In this third episode of Criminal Justice Matters, the podcast series from the Criminal Bar Association of England and Wales, Mary Prior KC, Chair of the CBA together with James Gray, CBA Treasurer, draw on their and other justice professionals’ first hand experience to illustrate the personal toll on criminal barristers as they struggle to maintain the excellence expected in every case prosecuted and defended in the face of ongoing funding constraints and colleagues leaving criminal practice in droves.

We hear more from Paul, who as we learned in Episode 2, is a man who spent four years on bail awaiting trial, and how he relied on his defence counsel to hold both his case and his emotional stability together during the years when his life was put on hold.

The traumatic experiences of a rape complainant coming to court for a long delayed trial, only to cross paths with her assailant in the court car park before both were due to give evidence is recounted by Paula. We bear witness to her raw reality experienced from a chaotic justice system reeling from years of court estate cuts, despite the best efforts of judges and criminal barristers to keep witnesses calm so they can give evidence safely and fairly.

The impossibility of many barristers to remain practising in criminal law is explained in detail by former Resident Judge at Leeds Crown Court, Peter Collier KC. He makes the link between Government decisions pre-pandemic to cut Crown Court funding which forced available court rooms to close, thus causing the throughput of trials to slow and cases to pile up.

The current backlog of criminal cases stands at over 70,000, more than double the backlog of just 33,000 at the start of 2019. The precise extent of the backlog as of the date of this publication is still unknown as Government has yet to publish its latest accurate data for over six months. Those of us who prosecute and defend these cases at the Criminal Bar, however, are receiving listings for trials into late 2026 and early 2027, which if they do commence on time, will be by then two years or more since offences were charged and taking total wait for justice since the reporting of any alleged offences to six, seven or more years.

As our Chair Mary Prior KC concludes “Anyone can be accused of a crime and anyone can be the victim of a crime. If you find yourself in that position or you find one of your loved ones is in that position, you want a system that works, that gets your case dealt with within a reasonable time, in a reasonably fitted court building, and by the best barristers that there are.”

Join us as we continue a real-life journey through criminal justice – because #CriminalJusticeMatters.

Criminal Justice Matters is produced on behalf of the Criminal Bar Association by Adam Batstone Media & Communications.

For any further information on issues raised in this series contact James Rossiter, CBA director of Communications

07985117887