Criminal Justice in Austerity: Legal Aid, Prosecution and the Future of Criminal Legal Practice

This book offers a timely and detailed examination of the reality of criminal legal practice today. Drawing upon extensive anonymous interviews with criminal lawyers in England and Wales, it illuminates how financial pressures arise within the criminal justice system and how lawyers seek to navigate them.

It explores the way the work of criminal lawyers is frequently depicted in the news and media as exciting, well-paid and worthwhile, with prosecutors aiming to convict the guilty and defence lawyers fighting against miscarriages of justice. In contrast, the picture reported by many is of an already creaking and under-resourced system, now exacerbated by fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic. Against this backdrop, the book considers whether the criminal legal aid system really can continue to provide those unable to afford a lawyer with access to justice and whether the Crown Prosecution Service can provide justice to victims of crime.

The book presents detailed findings about the work and experiences of both prosecutors and defence lawyers, how financial pressures influence this and to what extent this has changed with the new ways of working brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic.