'Let's put that on the back burner' - We all know what goes on the back burner, things that don't matter. In 2020 the entire criminal justice system went on the back burner. The problem is that the criminal justice system really does matters. The other problem is that it went on the back burner long before Covid snuffed out the lamp that shows freedom lives.
I feel that I have spent quite a lot of this year, as have many other barristers, trying to explain the crisis that has befallen our profession and the system which it desperately tries to prop up. I sometimes think that a mistake we make is assuming too much knowledge of the criminal justice system. If you're not a lawyer you won't know the difference between a 1,000, 10,000 and 100,000 page fraud case.
You do however probably know the difference between making toast, cooking spag bol for your mates and the sort of meal you lay on for the woman of your dreams the first time she comes round for dinner. So here is my attempt to render the criminal justice crisis in culinary terms.
Trials, like foods, come in all shapes, sizes and flavours. They also require different levels of preparation. A CCTV based shoplifting is like a pot noodle. Instantly prepared, not something that anyone particularly looks forward to, remembers or cares about and can sit at the back of the cupboard for months on end without going off.
Other cases, involving children or death, require Masterchef levels of skill and experience. And even with that skill and experience if the ingredients go stale the dish will never come good. Witnesses, like ingredients, go off. In a culinary worst case scenario you can poison people with old food gone bad so too can trials gone wrong devastate lives, even end them.
Some cases are like souffles. They don't just require perfect ingredients the timing has to be absolutely precise. Once they pass the point of no return there is no recovery. The other problem that the ongoing court chaos has caused is that almost no barristers have any certainty about what cases they will be doing and when.
Almost all cooks can make an omelette. Very few can make a croquembouche. So it is with barristers and criminal cases. Anyone can handle an ABH. Not everyone can manage an MTIC fraud. The more uncertainty there is in the listing of trials the greater the danger is that at the last minute a carefully chosen barrister will have to give up a case to a newcomer who may not share their speciality.
It's said that too may cooks spoil the broth but that assumes there is at least a way of cooking the broth. At the moment it feels like every barrister in England & Wales is crowded around one 4 ring hob trying to get their pot on the hob. If more courts don't open soon for jury trials we'll all be in a stew.