Almost 60,000 arrest warrants were issued for defendants who skipped court in England and Wales last year, up nearly 50% since 2020 in further evidence of the “horror show” in the criminal justice system. The figures, obtained in an investigation by Channel 4’s Dispatches to air on Friday, also show that more than 30,000 failure-to-appear warrants are outstanding, meaning that tens of thousands of criminals could be on the run after being charged.
It is unclear how many have more than one warrant to their name. More than 7,000 of the outstanding warrants were issued before 2020, meaning the subjects have been on the run for six or more years, and more than a quarter relate to people accused of category A offences – the most serious and complex cases including crimes such as rape, armed robbery and manslaughter.
The former justice secretary Alex Chalk KC said: “The real question is whether the situation is recoverable at all. Delay is toxic.
Every prosecutor knows it gives defendants more opportunity to disappear. That’s why this is a horror show.
“If you’re a defendant and you’ve been accused of a really appalling, serious crime, say rape and you are told that your trial is not going to take place for three years, you might think: ‘Well, you know what? If I hang around, she’s going to get bored.’ So you might just go to Thailand.” The number of rape victims pulling out of prosecutions before trial has more than doubled in recent years amid record delays in the courts system.