Judges and criminal defence practitioners have no need to worry about unintended consequences of remote hearings in Crown court cases, a report by the Ministry of Justice suggests.

Publishing the findings of an evaluation of the impact of remote hearings on the Crown court, the Ministry of Justice said yesterday it had found ‘little meaningful differences’ in pleas or outcomes when plea hearings were held remotely rather than in person. 

According to the findings, there was no evidence to suggest holding plea hearings remotely affected the rate of guilty pleas given at or before a plea hearing. There was no evidence to suggest holding plea hearings remotely affected the rate of not guilty pleas and, as a result, the number of trials held.

‘This suggests that there are no wider impacts on the wider justice outcomes when remote hearings are used as current practice standards. These findings may be reassuring to those members of the judiciary who are concerned over unintended consequences of opting for a remote hearing, or to those defendants or legal practitioners who are wary of remote hearings,’ the report states.

A ‘propensity score matching’ approach was used to analyse data from January 2020 to March 2022, matching remote hearings or cases, with at least one remote hearing, with similar in-person hearings or cases.

According to the report, the average duration of a remote hearing was 23.6 minutes – six minutes shorter than a matched in-person hearing. The average duration of a remote plea and trial preparation hearing was 22.1 minutes – around two minutes less than a matched in-person hearing.

Despite remote hearings taking less time, only one in 10 listings officers surveyed for the evaluation listed some types of remote hearings for a shorter time.

‘As the results from this analysis are circulated more widely, shorter listings durations for remote hearings may become more common and help in managing the day-to-day listing pressures in Crown courts,’ the report suggests. 

On average, 5% of 1,700 remote hearings held over the course of a week were adjourned due to problems with the equipment. The rate of adjournments due to technical issues varied by court. Two thirds of courts had no adjournments in the week surveyed whereas one court had to adjourn almost half of all remote hearings. ‘This implies the problem was specific to certain courts rather than a general issue with the remote process,’ the report states.

 

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