Earlier this week (2.12.25), the Lord Chancellor announced radical plans to tackle the growing backlog of cases waiting to be heard in the Crown Court – the part of the English and Welsh criminal justice system which deals with the most serious crimes. Those plans include retaining juries in murder, manslaughter and rape trials, but removing them in cases in which a guilty verdict would carry a sentence of less than three years.
We are aware of the strength of feeling around this announcement. The vast majority of criminal cases in England & Wales are already progressed in Magistrates’ courts, without juries. However, for some types of trial, juries can play an important role in our justice system. They allow for a diverse range of perspectives and life experiences to be brought to decision-making, which is important when it comes to discrimination - in particular racial biases - and many believe they can safeguard against judicial over-reach.
Balanced against this, however, is that the current system is failing rape and sexual abuse survivors, and doing so profoundly:
- The Crown Court backlog is increasing every month, with over 13,000 sexual offence cases currently waiting to be heard.
- 17% of all cases in the backlog are currently sexual offence cases.
- A third of all rape trials are postponed at least once, with some delayed six times or more.
- 1 in 5 (20%) adult rape survivors withdraw support for a case after charge, with many citing the backlogs as the direct reason for doing so.
Sexual violence survivors wait longer for a trial than victim-survivors of any other offence type. And every year, Rape Crisis England & Wales and our member centres speak to thousands of women whose experience of the criminal justice system is anything but fair, safe, or just. They repeatedly and consistently tell us that the torment, distress, and disruption caused by delays, cancellations, and a myriad of other factors both retraumatises them and undermines their confidence in the criminal justice system. As one survivor told us: “I wish I’d never bothered.”
Not only is our current system harming those survivors who do seek criminal justice, but it is also deterring others from coming forward at all. For thousands upon thousands of women and girls who have been raped, abused, and exploited, engaging with the criminal justice system in its current state just is not an option. This is a reality we cannot afford to ignore, and which forms the basis of our current thinking and approach.
Rape Crisis England & Wales believe that change is not only required, but urgent, when it comes to the experiences and treatment of rape and sexual abuse survivors, particularly when it comes to Crown Court backlogs. To address this, and understand better what might help, we recommended government explore the possibility of piloting juryless trials for rape and sexual offence trials – see our 2023 Breaking Point and 2025 Living in Limbo reports for more detail. Our recommendations were based on several factors, all aimed at ending the systemic re-traumatisation of survivors:
- Addressing the backlog crisis: Ministry of Justice research suggests juryless trials would use 20% less court time, freeing up much-needed time and space to hear the nearly 80,000 delayed cases awaiting trial – a number that is projected to hit 100,000 by 2028.
- Improving survivor experience: Our adversarial justice system encourages a performance between two opposing legal advocates, who must persuade a jury to take their “side” in the case. To do so, defence barristers often employ entirely inappropriate strategies, deliberately deploying and drawing on rape myths and stereotypes, and using survivors’ third-party material and previous disclosures of abuse to undermine their credibility. These experiences are devastating for survivors, and render our justice system unfair, off-putting, and ineffective. We believe that judges who hear these cases regularly and are familiar with the range of tactics employed by defence barristers, may be less susceptible and more able to disregard them than juries are, particularly if they are trained to spot the tactics used to undermine survivors’ credibility.
- Transparency and learning: Juries deliver either guilty or not guilty verdicts, with no accompanying rationale to support their decision. Judges, or panels of judges, will (as we understand) be required to provide explanations for their verdicts, which can then be scrutinised and potentially challenged. Increasing transparency has been shown to facilitate vital learning about how and why cases are falling down, increase scrutiny and accountability, enabling the Crown Prosecution Service to address these issues in future prosecutions.
- Increasing public confidence in the justice system: As the situation for sexual violence survivors continues to deteriorate within the Crown Court, the collateral damage to other survivors – and the general public – also steadily worsens. In the year ending March 2025, the police recorded 71,667 rape offences. Less than 3% of cases in the same year resulted in a charge – let alone a conviction. A rape survivor in London would today be told that her trial date will be listed (but is not guaranteed to be heard) in 2029/2030.
The current situation is intolerable for survivors and directly undermines our justice system. It means that survivors of rape and sexual abuse must live in limbo, with the possibility of a trial hanging over them for years on end, and no certainty about when or if it will proceed. It is no wonder that 85% choose not to report what has happened to them, and that perpetrators continue to act with impunity, often making use of excessive wait times to continue their abuse and intimidate their victims.
It was – and remains - our firm belief that our justice system must be reformed in order to apprehend and punish rapists, and to end the harms to those who try to use it. We do not think anything less than bold change will achieve that.
A pilot of juryless sexual offence trials is one of a set of recommendations we have made with the aim of building an evidence base and understanding of what might work to address the current failings. Our most recent Living in Limbo report also supported the recommendations made in sections 30–34 and 43–45 in Part 1 of Sir Brian Leveson’s Independent Review of the Criminal Courts. These are for certain cases with likely sentences of less than three years to be heard by a newly formed Crown Court Bench Division, where a judge would sit on a panel alongside two magistrates without a jury. For certain complex and lengthy fraud trials, Sir Brian recommended that a single judge hear the case.
Yesterday’s announcement is at odds with our recommendations, and almost the direct opposite: not a pilot, but a full roll-out of jury removal in some cases; not the use of panels, but single judges; and no change to the use of juries in rape trials and most sexual offence trials. Nevertheless, and whilst we agree that the need for juries has not, of itself, caused the backlog of cases in the Crown Court, we think that removing them in some cases may well be part of the solution.
This is not, however, to say that this measure will constitute a panacea. Indeed, our 2023 and 2025 reports make clear that the issues causing and contributing to the Crown Court backlogs are numerous and interlinked (our Living in Limbo report made 16 system-wide recommendations for change). This means they cannot be tackled in isolation; it is the whole system that must be reformed. Changing practices in some areas may well cause challenges elsewhere, and survivor welfare should be prioritised in the conception and implementation of any and all reforms.
Alongside yesterday’s announcement regarding jury trials, the government also committed to:
- Up to £34 million additional funding for criminal legal aid advocates each year.
- Match funding pupillages to increase the number, and diversity, of criminal barristers.
- A £92 million per year boost in funding for criminal solicitors.
- A £550 million investment in vital victim-survivor support services over the next two years.
- A commitment to continue to increase court sitting days during this parliament.
RCEW have campaigned for changes to the criminal justice system for decades, and we are pleased to see that the government is now taking our calls to action seriously. These announcements show a clear commitment to tackling the issues in the Crown Court from several necessary angles, and align with many of the recommendations of our 2025 report.
That said, we still need to see further action to tackle the working conditions and capacity of the criminal legal profession, as well as improvements to judicial capacity, serious investment in the court estate, and urgent improvements to listing practices.
RCEW and our members are also keen to understand, in the context of removing juries from some trials, some key issues:
- Judicial diversity: The judiciary does not currently reflect the diversity of rape and sexual abuse complainants and defendants. What might the proposed changes mean for marginalised individuals seeking justice and how will justifiable concerns about this be addressed?
- Training and bias: What training will judges receive on unconscious bias, sexual violence and abuse including rape myths and stereotypes, trauma informed practice, and perpetrator accountability?
- Concentration of power: How might this move, which will increase the power of a few judges rather than members of the public, contribute to current efforts to scale back and/or repeal the Human Rights Act and protest rights?
- Public trust: How will the removal of juries affect confidence in the justice system among the public and how will this be mitigated?
- Hierarchy of sexual offences: Creating a divide where rape and “serious” offences go before juries, while “lesser” offences go before judges, risks a two-tier justice system, which could undermine the forthcoming government VAWG strategy and the recent CPS VAWG strategy, which stipulates a commitment to recognising the links between rape and 'lesser' sexual offences?
- Departure from Sir Leveson’s recommendations: Why has Sir Leveson’s suggestion of a Crown Court Bench been rejected in favour of single judges?
It will be vitally important for government to consult closely with the organisations representing and working with women and girls and survivors of rape and sexual abuse as part of their consultation on this topic, and Rape Crisis England & Wales look forward to supporting that process.
Survivors deserve timely justice. They deserve a system that works for them. The current system falls far short of delivering this and is in many cases actively harming survivors. Bold action is needed. But bold action must also be fair, transparent, and accountable.