Despite the positive news about a potential vaccine for COVID-19 it remains likely that we will continue to live with the virus for some time to come.

Some sectors have done well to cope with the ‘new normal’ but it is time to face up to the fact that our courts are at breaking point and the Ministry of Justice has failed.

There is a backlog of nearly 50,000 cases and the number of prisoners who are either awaiting trial or sentencing has increased by 28% in the past year alone.

In truth this is only an exacerbation of pre-existing problems with the justice system. Just as the pandemic has tipped some struggling High Street shops over the edge the courts have been limping along since way before anyone had even heard of the coronavirus.

The reasons are both practical and structural as a lack of investment and capacity is combined with an increased determination from the government to imprison people for non-violent crimes.

Furthermore the successive attacks on legal aid are also starting to bear consequences as smaller firms can no longer afford to do that type of work when the backlog means they don’t know when they will get paid. When cases are being listed in 2022 that long-term uncertainty does not represent a promising business model.

One recent study has suggested that unless the backlog is properly addressed the number of serious pending cases could reach as many as 195,000 by 2024. Custody time limits have already been extended from six months to eight months but when your approach to a problem is to keep people who have not been found guilty locked up for even longer it only demonstrates how weak a grasp you have on things. Of course that solution also only pushes the problem further down the line because it is not as if the prison system is itself in the best of shape right now either.

The consequences are stark and paint a bleak picture for the future. A bare-bones legal aid system; trial dates that are not months but years away; guilty pleas being entered because it offers a better chance of getting out of prison than waiting for a fair trial; all of this undermines faith in the justice system and the rule of law.

It’s hard to adapt to a ‘new normal’ when the old normal was already such a struggle.