Sir Brian Leveson, who famously probed press practices, is to conduct a similar exercise in examining the operation of a criminal courts system ministers claim is in a significant ‘crisis’

A major review of the courts system across England and Wales will include, as one of its two key strands, an examination of how artificial intelligence and other technologies could help improve the justice system.

Justice secretary Shabana Mahmood announced this week that Sir Brian Leveson – the current Investigatory Powers Commissioner and former judge, who led a 2012 inquiry into the UK press after the News International phone hacking scandal – will undertake an assessment of how criminal courts could expedite the hearing of cases. The review is launched as the backlog of Crown Court cases has grown to 73,000 – a figure that has almost doubled in the past five years.

Furthermore, the government believes that “even if the Crown Court were to operate at maximum capacity, the backlog would continue to grow, [and] bold, innovative reforms are therefore the necessary solution”.

Leveson’s review will thus take as one of its two major areas of focus the question of “how the criminal courts could operate more efficiently”, Mahmood said.

“This includes consideration of how new technologies, including artificial intelligence, could be used to improve the criminal courts”, she added.

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The other half of the review will “consider how the criminal courts could be reformed to ensure cases are dealt with proportionately”.

Potential reforms to be examined include the possibility of allowing magistrates to hear a wider range of cases – thereby reducing the need for full jury trials. Leveson will also consider the potential creation of an “intermediate” option between crown and magistrates courts, which might be appropriate “for cases too serious to be heard by a magistrate alone but which could be heard by a judge alongside magistrates”,  the secretary of state said.

Alongside these considerations, the exercise will also ask “whether offenders should be given the right to appeal a magistrate’s sentence, where today they are able to appeal their case in the Crown Court”.

Mahmood claimed that all of this adds up to a singular opportunity to transform the criminal justice system.

“The scale of the crown court crisis inherited by this government is unprecedented. Despite the efforts of judges, lawyers and court staff, we simply cannot continue with the status quo,” she said. “To deliver the government’s bold Plan for Change and make our streets safer, we require once-in-a-generation reform of a courts system stretched to breaking point. In many cases, victims are waiting years to see their perpetrator put before a judge, and we know for many victims, justice delayed is as good as justice denied. We owe it to victims to find bold, innovative approaches that will speed up justice, deliver safer streets and send a clear message to criminals that they will quickly face the consequences of their actions.”