real terms since 2010-11.
The report concluded that “ambitious” reforms led by the Ministry of Justice, CPS and judiciary had the potential to improve value for money but warned that they “will not address all of the causes of inefficiency”.