Independent Review of the Criminal Courts II
This morning (4 February 2026) Sir Brian Leveson has published part II of his independent review of the criminal courts. It comes in at 756 pages long, published in two volumes, so thank goodness for the overview. Sir Brian is clear that “chronic underfunding” is the main cause of the backlogs and inefficiencies besetting our court system. Related to this is the lack of an experienced legal workforce which is exacerbating current problems. Few would argue with his bald statement that:
“Courts, prisons and probation are also working under intense pressure with very limited capacity and decreasing efficiency”
A fragmented criminal justice system
Sir Brian takes the opportunity of the review not just to take remedial action to cope with the current problems but to fix the system going forwards. He diagnoses the problem as “fragmented governance and siloed decision-making with a lack of unified vision and accountability across agencies and across the country”.
He notes that the police, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), the defence community, HMCTS and HMPPS all have their own financial constraints and their own priorities. These include legacy IT systems and poor interoperability that hinder adaptability. His recommendation is a single vision for the criminal justice system, with policy decided by Ministers and coordinated leadership directed by a second Permanent Secretary within the MoJ.
Recommendations
The review makes a number of significant and far-reaching recommendations including:
Improving disclosure
Disclosure has become increasingly complex with large amounts of digital evidence often involved. He recommends the use of AI summarisation tools for disclosure schedules (with the defence permitted to propose search terms for unused material).
Court efficiency
As the recent Institute for Government report showed, court inefficiencies are probably the main contributor to the unprecedented Crown Court backlogs. Sir Brian recommends improved listing process (including a national listing framework for Crown Courts, again using AI tools to assist this judicial function) and the appointment of Case Progression Officers at every court.
Remote participation
Sir Brian advocates increased use of remote participation, saying it should extend to first hearings in the magistrates’ court, managed in police stations by Prisoner Escort and Custody Services (PECS) contractors and to preliminary hearings at Crown Court with only the judge physically in court. Given the many current failings of remote hearings, this is likely to be one of the more controversial recommendations.
Structural change
Many of the other more controversial recommendations were made in Part 1 of the Review published in July last year. Here Sir Brian recommended a big reduction in jury trials and the creation of new Bench Trials held by a judge and two magistrates. He also recommended extending the powers of magistrates to make prison sentences of up to 18 months. We are still waiting for the Government’s response on this last point, but it appears they are considering extending magistrates’ powers further – to make prison sentences of up to two years.
A crumbling court estate
Sir Brain notes that:
“the court estate suffers from chronic underinvestment, with a £1.3 billion maintenance backlog and facilities ill-suited to modern demands. Besides rendering a number of courts unusable, these defects also aggravate the issues of morale which affect those who work in the system”
He urges the Government to address this issue more robustly as a matter of priority.
Conclusion
In his conclusion, Sir Brian makes it clear that more funding and better efficiency are critical, but that they will only have limited impact without structural reform. The Government has had the full report for over three weeks so we must expect a number of announcements soon regarding their plans to overhaul the court system.
Thanks to Andy Aitchison for kind permission to use the header image in this post. You can see Andy’s work here
One Response
The adult cjs requires a single statutory principal purpose “to prevent offending”. This, like the youth justice system would frame and prioritise the deployment of the most effective and efficient methods to the real outcome that the public want and reduce the emphasis on punishment.and process. It would shift focus to preventing offending and preventing re offending, especially in those agencies that currently do not see this as their purpose. There are many programs and services that have empirical evidence based approaches that have proven success but are largely in the voluntary sector or on the fringes of statutory agencies, struggling with sustainable funding while we spend huge sums of money on a broken system that actually raises the risk of offending and re offending. The government need to look no further than the youth justice system and its success in reducing both while spending less. The court system is by far the worst culprit. Countless current alternative to prosecution schemes prove that you can have better outcomes for both offenders and victims at less than half the cost of a court appearance and a formal sentence. Yet we fail to invest sustainably.