Alleged offenders are spending up to five years in prison awaiting trial

Court backlogs are forcing alleged offenders to spend up to five years in jail awaiting trial and driving innocent people to plead guilty, two prison watchdogs have revealed.

- Rajeev Syal Emily Dugan

Charlie Taylor, the HM chief inspector of prisons in England and Wales, said some of the 17,000 prisoners on remand had waited nearly five years for their cases to come to court.

Adrian Usher, the prisons and probation ombudsman for England and Wales, said inmates waiting lengthy periods for a trial were changing their pleas to guilty after being advised it would mean they could leave jail immediately.

The disclosures are part of a Guardian investigation into the state of the courts system in England and Wales, amid warnings that the backlog in crown courts could hit 100,000 without radical action.

The backlog means one in five prisoners are there on remand awaiting trial: they have been charged with a crime but not yet found guilty, though it is deemed too risky to release them on bail. The remand population of England and Wales has risen 87% since 2019 and stands at a record high.

Those who are eventually found guilty normally have their remand time deducted from their sentence. But those found not guilty get no compensation for time spent in jail, unless their case has been seriously mishandled.

Taylor said he had personally met several prisoners involved in complex cases who were facing four years on remand, and had been told of others waiting up to five years.

"I met a guy in Hewell prison, just south of Birmingham, who'd done three years, and he'd been given a provisional court date of April the next year. So he will have been held for four years before his case is tried It isn't rare," he said.