The justice system's problems are not just about money

The justice system is under visible strain. Crown Court backlogs stand at over 80,000 cases. A record 330,000 tribunal cases were open in early 2026. Since 2010, over 300 magistrates' court sites have closed and Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (LASPO) reforms have significantly reduced the scope for legal aid, and the number of providers. Prisons are almost at full capacity, with high levels of violence. These are not abstract statistics: they represent real delays, unresolved disputes, and people left further away from services they may need.

When performance falls short, our first instinct is usually to look at the budget. And the budget does matter. Ministry of Justice day-to-day spending fell 33% in real terms between 2007-08 and 2016-17, compared with a 3% reduction across all departments. Spending per person remains around 17% below its 2002-03 level. Spending has recovered somewhat in recent years, though delivering on the scale of reform needed across backlogs, prison capacity and access to justice remains a significant challenge.

But new research from the IFS Transforming Justice programme finds that budget alone will not fix the system's problems. Across policing, courts, prisons and legal aid, how resources are used, where they are located, and what pressures arrive from outside the system are all important determinants of performance. This means that higher spending, without attention to how resources are used, may not translate into better outcomes.

Take the Crown Court backlog. Sitting days rose 32% between 2019 and 2024, yet case closures (disposals) increased by only 20%. Had pre-pandemic productivity been maintained, even when adjusting for changes in the complexity of caseloads, the backlog could almost have been cleared by the end of 2024, without additional resources. This shows that investing in more court time alone has done little to clear the backlog. Doing so requires every part of the system to be working effectively together: judges, barristers, court staff, prison transport and case preparation.

The same is true when we look at management more broadly. In the Metropolitan Police, the effectiveness of individual borough commanders accounts for around a quarter of the variation in policing productivity across London divisions. In prisons, independent inspections by HM Inspectorate of Prisons reduced violence by around 12 incidents per 1,000 prisoners per month over the 15 months following inspection, without any increase in staffing or expenditure. In other words, good leadership and management can deliver real improvements even when additional resources are not on the table.

Where services are located, and who can reach them, is another important dimension of how the justice system performs. Magistrates' court closures have more than doubled the average distance to the nearest court for many communities. Police station closures increased violent crime in surrounding areas by around 9%, a rise that the evidence suggests could have been avoided had different stations been selected for closure. And funding changes in legal aid have reshaped where private providers operate, leaving 12% of local authorities with no active civil legal aid provider. Behind these changes lies a pattern of uneven geographic impact that deserves closer attention.

A further dimension concerns pressures that originate entirely outside the justice system. Several pressures are driving tribunal backlogs: disability and social security cases make up the largest share, while SEND and asylum and immigration appeals have seen the sharpest recent increases. Youth club closures following cuts to youth services raised offending in their vicinity by around 14%. Evidence from Sure Start suggests that early years interventions can reduce more serious offending later in life. More broadly, decisions made in other parts of government, often years earlier, shape the demands placed on the justice system. The introduction of mandatory reconsideration by DWP shows this clearly: designed to resolve more disputes before they reached tribunals, it directly reshaped the flow of cases into the system.

Funding matters, and the cuts of the 2010s had a significant and lasting impact on the system. But it is not the full story. The evidence base being built as part of the IFS Transforming Justice programme suggests that better use of existing resources, more efficient allocation of services across geography, and a clearer understanding of how other departments affect justice outcomes could all make a material difference. The question is not only whether the justice system is adequately funded, but whether the resources it has are being used as well as they could be, and whether the pressures it faces are being understood and addressed at their source.

This article was first published by Civil Service World, and is reproduced here with kind permission.