Research

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CAREER CRIMINALS

    • From 2000-2021 10% of offenders (over half a million offenders across two decades) committed at least 16 offences and these offenders accounted for half of all crimes

    • Theft offences are disproportionately committed by a small number of career criminals. For every 2 offenders with no prior convictions or cautions who are sent to prison for theft, there are 73 offenders with at least 15 previous convictions.

    • Around a third of all knife crime results from repeat offenders (the highest since records began in 2014), whilst a third of all knife possessions result from repeat knife possession offenders

But the state is failing to act – and these career criminals are repeatedly avoid prison:

From 2007-2018:

  • Over 200,000 offenders avoided jail despite having 25 previous convictions;
  • 32,000 avoided jail despite having over 50 previous convictions;
  • 2,450 avoided jail despite over 100 previous convictions

The courts are becoming more more lax on career criminals. Since 2018, there have been 50,000 cases of career criminals, with over 50 previous convictions, avoiding jail. In 2023, career criminals with more than 50 previous convictions are five times as likely to avoid jail as they were in 2007.

Failure to imprison these career criminals leaves British streets increasingly dangerous. When in prison, career criminals are unable to put the wider public at risk. When just seven members of a bike theft gang in the City of London were arrested and imprisoned in 2020, the number of bike thefts in the City of London fell by 90%. In addition, when the focussed efforts of police in Hemel Hempstead culminated in the arrests of several career criminals, police reports in the area declined by 72%. The same phenomenon was observed when Barnsley police arrested 7 prolific burglars which resulted in a 64% reduction in the number of homes burgled in Goldthorpe over a 6 month period. The most prolific phone thief in London is likely responsible for thousands of phone thefts a year, and is likely personally responsible for >1% of all phone thefts in London.

Similarly, in New York, nearly a third of all shoplifting arrests in 2022 involved just 327 people. Collectively, these people were arrested more than 6000 times. A study of Sweden’s multi-generational register found that 1% of the total population were responsible for 63% of violent crime (3+ violent crime convictions per criminal), and 0.1% were responsible for 19.8% of violent crime (11+ violent crime convictions per criminal). 

In Britain, these career criminals are driving up the cost of living, terrorising our streets and consistently avoiding prison. If these individuals were imprisoned for their offences for commensurate lengths of time, Britain could essentially eradicate a vast swathe of crime overnight. Our streets would be safer, and crime would no longer pay. 

We must change direction to crush the growth in multiple crimes that are spreading like an epidemic across Britain:

    • Phone thefts have increased 150%; with 78,000 cases of phone or bag snatch thefts in 2023. Robbery has increased by nearly 10%.

    • Shoplifting has increased by at least 30% year on year (but rates of reporting in shoplifting are suspected to be extremely low thus the number is likely much higher), leading to supermarkets introducing security mesh over products, security boxes on chocolate, robot cameras patrolling the aisles and installing 4ft smoke machines to deter criminals at night.

    • Three murders or major sex crimes are committed every week by offenders on probation

CRUSH CRIME DEMANDS:

Catching Career Criminals

Train police in binary search. Trawling through hours of CCTV footage is a waste of police time when binary search can be used to locate the key information in the footage with a fraction of the labour.

Establish a CCTV repository. Allow members of the public to submit recordings captured by their CCTV equipment to a police database which can be used to gather evidence during investigations. The current system for how police handle victims’ videos is a legal and operational mess. 

Instruct judges to give greater discretion under RIPA to authorise police investigations. Police should be granted RIPA authorisation to investigate and pursue career criminals. This includes the wider use of surveillance and GPS tracking when tracking stolen goods.

Use Operation Cross as a template to dramatically reduce crime in an area. Through a combination of the identification of crime hotspots, patrols (plain clothes and high-visibility), collaboration with the local community, the use of Stop and Search powers (PACE 1984), and forced entry to buildings storing stolen goods, police in Hemel Hempstead reduced reports of crime by 72%. Encourage police to tactically use the entire array of powers afforded to them in this manner to apprehend career criminals.

Prioritise and Increase the budget for investigations of theft offences. The average budget for a ‘theft from the person’ offence is £40. Over 90% of phone theft investigations by the Metropolitan Police are closed without a suspect identified. As thefts are the most common type of crime committed by career offenders, a successful theft investigation is likely to have the downstream effect of preventing a huge number of future thefts. Conduct sustained investigations propelled by sting operations akin to the City of London investigation which resulted in the arrests of several members of a bike theft gang, subsequently reducing the number of reports of bike theft from 68 in August 2020 to 7 in January 2021.

Swift Justice for First Time Offenders

Fast, efficient sentences for first time offenders. The faster the feedback loop, the fewer individuals commit crimes – the better our system acts as a deterrent, and shows would-be criminals that police can and will act. More first-time offences must be dealt with, at high priority by the courts, with the least serious resulting in a first time non-custodial sentence – allowing for extreme speed, discouraging future criminality before it becomes career and giving police the power to bring individuals to court, to face community sentences and fines at pace, for first time offences.

Convicting Career Criminals

Amend sentencing guidelines to make clear the more offences a criminal commits, the longer they should stay in prison. Immediate, simple reforms to the sentencing guidelines would see career criminals reflected in sentencing. Replacing language discouraging prison, sentencing guidelines must change to reflect the societal cost of career criminals, as well as the good of imprisonment as a means to limit this cost and damage, and to prevent further criminality from career criminals. This could be passed with the stroke of a pen, and give judges the power to imprison career criminals at speed.

Legislative change. Government must ensure that each subsequent offence results in a proportionally longer sentence. Judges shall be permitted discretion but the direction of judgements must be made clear: repeat offences increase the time to be served, and the more serious a pattern of behaviour – or the more widespread – the more sentences must compound. More crimes must mean more time.

Swift Justice

The CRUSH CRIME campaign today demands the government act to CRUSH the growing backlog of cases languishing in our court system:

  • The court system is broken. Rape victims have to wait 2-3 years, sometimes more, for a trial and there’s roughly 3,000 rape cases stuck in a backlog. Longer delays mean more trials collapse and more violent criminals walk free. The total crown court backlog is 70,000 and growing. Cases awaiting trial for over a year have increased by 800% and those awaiting trial for over two years have tripled. The length of Crown Court trials has doubled. 
  • The system is so broken it’s starting to schedule cases for 2028, four years away. Soon cases will be scheduled for after the NEXT election. DNA is being lost by being stored in faulty freezes alongside officers’ packed lunches. 
  • The committee tasked from the previous government to address delays did not meet for two years. The current government has made no attempts to address the backlog, even as it grows by 500 cases a month.
  • The broken system and lack of seriousness from both parties means more rape and abuse victims say they do not report attacks in the first place.
  • We need more courts, 24/7 courts, faster courts to CRUSH the backlog and give victims the swift justice they deserve.

Victims of rape, abuse and violence are suffering from appalling court delays 

Britain’s court system is close to standstill with cases languishing for years, forcing victims to undertake prolonged, unnecessary stress and turmoil, awaiting justice and closure. The backlogs are getting worse. There is no plan to change this.

  • Since 2019, cases awaiting trial for a year have increased by 800%, and those awaiting trial for over two years have tripled. Consequently, a third of all cases within the court system are over a year old.
  • In 2023 Crown Court cases now take double the time to reach an outcome as they did in 2019 – from an average time of under six months, to an average of almost a year for 2023.
  • This trend is worsening over time. Cases were more delayed in 2022 than in 2019 and cases in 2023 took 30% longer to complete than in 2022.
  • Delays start in police investigations with DNA evidence repeatedly stored in faulty freezes and fridges, damaging evidence and letting the worst criminals run free – the scale of which is not yet known. Police scans of phones or computers have a backlog of 25,000 devices. Because of this, victims have had to wait up to 18 months to have their phone returned.
  • In some instances, delays in cases result in prolific repeat offenders avoiding custodial sentences. One judge called a defendant with 44 previous offences ‘a lucky man’, stating ‘if you had come to court in late 2017, as you should have been, I would have sent you to prison.’ The defendant instead received a 12-month community order

These delays are not mere inconveniences. Victims of crimes are forced to suffer twice: once for the horrific crimes they have suffered, and again through the uncertainty and stress inflicted by these delays and the knowledge that delays increase the chances of their attacker walking free.

A study of rape victims found that survivors of sexual offences list delays as their primary concern while awaiting trial. There is an average wait of 839 days from report to completion in court for a rape or serious sexual offence. As a result, victims are suffering significant mental anguish, there have been increased suicide attempts by victims and families are unable to obtain closure from the courts. Consequently, victims have a lack of confidence in the justice system with 5 in 6 women and 4 in 5 men who are raped choosing to not report to the police.

MORE DELAYS, MORE CRIMINALS WALK FREE

Delays also weaken the probability of justice for victims. The longer a delay, the higher the likelihood that victims and witnesses withdraw from the trial, the quality of evidence and testimony weakens, and a greater proportion of defendants plead not guilty. These factors work together: incentive for a guilty defendant to plead not guilty is increased, as the robustness of the evidence against them corrodes, whilst witnesses disappear and victims become overwhelmed with stress.

The last government was useless. In 2021 a government committee was tasked with reducing the backlog. Despite making an “Action Plan” in April 2021, the committee did not even meet for two years, from July 2021 to July 2023. Instead, it undertook a “strategic oversight role”. Between 2021 and 2023, the number of cases in the backlog increased from just over 60,000 to nearly 68,000, and the number of cases waiting at least one year for trial increased by over 50% (from 11,350 to 18,045).

CRUSH CRIME DEMANDS:

Crown Courts

Open the courts: Up to 30% of crown courts are shut on any one day and a third of all trials are delayed on day one. Despite the backlog, the Ministry of Justice has cut the number of days courts can open, ensuring they open fewer days this year than last. This must be reversed immediately. Following this, Crown Courts must be instructed to open every day – even without MoJ restrictions, many courts decided not to open all days of the week (being at the discretion of judges).

Extended Hours Crown Courts: Once it is ensured that all Crown Courts are open Monday through Friday, they can be opened on weekends to crush the backlog. Additionally, the Courts Act s.30 should be immediately amended to the following:

“1. The Lord Chancellor may [after consulting the Lord Chief Justice,] give directions as to the places in England and Wales at which magistrates’ and crown courts may sit.

7. The Lord Chancellor may [after consulting the Lord Chief Justice,] give directions as to the days on which and times at which magistrates’ and crown courts may sit.

8. Subject to any directions under subsection (7), the business of magistrates’ and crown courts may be conducted on any day and at any time.”

After which, the government must enact an Additional Crown Courts and Capacity Programme, opening Crown Courts for extended hours. Unsocial hours pay can be offered to lawyers and judges, and increased covering of expenses for jurors, until the backlog is crushed and rape victims can expect a trial within a reasonable period

Nightingale Crown Courts: In the midst of Covid-19, the government enacted an Additional Courts and Capacity Programme, opening multiple Nightingale courts. These courts acted with incredible speed, with the first jury trial taking place in a Nightingale court within 6 weeks of programme start. When prioritised, the government can act and find capacity. The government must immediately enact an Additional Courts and Capacity Programme to establish greater Crown Court capacity and to crush the backlog.

24/7 Magistrates Courts

24/7 Magistrates’ Courts: enact the Additional Courts Protocol. In response to riots earlier this year, the government almost opened courts 24/7, following their successful use in 2011 during the London Riots. The disgraceful court backlog represents another emergency to victims and society. The government must get serious, use s30 of the Courts Act, and enact another Additional Courts Protocol (as they did in 2011) to crush the backlog. Additionally, first-time non-custodial offences should be prioritised and sentences delivered at speed. Career criminals should be the next priority.

Commit to Enforceable Targets for Maximum Trial Times

Following the Human Rights Act requirements for reasonable times for trials, and similarly to the “No Delay Principle” within the Children’s Act 1989 s1(2) –  victims of the worst crimes should expect “no delay” in treatment from the courts. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms s11 (2) ensures crimes are tried within a reasonable time, with specific time limits set in precedent by the Canadian Supreme Court. Government must commit to ensuring that no rape or other serious violent offence should take beyond 12 months from report to end of trial – save in the most exceptional circumstances and personally approved by the Home Secretary.

Publish list of courts acting fastest to crush the backlog: To encourage compliance, a publicly accessible list of court sitting days, and speed of trials across the country (including anonymised police investigations) should be made available to the public – ensuring that the best courts are rewarded, and the worst are held to public account.

Cap on sitting days: From the beginning of 2015 to the end of 2018, the Crown Court backlog was reduced by 22,987 cases (55,923 to 32,936). 2019 was the first year to see Crown Court disposals drop to below 100,000 cases (data available from 2000 – 2023). Disposals remained below 100,000 until Criminal Court Statistics Quarterly stopped being published at the end of 2023. This is unacceptable as the number of cases in the backlog has reached an all time high. The cap on Crown Court sitting days was removed in 2021, and yet the number of actual sitting days did not reach 2015 – 2017 levels. In 2024, the cap was increased to 106,500, which is still below the level of 2015 (when made progress in reducing the backlog). The shock of COVID reduced the ability of the Courts to process cases, but there is now no excuse for worse performance than a decade earlier.

Increase the supply of judges and barristers

The number of Crown Court trials delayed due to a failure for a barrister to be found has increased twenty fold since 2019, and the number of rape trials delayed for this reason has increased ten fold. The majority of prosecutors (64%) said they would not re-register to prosecute such cases, and the majority of defence lawyers (66%) said they no longer wish to be be involved in such cases. 6 in 10 lawyers said they would not do the work due to poor pay. The government should offer all retired judges an opportunity to sit on cases to clear the backlog, and offer tax-free pay for barristers and judges willing to work on Rape and Serious Sexual Offence cases.

Accountability

The Criminal Justice Board Steering Committee (CJB) must explain what they were doing when they did not convene for two years (July 2021 – July 2023). The state of the backlog worsened over this period despite a plan supposedly being implemented to remedy it. In light of this failure, and if our solutions are not adopted, the Government must announce what specific plans they have to combat the growing backlog as a priority.

Taskforce in Number 10

If the Prime Minister is to get serious on crushing crime, the only way to do it in the dysfunctional British state is to create a Taskforce chaired by the PM/Chief of Staff that meets twice a week in No10. It must have the power to shake up teams across Whitehall that cannot deliver and direct a mix of legislative, policy and financial changes including rapid drafting of emergency legislation. Tackling the backlog must become a core priority for the PM’s office, the PM’s PPS, and the PM’s chief of staff.