Victims Must Not Be an Afterthought

Justice cannot be modernised without centring those most affected by its failures

By Jade Blue

This week, the justice debate has felt split in two.

On one side, the numbers. Thousands of Crown Court trials are listed for 2028 and beyond. Rape cases are pushed years into the future. People are told to wait four or five years just to have their case heard.

On the other, the reality behind those numbers. In The Times, women spoke about cancelled trials, last-minute adjournments, and meeting their barrister moments before giving evidence. About trauma that didn’t end with the offence, but was stretched out by the delay. About feeling like they were the least important person in a process built around their case.

And then there is the reform debate.

The Bar Council has welcomed unlimited sitting days - a necessary and overdue step - while continuing to oppose changes to jury trials, citing constitutional principle and risk.

In The Spectator, Danny Shaw warns that lawyers’ voices risk dominating the reform conversation, potentially outweighing those of victims.

That point deserves reflection.

While tradition and constitutional safeguards are passionately defended, the human cost of delay is not always given the same weight.

This is not universal. Claire Waxman, Sarah Sackman, and Alex Davies-Jones have been clear: delay is harming people. It is affecting mental health, work, housing, and relationships. It is retraumatising. It is exhausting.

But much of the louder commentary still circles structure - juries, thresholds, legal heritage - rather than what it feels like to live inside a case for half a decade.

Four years is not just a statistic. It is birthdays missed. Jobs lost. Therapy extended. Lives paused.

When we debate reform, the question cannot simply be: Does this protect tradition?

It must also be: Does this reduce harm?

Will it mean fewer last-minute collapses?
Fewer retraumatising experiences in court?
Fewer people feeling silenced by the very system meant to hear them?

Justice reform cannot be a closed conversation between the government and the legal profession. Victims are not observers in this debate - they are the ones living its consequences.

Efficiency matters. Principle matters.
But so does humanity.

You can redesign the process, but if the harm stays, so does the failure. Reform will only succeed if it is judged not just by backlog figures or constitutional purity - but by whether people come out of the process less damaged than they went in.

That is the measure that matters.

Justice is not only about principle. It is about people.

Our voices are not noise - they are momentum.