Peer to Peer: Covid-19 and Transforming Jury Trials in Australia
Halting jury trials in Australia addressed the immediate risk of virus transmission, but set the stage for damaging delays in access to justice. Even before Covid-19, criminal courts across Australia were facing a capacity crisis. A January 2020 report from the Productivity Commission found that 18 per cent of active criminal cases in supreme, district and county courts across Australia had been pending for over 12 months, almost twice the national benchmark of 10 per cent.1
Productivity Commission figures released in early 2021 show the number of pending criminal cases exceeding that benchmark has jumped by almost nine per cent in one year.2 In the County Court of Victoria, pending criminal cases rose by over 750 between March 2020 and June 2021. In NSW, the state’s Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research recorded only 364 finalised jury trials between April 2020 and March 2021, down from over 700 in previous years.
The impacts of these delays will reverberate for years to come, however people who work in the criminal justice system are already voicing concerns. “Many people have had to wait for their case to be heard, some in prison,” says Felicity Gerry QC, a professor at Deakin University and practicing barrister.
Peter Rolfe, who provides advice to victims of crime and their families through his group Support After Murder, says the delays are making a bad situation worse for the people he works with. “When someone gets murdered, and someone’s finally arrested, people want the trial to go ahead as soon as possible,” he says. Others have raised concerns that the delays may cause some cases to collapse, as the quality of evidence can decline over time.
A January 2020 report from the Productivity Commission found that 18 per cent of active criminal cases… had been pending for over 12 months
Most states recommenced jury trials in either June or July 2020, once the
