london
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For hundreds of years, Britons accused of serious crimes had the right to be tried by their fellow citizens in a court of law. But now, as the country grapples with a serious backlog of cases awaiting hearing, legal experts warn that the right to a jury trial has been curtailed, potentially leading to less fair sentences.
The reforms, announced by Britain’s Attorney General David Lammy earlier this month, will create a new “fast-track” tier of courts without juries to take cases where defendants can be jailed for up to three years. Those charges, including fraud, robbery and drug offences, had previously been heard in Britain’s Crown Court, which deals with serious crimes.
In addition to human trafficking, grievous bodily harm, and “public interest” prosecutions, cases of sexual assault, murder, and manslaughter will continue to be tried by jury. The reforms do not apply to Scotland or Northern Ireland, which have their own justice systems, and will not affect less serious offenses such as driving offenses and public order offenses, which are already dealt with without a jury.
The UK justice system is in crisis, with around 80,000 criminal cases currently waiting to be heard in the Crown Court, and that number expected to rise to 100,000 by 2028. According to UK government data, there is a backlog of 13,238 sex offenses cases. Some victims have to wait up to three to four years for their day in court.
A report released in October by the independent government body the Victims Commissioner paints a picture of an overreaching criminal justice system in which many people have lost confidence.
A man who was the victim of an assault that left him mentally traumatized has told how a lack of capacity meant he was denied justice.
“The police told me that it was unlikely that the CPS (Crown Prosecution Service) would prosecute me for assault. I was deliberately hit by a moving van multiple times, but when I was on the phone with the police at the time, the incident was recorded and my attacker admitted he had done it, citing a backlog in court.”
A woman who is a victim of stalking and harassment has described the horror she endured as her alleged attacker’s trial was delayed, adjourned and absconded. It was “a terrifying three years for me,” she said.
Advocating for reform, Courts and Legal Services Minister Sarah Sackman said in the House of Commons on December 8, “Justice delayed is justice denied,” citing the painful wait for some victims.
Lachlan Stewart, a Birmingham criminal barrister and chair of the Bar Council’s Young Barristers Committee, cited delays caused by the coronavirus pandemic as the main reason courts are backlogged. “The system simply didn’t have the capacity to recover after that.”
However, not everyone is in favor of reform. The plans sparked a backlash across political divides after they were first leaked to British media in November. Conservative MP and shadow justice minister Robert Jenrick said the proposed changes were a “disgrace” that would rip “old rights” to shreds.
Jury trials in England can be traced back to the 13th century’s Magna Carta, which is considered the foundation of the modern justice system. Therefore, many people consider it a fundamental right. In a November 2025 YouGov poll, a majority of the public (54%) said they would like a jury to decide the verdict if they were accused of a crime.
Labor member of the House of Lords Helena Kennedy KC expressed doubts about restricting jury trials. In an interview with CNN, she suggested that the desire among politicians to abolish them stems from “an exaggerated belief that ordinary people can’t stand it.” Still, she said jury service is an important responsibility in a democratic society.
For Kennedy, the main reason the current judicial system is broken is because it is underfunded.
One example is “idle courtrooms,” which are courtrooms that are vacant and unused due to a lack of funding for judges.
It was revealed on Wednesday that 39 Labor backbenchers had written to Prime Minister Keir Starmer urging him to change course on reform, calling it an “ineffective way to tackle the devastating backlog of cases in our criminal justice system”.
They raised the alternative of increasing the number of sitting days in the courtroom, stating that “courtrooms have approximately 130,000 sitting days available, but despite the capacity crisis, sitting days are limited to 20,000 days a year.”
The main argument against the reform is that it allows juries to bring diverse life experiences to their decision-making, helping to reduce discrimination and racial bias.
A 2017 independent inquiry into the treatment of black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) people in the criminal justice system in England and Wales found significant evidence of racial bias, but concluded that jury trials were more likely to have a fair outcome than judge-only trials and that juries acted as a “filter of bias”, with Lammy, then a junior MP, finding significant evidence of racial bias.
“In a jury system… you’re going to be tried by your peers, 12 randomly selected members of the public… different ethnicities, different ages, different backgrounds,” Stewart said.
Judges, on the other hand, usually come from a more restricted class. “The average age would be in their 50s… They skew male, they skew white, and they’re all middle class.”
But some believe that reforms should go further. Sexual assault charities in the UK have been sounding the alarm for years about the flaws in the current process and stressing the need for urgent change. One of the recommendations from Rape Crisis England and Wales (RCEW) is to pilot non-jury trials for sex offense cases, with current plans leaving juries in place.
In November, the RCEW released a report entitled “Living in Limbo” detailing how survivors are re-traumatized by the system.
The report revealed that survivors of rape and other sexual crimes in the UK are increasingly likely to face long waiting times and last-minute delays before their court hearings. The charity said some survivors have had their trials postponed more than six times, but added that the process was so disruptive and so difficult that many survivors were withdrawing from the trial altogether.
The Victims Commission’s report included multiple testimonies about how victims of sexual crimes were affected by the delay.
One rape and sexual assault victim has told how the wait ultimately forced her to withdraw from the prosecution. “It was too stressful and took too long. My life was ruined and I thought I would lose my family if I continued with the lawsuit.”
It is hoped that freeing up court time for serious cases will reduce wait times for sex crime victims, but there is no solid evidence that it will do so, Stewart said. “There is no data to show that (reforms) actually make the system more efficient,” he said.
