Breakthrough on justice data: Legal representation
In February, we reported on a major data gap in our justice system - the lack of statistics on how many people appear in the magistrates’ courts without legal representation.
We’re happy to report that there has been some progress! The topic was raised in Parliament, and in response, the Government provided some preliminary data on the number of people with representation recorded in court.
The Times has reported on the alarming picture painted by the data (£) - and we’re now talking to the Ministry of Justice to find out if they can produce accredited, official statistics, so we can all have a clearer picture of the state of our courts.
Background: understanding the unrepresented - a crucial data gap
As our briefing in February reported, there is a remarkable lack of official data on the number and proportion of defendants who lacked legal representation in the magistrates’ courts in England & Wales.
(Brief side note: magistrates’ courts are different from Crown Courts - magistrates hear less serious criminal cases, but can still send you to prison for up to a year. The Government does publish statistics on representation in the Crown Courts, but not the magistrates’ courts.)
We documented how MPs, researchers and journalists had repeatedly asked the government for better data on the topic - both the size of the issue, and its impact. (Unrepresented defendants often pose problems for the justice system, and 90% of magistrates feel they have a negative impact on the court process.)
Yet we found that the government had consistently failed to provide this data, saying it was “not centrally held”. But our research suggested that it should be possible for the Government to produce this data, because a new court case management system (Common Platform) does record representation status.
What new data do we have?
In July, another request was raised in Parliament. Alex Cunningham MP, the shadow justice minister for courts and sentencing, asked this Parliamentary Question:
“To ask the Secretary of State for Justice… how many and what proportion of defendants have appeared without legal representation in magistrates’ courts where the Common Platform has been used by (a) court and (b) the alleged criminal offence of the defendant in each of the past three years.”
To which Minister Freer replied - with data!
“The total number of defendants whose cases have been handled on Common Platform is 456,597 of which 231,223 had no legal representation recorded on the case. It is important to note that this data includes Single Justice Service Cases.”
He also supplied a spreadsheet which you can find find online. We then spoke to Ministry of Justice civil servants and to experts to help us understand the data correctly. In particular, we looked at:
how representative this data was, given that it only covered Common Platform. We found that by January 2022, Common Platform had been rolled out to approximately 44% of magistrates’ courts, and approximately 73% by January 2023. This suggested it should be a reasonably representative sample for those years.
which offences to focus on: we filtered it to include only ‘imprisonable’ offences, where representation would be especially important for obvious reasons, and ‘summary’ offences (i.e. that don’t go on to Crown Courts, where most defendants will have representation).
You can find our filtered data and notes here. We found that:
In the first half of 2023, nearly half (48%) of defendants appearing in the magistrates’ courts on imprisonable summary offences, or 9,240 defendants, did not have legal representation recorded on their case. This had risen from 35% during 2022.
This included serious offences: 2,944 defendants (41% of the total) charged with assault by beating and 838 (45%) charged with common assault, both of which carry up to 6 months in prison.
It’s important to note that the data we have isn’t official statistics - it’s management (operational) information. Still, it was supplied in response to a question in Parliament, so it’s reasonable to assume it’s reliable.
What has the reaction been?
Speaking to the Times, the president of the Law Society, Lubna Shuja, called the numbers “shocking”, which seems like a fair reaction. And Penelope Gibbs from Transform Justice warns that unrepresented defendants will struggle, because the criminal justice system “is designed for people to have lawyers”.
It’s worrying that the Government has taken so long to share this fundamental information. As Tana Adkin KC, chair of the Criminal Bar Association, told the Times:
“When a ministry with justice in its name does not have any clear data on the number of defendants unrepresented in court, it indicates a fundamental failure in the ministry’s duty to ensure that the criminal justice system works for everyone.”
What now?
We’re calling on the Ministry of Justice to commit to publish official, accredited statistics on representation status in magistrates’ courts, as it already does for Crown Courts. Importantly, this should include demographic breakdowns.
We’re now working with statistics producers to see if this is possible. There’s a way to go yet - but perhaps this is a glimmer of light into the darkness in our magistrates’ courts.
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This research was funded by the Justice Lab, an initiative of the Legal Education Foundation, as part of their programme of research and advocacy to improve the quality and availability of justice system data. We are very grateful for their support. Thanks also to the experts who provided comments on the research, including Transform Justice, JUSTICE and others.
We will be grateful to receive comments and corrections. If you’re interested in this or any of our other work, please get in touch.