On 9 July 2025, part 1 of the Independent Review of the Criminal Courts, chaired by Sir Brian Leveson was published (the Report). Leveson was tasked by the UK Ministry of Justice with conducting a wide-ranging review of the UK criminal court system. Part 1 focuses on reform and proposes various radical changes to criminal procedure and the court system in response to the crisis currently affecting UK criminal justice, with over 77,000 outstanding cases in the Crown Court and some trials being listed for 2029. Part 2, expected to be published later this year, will identify means to improve the overall efficiency of the UK criminal justice system.
This post highlights certain of the Report's recommendations and considers their effectiveness and potential collateral impact.
Background
Leveson cannot be criticised for sugarcoating the current crisis in UK criminal justice:
“… there is a real risk of total system collapse in the near future. That is to say that cases have little or no chance of being brought before the court, victims and witnesses disengage and if they do attend court that would be three or four years later, when they cannot recall specifics. Overall, the criminal justice system would stagnate, open caseloads would continue to increase, agencies would not be able to cope and inefficiency would be the norm. Little or no consequences for lawlessness could lead to a breakdown in law and order and society taking things into their own hands. Every submission and discussion with criminal justice agencies that I have had as part of this Review has confirmed this reality.”
The root causes of the crisis are complex, multifaceted and overlapping. The numerous systems through which criminal justice is delivered – the police, the Crown Prosecution Service, the defence community, the courts, the judiciary, prisons and probation – are each facing enormous challenges.
Leveson identifies a combination of long-term funding and investment constraints (resulting in fewer courts and a smaller and less experienced workforce), disconnects between agencies (each of which has its own budgetary pressures and line of accountability) and the increasing complexity of the criminal law (both its procedures and new forms of evidence such as smart phone data), among other factors, as being key contributors to the mounting delays. However, the Report is clear that neither an increase in funding alone, nor a surge in efficiency, are sufficient to resolve the crisis: a comprehensive overhaul of the criminal procedure and the entire court system is the only solution.
Recommendations
The Report contains 45 recommendations, some of which would require new primary legislation to be enacted. They include:
- Serious and complex fraud cases to be tried by judge alone, removing the right to trial by jury.
- Allowing defendants in the Crown Court to choose to be tried by judge alone.
- Creating a new jury-free division of the Crown Court for all either way offences.
- Removing the right to elect Crown Court trial for less serious offences.
- Removing the automatic right to appeal from the Magistrates to the Crown Court.
- Increasing the maximum reduction in sentence for an early guilty plea to 40%.
- Increasing out of court disposals (cautions, penalty notices, and deferred prosecution schemes) for low-level offending.
Effectiveness and impact
Leveson makes the point that very few of the recommendations put forward in the Report are new; many have been identified and proposed on various occasions over recent decades. Indeed, distinguishing between more and less serious offending, and conferring the right to a jury trial on the former but not the latter, is a pre-existing and long-standing feature of the UK justice system.
An exhaustive analysis of each of the recommendations falls outside the scope of this post but the recommendations prompt a number of questions requiring further debate and analysis, including:
- What analysis underpins the assumption that jury trials of serious and complex fraud cases are a leading contributor to the criminal case backlog?
- What analysis underpins the assumption that the presence of a jury is the primary reason why serious and complex fraud trials now take so long?
- How much quicker are judge only serious and complex fraud trials anticipated to be?
- Has thought been given to the impact of replacing a jury's understanding with a judge's understanding of the standards of ordinary decent people when concluding on dishonesty in fraud cases?
- Have each of the other common law countries referenced in the Report (Australia, Canada, and New Zealand) removed completely the right to trial by jury for cases of serious and complex fraud? Or is the defendant's consent to a judge only trial still required in some cases? And have those other jurisdictions experienced a reduction in criminal case backlogs following the introduction of certain judge only trials?
- How might an increase in the maximum reduction in sentence for an early guilty plea to 40% impact on the maximum fine discount available to companies entering into Deferred Prosecution Agreements? The approach in the DPAs agreed to date has been to offer a maximum 50% corporate fine discount. Would there remain sufficient financial incentive for companies to enter a DPA with only a 10% additional discount on offer compared to a guilty plea?
Conclusion
Leveson must be applauded for identifying and documenting so clearly the current dire state of the UK criminal justice system and the root causes of the crisis. The overwhelming majority of the Report's recommendations are well thought through and offer at least part of the solution to the problems faced, namely the obscene backlog of open criminal cases. An outlier among these, however, is the proposal to remove the right (to even elect) a jury trial for cases of serious and complex fraud, which is predicated on anecdotal rather than empirical evidence and the answer to a different problem.
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