The criminal courts are in crisis, with a backlog of over 78,000 cases awaiting trial, a figure expected to rise to 100,000 by 2028. This means that a suspect charged with an offence today may not reach trial until 2030.  Not only is this an untenable position for defendants, but it has a profound impact on victims, with six out of ten victims of rape said to be withdrawing from prosecutions because of delays. On Tuesday, the government officially announced its proposed solution: restricting the right to a trial by jury, a move that has outraged many criminal practitioners. But what are the reforms, and what do they mean for defendants?

The Reforms

Under the current plan, crimes with sentences of less than three years are to be handled by a new, jury-less criminal court: the Crown Court Bench Division (CCBD). Only crimes with under 3 years sentence will be referred to the CCBD – nearly half of all current Crown Court cases – with only the most serious crimes – murder, rape, manslaughter, and a handful of “public interest” offences – guaranteed the safeguard of a trial by jury. According to the Ministry of Justice, these trials will be 20% faster than existing jury trials. 

This echoes the recently published report by Sir Brian Leveson earlier this year, which proposed  similar changes to the criminal courts. While Leveson’s recommendations were not without controversy, they stopped significantly short of what the government is now proposing.

His report proposed only a limited and targeted expansion of juryless trials: either by re-classifying some lower-level either-way offences, diverting them to an intermediate Bench Division or to the magistrates’ courts, and permitting judge-only trials only in a small category of exceptionally serious or complex cases, such as major fraud. Crucially, decisions about allocation were intended to be made on an offence-specific and case-specific basis, thereby preserving the principle that serious offences or those involving substantial factual or legal complexity should remain within the jury system. By contrast, the government’s proposal is far less holistic – removing jury trial from all offences with a maximum sentence below three years. This represents a sweeping departure from the traditional right to trial by jury, detached from the individual nature or complexity of the case. This is particularly troubling. The sentencing powers available to the CCBD are not insignificant, and a three-year period of detention and deprivation of liberty will invariably shape the course of a defendant’s life, not least through the enduring consequences of a criminal record.

The counter-argument is that while the proposed reforms are drastic, they are not without precedent. Across much of Europe, many criminal trials proceed without a jury. In countries such as Germany, Italy and the Czech Republic, for example, serious criminal cases are generally heard either by professional judges or panels combining judges and lay judges, rather than by a jury of peers. Domestically, the distinction between jury-trial courts and non-jury courts already exists: for many minor offences, defendants are tried before non-jury magistrates’ courts, which currently have sentencing powers of up to one year.

Conclusion

The government are correct to observe that dramatic change is needed to address the crisis in the criminal courts. Ultimately, there is little evidence that these reforms will meaningfully reduce the backlog they are said to address. The delays crippling the criminal courts are the product of long-term underinvestment, chronic shortages of court staff, judicial vacancies, ageing infrastructure and the closure of dozens of court buildings. Shifting thousands of cases into a new juryless tier does nothing to fix those structural deficits. Without more courtrooms, more sitting days, more judges and sustainable funding for legal aid, the pressures that created the backlog will persist regardless of the forum in which cases are tried.

This is not the first time that a reform to jury trials has been mooted. If the reforms pass, they open the door to future widening of juryless trials for a broader array of cases. The question remains – are juries a democratic luxury that we can no longer afford?

© Whitestone Chambers 2025

---

Sources: