Coronavirus has been inflicted upon a Criminal Justice System that was already strained by a sizeable backlog of cases and years of underinvestment, overseen by a Ministry that has suffered the deepest spending cuts of any government department since 2010.

As court doors closed, Plexiglass screens went up, and video links were circulated, the time taken to conclude a case in the Crown and magistrates’ courts respectively increased by 20 percent and 25 percent compared to July-September 2019. Following the courts’ prolonged operation at lower capacity, the latest figures from November 2020 reflect a total backlog of 457,518 cases. Of these cases, 53,950 are awaiting trial at Crown Courts, reserved for the most serious crimes. This backlog alone has soared by 44 percent from February 2020, rising 19 percent from the previous quarter.

While the extent and depth of this backlog is unprecedented, it is not surprising. It is emblematic of a system that has been financially neglected by successive governments, leaving problems baked into crumbling structures. Chronic underfunding created a combustible problem, the ignition of which was foreseeable, even if the virus was not.

At a political level, these problems are representative of a political class whose interest in the rule of law is often limited to serving its own ends. On a more personal level, the backlog materially impacts the lives of millions of British people, with victims, families, and the accused all thrown into limbo as the pandemic is mismanaged from Whitehall.

The backlog is inseparable from the broader decline of the Criminal Justice System caused by austerity. The 2019/20 Justice budget was 25 percent lower than in 2010/11, while the number of full-time Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) workers decreased from 8,094 in 2010/11 to 5,684 in 2018/19. The Criminal Bar Association claims that junior judges are effectively operating on zero-hour contracts.

Between 2010 and 2020, 164 out of 320 magistrates’ courts were sold off. This represents a 51 percent reduction in the number of courts that deal with lower-level crimes, and has disproportionately impacted the most vulnerable and disadvantaged court users. Although this sell-off aimed to raise funds to enable the transition to digital court services, the Law Society has expressed concerns about the evidence surrounding the effectiveness of this move.

These few examples reflect a system squeezed beyond its operational limits, compounded by a contradictory increase in police funding that is likely to increase court workloads, upticks in certain types of crime due to Covid-related unemployment, and the systemic problems that prevent ‘effective rehabilitation’.

In response to this pressure, the government has invested an additional £142 million in modernising courtrooms, established 23 ‘Nightingale Courts’, introduced virtual case hearings, installed protective screens to support safe use of existing courts, and employed 1,600 more members of staff to help implement the measures.

While Law Society president Simon Davis ‘welcomed’ the investment, he noted this funding only represented a small initial step in the wider scheme of necessary justice finance. The provision of Nightingale courts has been likened to ‘taking a bucket to a house fire’, given the extent of the backlog; the new system also has geographical limitations which means some areas are not covered at all, and the cost of the safety measures can be prohibitively expensive.

As a result, there are profound concerns about the quality of justice now being administered. The impersonal nature of virtual hearings and the loss of non-verbal communication reduce the effectiveness of defence arguments, undermining the standards of judicial process. Virtual hearings also pose particular challenges for those with disabilities and those who do not speak English as their first language.

Crest—an independent justice consultancy—has critiqued the relative successes of expanding capacity, increasing court staff, and extending court hours in light of the court system’s interdependence on other bodies within the Criminal Justice System. Its report finds that even if court capacity is ‘doubled and equilibrium is achieved’, the prison population would increase by 34 percent by 2024. Prisons are already overfilled, and moving the current crisis further downstream merely perpetuates the systemic issues responsible for bleak living conditions and ineffectual rehabilitation. This is a system in need of holistic, institutional change, not more piecemeal emergency measures.

At the heart of this administrative crisis, of course, are normal people, and the legal maxim ‘justice delayed is justice denied’ has perhaps never been more apt.

Time has a potent effect on witness memory, with recollection of events that may have occurred months or years in the past fading as cases are delayed. For many this has a disenfranchising effect, leading some to [lose] faith in the process and others to ‘fall through the gaps’.

For those who proceed, the sense of closure that conclusive judicial reasoning can afford now eludes them. In an open letter published by the BBC, a survivor of domestic abuse described how her experience left her ‘desperate to move on’ but ‘utterly powerless’ to do so, since her case has been postponed from Spring 2020 to 2022.

The situation for those awaiting trial within prisons is arguably more severe. A report by the justice inspectorate published last month found that only 21 percent of those in prison are finding it ‘easy to access education’; general rehabilitation activities have been rolled back by more than 60 percent compared to pre-Covid levels, and restricted access to ‘open space, exercise, and human contact’ has led to reported increases in anxiety and physical problems in a system already plagued by mental health issues. Meanwhile, Covid cases in prisons surge.

These conditions have been legitimised by the extended custody policy, which means that detainees can be remanded while cases are determined for 56 additional days—lengthening the maximum period from an already too long six months to eight months—to help address the backlog. As lawyers and former judges have noted, ‘defendants can do the sums’; innocent individuals may well plead guilty if they are likely to receive sentences shorter than the time they would otherwise spend under remand.

Like all other aspects of British public life, the onset of Covid has exposed the fissures in the British justice system. Radical change is not advisable; it is imperative. An increasing number of those on the left now subscribe to the prison abolition model, but as Joe Williams has written in Tribune before, while the system persists, its desperate underfunding is a pillar of its inhumanity, and representative of the devaluation of the lives of those it most affects. The same goes for a court system that is now compounding the problems it supposedly sets out to solve – and the longer this status quo endures, the more deeply constituted these issues become.