Introduction

As spaces for public gatherings, courts have long had to manage the risk of disease spread. When London's sessions house – more popularly known as the Old Bailey – was redesigned in the 1770s, like many early dedicated court buildings, it was built with avoidance of disease transmission in mind. Jackson (1978) notes the keen awareness among court officials, justices and members of the public of the risk of contracting typhus in the courthouse (this was so common an ailment among prisoners that it was known as ‘gaol fever’). They had good reason to be concerned. In 1750, the disease had ‘killed two judges; the Lord Mayor, several aldermen and some fifty members of the public, including jurymen and spectators’ (Jackson, 1978: 29). Architecturally, the response to the risks posed by physical co-presence in the courtroom was to make these spaces more open and better ventilated, however uncomfortable that made court proceedings in practice.

In striking contrast, the global response to COVID-19 involved the mass closure of criminal courts. Roughly half of the court buildings in England and Wales were closed during Spring 2020 – the start of the first wave of the pandemic in the United Kingdom (UK) – with face-to-face hearings reserved for priority cases and remote hearings held wherever possible (Criminal Justice Joint Inspection, 2021: 8). Even in hearings held face to face, normal service was significantly disrupted, with the public barred from access to proceedings due to the government's ‘stay at home’ order.

This chapter outlines the immediate effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on criminal courts in England and Wales and considers the longer-term opportunities offered by digital transformation of justice processes as well as the challenges in implementing wholesale change. Before that, and by way of introduction, I want to make two preliminary observations that in turn provide the point of departure for this chapter. First, when we look across the various parts of the criminal justice system and their response to the COVID-19 pandemic, it is reasonable to suggest that criminal courts fared especially badly – in the context of England and Wales, at least. This is true, in the first instance, in terms of the agility of the organizational response. Godfrey et al (2021) convincingly argue that the criminal courts were the least innovative and responsive part of the criminal justice system when it came to managing the crisis.