Accused criminals face longer waits for justice

A rise in the number of people arrested in NSW has led to a blowout in the time matters take to go before the courts with the median time for a case to be finalised in the District Court now at close to two years.

Data released by the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research on Tuesday shows that since 2013 the number of men appearing in court on criminal charges increased by 15 per cent. The number of women on criminal charges was up 25 per cent.

Of the 141,024 defendants before the state's criminal courts in 2017, 90 per cent were found guilty of at least one charge. The growth in convictions has been primarily for traffic and drug offences and for breaching court orders.

The figures reveal that the median waiting time for trials in the state's court system had also increased. The median time between being arrested and a case being finalised for matters proceeding to trial at the District Court level is now at 716 days.

Bureau director Dr Don Weatherburn said that many face an even longer wait for justice.

"There would be an awful lot of cases where it is a lot longer. There is no doubt that the justice system is highly stressed," he said.

The consequences of these lengthy waits include increased court delays and a larger prison population.

"Innocent people are kept in custody waiting for their acquittal. Some, even if found guilty of the offence, won't end up getting a custodial sentence," Dr Weatherburn said.

"On the flip side, the longer it takes to bring a person to court, the weaker the evidence is. It's inherently bad to have long delays. The worst of it is in the District Court, where the time from arrest to finalisation is 716 days."

At a Local Court level the time from arrest to case finalisation had blown out by 18 per cent from 169 days to 199 for defended cases in the five years to 2017.

In 2017, the NSW criminal courts dealt with 3023 more defendants than the year prior - 21,000 more defendants than in 2013.

"The number of people being brought before the criminal courts has gone up quite significantly. This is a case of spending money on front-line policing, but having no flow-on funding," Dr Weatherburn said.

The report comes as the Premier Gladys Berejiklian announced an additional $220 million funding for front-line policing.

Dr Weatherburn said the impact that funding would have on the justice system wasn't clear cut.

"It all depends on what those police do. The rate of arrest per officers has been declining slowly.

"In 2001/2, there were 17 arrests per officer per year. That's down to 14.1 arrests per officer. You can appoint more officers with more funding, but it doesn't automatically mean more arrests."

In May 2017, the state government announced sentencing reviews that would see a Local Court defendant receive a 25 per cent discount on their sentence in exchange for a pre-committal guilty plea.

Pleading guilty in the District or Supreme Courts up to a fortnight ahead of trial will guarantee a 10 per cent discount, while early guilty pleas in any other circumstances will result in a 5 per cent discount on sentence.

"These reforms are trying to deal with the problem, but sooner or later you'll have to appoint more judges and build more jails," he said.