According to the Criminal Bar Association, there would be 80,000 criminal cases pending by March 2025.
Those who have experienced sexual assault and rape are among those whose cases are among those with the longest wait times. The Criminal Bar Association states that it often takes them two years from the time of the charge to go to trial.
In their most recent research, Victim Support, a charity, examined cases in which the time elapsed between the police complaint and the initial court hearing was three years or longer in exactly half of the cases.
The wait is making their suffering worse.
However, there’s no assurance that a trial will proceed even once one has been scheduled; survivors frequently told News they would discover the day before, or even the day of, the trial would not be held.
The nonprofit discovered that 47% of the cases it evaluated had been postponed, frequently without cause.
