80 new rape courts

[CassieMaddox]

Labour pledging this as part of their manifesto commitment to reduce VAWG.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jun/08/labour-pledges-80-new-courts-in-bid-to-tackle-backlog-crisis

So pleased to see an actual tangible action targeted at something that will help women. I'm looking forward to seeing what else is in their manifesto now.

I've reread the thread. Your answers read to me like variations on a theme of "it's too hard". That's why I was double checking after you said I didn't understand

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.

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.

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?