Justice delayed is justice denied!

God is just and He is a God of justice. He loves righteousness and justice and, by extension, He loves to see justice being done within the nations. ‘When justice is done, it is a joy to the righteous but terror to evildoers’ (Prov. 21:15)

Sadly, in a world broken by sin, injustice is rife. We might naturally think of extreme examples of injustice in the world – women, for instance, oppressed and at risk of death at the hands of Iran’s ‘morality police’. But what of the Western world – particularly in the UK – where we’re at risk of growing levels of injustice within the criminal justice system because of its increasingly parlous state?

The recent industrial action by criminal barristers has brought into sharp relief the pitiful pay of criminal lawyers and the wider impact of years of chronic underfunding of the justice system. This may surprise many readers, but thousands of criminal barristers – mostly self-employed - are working for less than a living wage (many don’t even make enough to cover their expenses). Further, it’s not unusual for a criminal barrister to work and not get paid for that work. Worse still, it’s not unheard of for a criminal barrister to wait years to be paid by the Legal Aid Agency. This is neither fair nor just.