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By Elaine Sanderson

The UK criminal justice system has been self-labelled the “envy of the world”. The truth? It’s a system hanging onto stability by a thread. Rising crime, police cuts, court backlogs and a lack of government funding have led to the breakdown of a once effective justice process. In 2018, London’s murder rate overtook New York’s, prison violence and cases of self harm are rising, as is the increase of discrimination throughout. This is far from a system that the world should be jealous of. 

At the forefront of the failings are the police. There are roughly 123,171 officers in England and Wales (devolved powers mean Scotland and Northern Ireland have separate criminal justice systems), as of March 2019. Under Conservative and coalition governments, the number of police officers has fallen between 19,000 and 22,000, which can be universally regarded as a substantial loss. At the end of 2018, it was revealed that only 8% of 5 million crimes were prosecuted. Nick Symonds, current shadow home secretary, said these numbers were no surprise “given the swinging government cuts to both police and Crown Prosecution Service budgets”. Although the rule of law demands justice be separated from politics, this isn’t happening. Budgets that are cut result in fewer resources and subsequently lower prosecution numbers–a type of political intervention that should not be in motion. 

Despite the fact cuts to funding are certainly a key aspect of the collapsing system, further failings, namely discrimination, are equally as prominent. In 1993, 18-year-old Stephen Lawrence was fatally stabbed in a racially motivated attack as he waited for a bus. Surveillance footage prior to the killing showed the group talking about skinning a black man alive. Little was done to secure the identified suspects into custody and arrive at a conviction. In 1997, the Labour government announced a public inquiry into his death, seeking to find out what went wrong. Once published, it concluded that the investigation into the killing was “marred by a combination of professional incompetence, institutional racism and a failure of leadership”. Conclusions like this lead to an erosion of trust between the justice system and the people. 

Many assume that Britain has become a more progressive nation and has moved on from underlying prejudices; this is not the case. While only making up 3% of the British population, in a 2017 report, black people are twice as likely to die in police custody than their white counterparts. Alexandra Wilson, a criminal and family lawyer, was led to issuing a complaint after being mistaken for a defendant three times in one day. As a result, after being flooded with responses from other black and minority ethnic lawyers facing similar scenarios, she called for anti-racism training to be compulsorily enforced. 

The complexity of the criminal justice system and its specialist language present a particular problem for the disabled. Those who lack a clear understanding of what is going on, and the most appropriate way of defending themselves, risk not being able to effectively participate in the legal process. The EHRC (Equality and Human Rights Commission) quotes one woman defendant as saying “I know I’ve done something wrong, but I’m really not quite sure what that was”. This signals a system ignoring its most vulnerable choosing to rest on inequalities. 

On the evening of Aug. 6th, 2011, 300 protestors marched to Tottenham police station. Demonstrators chanted ‘no justice, no peace’ regarding the poor handling of the circumstances surrounding the death of Mark Duggan, who was fatally shot by an officer under Operation Trident (set up in 1998 to tackle gun crime and homicides in London’s Afro-Caribbean communities). Discrepancies around the shooting remain due to disputed expert evidence surrounding whether Duggan had a gun in his hand as he was shot. Demonstrators also made broader demands for justice, seeking to publicize the poor relations between the police and their local communities. This peaceful protest soon became violent, with bottles thrown and fires started. Nationwide riots soon broke out with almost 4,000 arrested. The cost of the clean up was estimated at over £200 million. On day five, the IPCC (Independent Police Complaints Commission) admitted they misled journalists into believing Duggan fired at officers before he was killed. A system that is broken internally is not one that is actively pursuing the protection of people within the society that it’s meant to serve, and the people clearly agree. 

The Crown Prosecution Service has previously said the justice system has “systemic problems”. This statement has only been amplified by complaints against their own service. In 2019, the End Violence Against Women coalition lodged formal proceedings in the High Court against the CPS, stating their internal practices have led to a decrease in the number of defendants charged. Plagued by daily errors and cuts in funding resulting in backlogs, justice is more likely to be denied than served. 

The nation’s domestic security is fragile. Its foundations rest upon a failing system. The general idea of a criminal system is that it takes the most dangerous individual out of society, preventing crime and making communities safe. In reality, we see a system filled with unconscious bias and disproportionality that stretches further than the actions of the police and branching out into the system itself. Police cuts, institutional racism, discrimination, and disarray in the courts ultimately show a criminal justice system settled in the hands of defeat. 

Elaine is a political writer for La Tonique. You can follow Elaine on Twitter @sando_99.