Third of remand prisoners in England being held beyond legal time limit for trials

By LE Desk

London, March 17: More than 3,600 people – almost a third of England’s remand prison population – have been held beyond the legal time limit awaiting trials as the pandemic wreaks havoc on the legal process, the Guardian reported.

The scale of the backlog has prompted calls for more remand prisoners to be released immediately. Some prisoners have been pleading guilty purely to avoid lengthy pre-trial detention.

The figures were revealed in data provided under the Freedom of Information Act to a campaign group, Fair Trials, which has collected accounts of prisoners struggling with conditions as they await trial.

The issue is expected to be raised in parliament, where the shadow minister for courts and sentencing, Alex Cunningham, has called on the government to rapidly increase the number of temporary “Nightingale” courts.

“It is a national travesty that because of the government’s incompetence, justice is being denied to victims of crime, as well as thousands of people who have not been convicted of any crime but are locked up in prison on remand past the legal time limit – often with no trial date in sight,” he said.

The figures obtained by Fair Trials, a legal charity focusing on improving respect for trial rights in criminal cases, were provided by the Ministry of Justice.

They recorded that 3,608 people had been held for six months or longer as of December 2020, and 2,551 people had been held for eight months or longer.

One prisoner who had been on remand since October 2019, and whose trial date had been put back until September of this year, told of being locked up for 23 hours a day, apart from a shower and half an hour of exercise.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/mar/17/third-of-remand-prisoners-in-england-being-held-beyond-legal-time-limit-for-trials