Shoplifters and drug dealers to avoid court
A government review is expected to recommend that 'out of court resolutions' are used more widely for lower-tier offenders including theft, drug-taking and some public order offences.
The disposals can include cautions, fixed penalty notices, rehabilitation courses, verbal warnings or apologising to victims.
The move is part of a package of measures to help reduce record delays that mean some victims will have to wait until 2029 to see their perpetrators in court.
Sir Brian Leveson, leading the government review, warned that criminal justice was at 'risk of collapse'. He said defendants were exploiting the delays by pleading not guilty in the hope their victims would give up or forget vital evidence.
The former Appeal Court judge will propose increasing the 'discount' for an early guilty plea from one-third to 40 per cent of an offender's sentence.
Coupled with recent plans to allow offenders to serve just one-third of their time, the move would see some criminals serve less than a fifth of their nominal sentence.
The right of defendants to a jury trial will be scaled back to speed up justice and clear a backlog of 77,000 cases waiting to be heard in crown courts.
As The Telegraph previously revealed, Sir Brian will propose a new 'intermediate court', with a judge and two magistrates hearing cases that would have previously gone before a jury in a crown court.
He will recommend complex cases that might last a year or more, such as fraud and cybercrime, should be considered only by a judge.
Magistrates will be given the power to hear offences where previously a defendant could have elected to be tried by a jury.
At present, magistrates can only try offences with a maximum sentence of one year, but this could be increased to two.
Ministers are expected to agree which offences would be heard in which type of court later this year, but Sir Brian is understood to have argued for a radical approach. Even defendants charged with assault causing actual bodily harm would be denied a jury trial.
Thousands of suspects would no longer have the right to put their case to a jury of their peers when tried for offences such as assault of a police officer while resisting arrest, racially aggravated criminal damage, dangerous driving or possessing a class C drug like cannabis.
Sir Brian will also recommend that defendants should have the right to ask for a judge-only trial without a jury.
In the US and Canada defendants have the right to refuse a jury, as they do in New Zealand, where the right is limited to less serious offences that carry a maximum sentences of less than 14 years.
Government sources insisted the plans were only recommendations. 'We will consider all his recommendations over summer and won't respond until autumn,' said a source.
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