80 new rape courts

There are 79 Crown Courts in E&W. Half of them only have 2 courtrooms and 2 of the largest are dedicated courts. So, realistically, 38 crown courts could have a dedicated rape courtroom. Each court sits for 43 weeks per year and a contested case takes a week. This works out as 38 x 43 rape trials per year. 1,634 trials! That's it. Some of those trials would have taken place anyway. Not exactly shifting the dial is it?

Short term diversion of personnel to rape trials will only cause worse backlogs in other, equally deserving of justice, areas of the legal system. You don’t improve a crappy system by making bits of it even worse.

While I agree that what is needed long term is investment in CJS infrastructure, I strongly disagree that diverting resources from other crimes would be inappropriate. Rape trials currently take 1/3 as long again than criminal trials in general. Diverting resources to even out that gap is entirely justified. And given the human cost of delay in rape trials, there’s a strong argument that redistribution of resources to favour rape trials over at least some other criminal trials is justified.

You’ve misread. The responses are variations on a theme of “this is an attention grabbing soundbite that does nothing to address the root cause of why there are backlogs in the criminal justice system in the first place, and will not reduce VAWG as claimed”. Try re-reading the posts by@NoWordForFluffy who describes what some of the issues are like for people actually working in the system.

We need long term investment in our infrastructure and people. Short term diversion of personnel to rape trials will only cause worse backlogs in other, equally deserving of justice, areas of the legal system. You don’t improve a crappy system by making bits of it even worse.

I've already answered upthread. Plenty of useful suggestions made on this thread by several other posters that I would generally agree with.

Oh wrong thread sorry!

I truly find it dry when Beer isn't around. It really feels like watching paint dry.

No.... your logic is flawed, if that's the conclusion you are drawing.

FFS, alternatives have been discussed in this thread.

No, Starmer is promising resources that he can't deliver, at least not with the ideas he's suggesting or in the short term. That's the point, not that there's some miracle solution that doesn't require additional resources!

I’m not fedup, but would like to know exactly which issue you are asking about. Long waits for trials? Rape? VAWG in general? Because all of those have been addressed in the thread already, so what else do you want to ask?

See, this is an excellent example of the misinterpretation of what people are saying here. No one on this thread is accepting of long waits for rape trails to get to court. No one here is being patriarchal about this.

It is not a case of Starmer's promises being the only way to address this issue.

What are you wanting to get out of this thread? You don’t appear to want discussion or express a curiosity about other people’s views with a view to deeper understanding.

Your incorrect impression. "Pouring scorn" means making valid knowledgeable criticisms of the details of this proposal, or wanting further clarification before deciding on its worth.

And if you take them from one area of law, there will by definition be a hole in other areas of law. And that's assuming anyone wants to move.

You think a magistrate wants to do rape cases? Aren't they limited to two year sentences?

You really want your rapist and your case to be dealt with by legal executive's? Are there even any legal executive's?

On a side note, wth are legal executive's?

It takes time to train people, if there were masses of judges and barristers languishing around, they will have found other jobs and probably unwilling to come back to court work.

Heard Starmer on the radio earlier at the manifesto saying this idea that the country is flat lining and we can't do anything about it shouldn't be accepted and he won't accept it. It reminded me of many othe attitudes on this thread "It's too hard, we can't fix it"

But that's the opposite of what he's saying, if he says he won't accept a general acceptance that we're flatlining. He's saying he's going to fix it.

"It's too hard, we can't fix it" - don't know who you're quoting there, as not a single poster has said that, or even implied it. It's just your (repeated) accusation, unfounded.