Defending Trial by Jury
Justice Secretary, David Lammy, has announced plans to drastically reduce the use of jury trials in England and Wales. Under these proposals, only the most serious offences such as murder, rape or manslaughter, will continue to be heard by a jury.
Lammy cites court backlogs as a justification. With a backlog of 78,000 Crown court cases, projected to rise to 100,000 by 2028, the judicial system in England and Wales is indeed on its knees and radical action is needed. But these proposals must also be understood in the context of a wider crackdown on our democratic freedoms.
From the normalisation of mass surveillance, such as facial recognition, to the crackdown on protest and free speech, successive governments have used the criminal legal system to suppress dissent and crackdown on crimes that would be better addressed through investment in community support, poverty alleviation and drug rehabilitation.
Why juries matter
Jury trials are not just a procedural detail, they are the cornerstone of democracy. They enable the public to participate directly in legal proceedings and provide a crucial check on state power. This is particularly important in a context where the judiciary is one of the most elitest professions in Britain. 62% of senior judges were privately educated compared to just 7% of the general population. In this sense, juries bring a vital diversity of lived experience into the courtroom, making justice more representative and accountable.
Lammy, of all people, should know that jury trials must be protected at all costs. His 2017 review found that people from racialised backgrounds were more likely to trust a jury than a magistrate with some electing to be tried at a Crown Court rather than a Magistrate’s Court, despite the risk of higher sentences if found guilty. The Lammy review also noted that: “Successive studies have shown that juries deliver equitable results, regardless of the ethnic make-up of the jury, or of the defendant in question.” Juries protect against institutional failure. Judges form part of the legal system and state infrastructure, so are more likely to accept the police or Crown Prosecution Service narrative at face value. Removing juries removes one of the last public checks on state abuse of power.
Why it matters for our right to protest
Lammy’s proposal comes in a context of successive governments passing aggressive anti-protest legislation, including the Public Order Act; the Policing, Crime, Courts and Sentencing Act and expansions of terrorism law which is increasingly being used to criminalise those involved in protest and direct action.
When protest cases do reach trial, verdicts often hinge on how a jury interprets intention and political meaning. For example, in 2024, a jury acquitted Palestine Action activists for alleged criminal damage arising from a six-day rooftop occupation of Elbit UK, a subsidary of Israel’s largest arms company. The activists argued argued that their actions were justified on the basis of necessity, in order to save the lives of Palestinians, and in order to protect property at immediate risk of drone bombardment in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Similarly, in 2022, a jury acquitted four individuals charged with criminal damage for toppling a statue of slave trader, Edward Colston, in Bristol, 2020. The defendants did not deny their involvement, but argued their actions were justified because the statue was a hateful symbol of oppression, and the city council had failed to remove it despite years of protest.
Under Lammy’s plan, many of these kinds of cases would no longer fall within jury jurisdiction. Protesters would face a single judge, at a time when the state is criminalising dissent on an extraordinary scale. Removing juries threatens to remove one of the few remaining checks on the criminalisation of political expression.
Automated injustice and the erosion of accountability
What makes this attack on juries even more concerning is that it coincides with the government’s increasing reliance on automated technologies, risk assessment tools and algorithmic decision-making in courts and across the wider criminal legal system.
For example, the Ministry of Justice ‘Offender Assessment System’ is a risk assessment tool which the MoJ claims can “predict” people’s risk of reoffending. These scores influence sentencing, rehabilitation access and custody decisions. This tool relies on flawed data which in practice, is used to target low-income and racialised communities who are already over-represented in criminal legal system data sets. This then creates a negative feedback loop, where these so-called “predictions” lead to further over-policing of certain groups and areas, thereby reinforcing and exacerbating the pre-existing discrimination as increasing amounts of data are collected.
This is automated injustice. While human oversight and community participation are rolled back, opaque and unaccountable systems are being expanded. The government and big tech companies market these products as “solutions” that will increase “efficiency” and “innovation.” But, “efficiency” without accuracy and accountability is simply injustice delivered faster and at scale. Wrongful detentions based on biased algorithms not only violate rights, but also waste public funds. Legislation that treats discrimination as an operational gain fundamentally misunderstands both human rights and public safety. Reducing the use of juries while increasing the use of flawed technologies isn’t about efficiency – it’s about control.
There was already a backlog of 40,000 Crown Court cases prior to the pandemic. The root causes of this backlog were long-term political decisions, including the closure of half and sale of one third of courts in England and Wales between 2010-2020, as part of the then Conservative government’s programme of austerity. In addition, we’ve seen cuts to legal aid, resulting in the decline in numbers of criminal barristers and solicitors and the expansion of criminalisation as a way of addressing often complex social problems.
Lammy has justified his decision to scrap juries by the long wait for trial of up to three or four years that rape survivors currently face. But the solution to this is not fewer rights. Trials could be expedited for particularly traumatic cases and there could be investment in targeted interventions and community based support.
Lammy’s justification also leans on a highly misleading statistic, by claiming that 60% of rape survivors drop out because of trial delays. In reality, most withdrawals happen before a case ever reaches court, often due to policing failures and a system that routinely retraumatises survivors. The true withdrawal rate once a case is charged is closer to 8%. Using distorted figures to argue for scrapping juries only obscures the real crisis of a system that often fails survivors of sexual violence, compounded by lacking political vigour in addressing the conditions that produce harm in the first place.
What we must fight for
If the government are serious about justice, rather than removing juries, they should focus on expanding legal aid, banning “crime-predicting” technologies that funnel people into the legal system and investing in trauma-informed community services, stable housing, youth clubs and mental health services. Research by the Ministry of Justice themselves found that these kinds of investments are more successful in reducing crime and reoffending. Real democracy lies in empowering communities, not stripping us of our voice in the courtroom.
