Body reviewing miscarriages of justice struggles to deal with rising number of cases amid budget cuts

Year-on-year decreases in funding for the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), which reviews the cases of people fighting miscarriages of justice, has been criticised following a sharp rise in the number of applications received by the body.

Shadow Justice Secretary Richard Burgon has said that increasing caseloads and the long-term decline of government funding have had a detrimental effect on the CCRC’s ability to fairly and effectively review the cases of people who believe they have been wrongly convicted. As The Guardian reports, the CCRC’s budget in 2003 was £7 million, but in 2017 it was just £5.6 million – a cut that appears even more swingeing when inflation is factored in.

The CCRC is also having to deal with more cases than in 2003, when it received 885 applications. In 2017, the number of applications had risen to 1,439 – an increase not helped by cuts to legal aid which, according for the Centre for Criminal Appeals, tend to favour the prosecution, making wrongful convictions more likely.

Richard Foster, chair of the CCRC, said: “Numbers of application have risen considerably in recent years. Money is tight. For every £10 the commission had to spend per case 10 years ago, we have about £4 today.”

Justice Minister Edward Argar defended the government’s policy of reducing the CCRC’s budget over the long term. He said: “In my view, the CCRC is sufficiently funded for the work that it does.”

The Ministry of Justice’s budget has been cut more than any other government department’s during the austerity era – it has lost 40% of its funding since 2010.