Abstract
Criminal Justice Reform in India is at a critical crossroads, with rising case backlogs, overcrowded prisons, and delays that undermine fair trial rights. Drawing insights from the United Kingdom’s current criminal justice crisis—particularly in sentencing guidelines, jury trial reforms, and remand population management—this article highlights key lessons relevant to India’s legal future.
By comparing structural challenges, political pressures, and the balance between judicial independence and accountability, the analysis encourages Indian law students to engage with systemic reforms rather than accept delays and inefficiencies as inevitable. Strengthening courts, improving trial design, and ensuring humane incarceration policies are essential for a more effective, equitable justice system in India.
What Indian Law Students Can Learn from the UK’s Criminal Justice Reforms: former Lord Chancellor and Justice Secretary of the United Kingdom Alex Chalk Conversation
When you sit in a busy Supreme Court corridor long enough, you realise something simple but brutal: a justice system can collapse quietly — not with a constitutional crisis, but with adjournments, undertrial prisoners, and files that move slower than lives do.
Recently, I listened to a long, candid conversation with Alex Chalk KC, former Lord Chancellor and Justice Secretary of the United Kingdom. On the surface, it’s about the UK criminal justice system — its backlogs, prisons, jury trials, sentencing guidelines, and the tug-of-war between judges and politicians.
But if you listen to it as an Indian law student, what you’re really hearing is a mirror.
Because almost every challenge he describes in the UK has a familiar echo in India.
This article is my attempt — as Adv. Tarun Choudhury, practising in the Supreme Court for over 25 years — to walk you through those themes and show what Indian law students can learn from this “foreign” conversation that is, in truth, uncomfortably close to home.
1. A Criminal Justice System in “Crisis”: Sounds Familiar?
Alex Chalk openly admits that the UK criminal justice system is in “crisis”:
- Enormous backlogs in the Crown Court
- Rape trials that may take years to reach hearing
- A remand population that has almost doubled
- Prisons overflowing, forcing early-release schemes
If you replace “Crown Court” with “Sessions Court” and “remand population” with “undertrial prisoners,” you’re basically describing India.
In Indian courts, we see:
- Undertrial prisoners who spend more time in jail awaiting trial than the maximum sentence for their alleged offence.
- Rape and POCSO cases where victims and witnesses burn out emotionally before the trial even meaningfully begins.
- Sessions Courts and High Courts struggling with staggering caseloads, and the Supreme Court too often handling matters that should have been resolved at lower levels — if the system were adequately resourced.
What Chalk calls a “crisis” in the UK, we in India often treat as “normal”.
As future lawyers, if you ever feel tempted to treat delay as an inevitable part of the system, stop yourself. Delay is not neutral. Delay is substantive injustice, especially in criminal law.
2. Juries, Judges and “Wingers”: Process vs Throughput
One of the most interesting parts of Chalk’s discussion is his proposal to rethink the jury trial in the UK.
The UK still uses juries in serious criminal trials. Chalk suggests that for certain mid-level offences (like assault on emergency workers), instead of a jury, the case could be heard by:
A judge and two magistrates (“wingers”) — an intermediate model.
The goal? Reduce backlogs and free up the jury system for the most serious offences like murder and rape.
But India doesn’t have jury trials. So why should you care?
Because the underlying issue is exactly the same for us:
How do you match limited judicial capacity with exploding caseloads, without compromising fairness?
We abolished jury trials after the famous K.M. Nanavati case. Our trial model is judge-centric. But we still face:
- Overloaded trial judges
- Long-drawn evidence recording
- Repeated adjournments
- Witness fatigue and hostile witnesses
The UK is experimenting with different “constitutions” of the court — sometimes judge + jury, sometimes judge + magistrates — depending on seriousness.
In India, we rarely think creatively about trial design. Some possible questions we should ask:
- Should some categories of less serious offences have fast-track, simpler procedures with specialised magistrates?
- Can we strengthen and professionalise magisterial courts so that Sessions Courts are not crushed under mid-level cases?
- Can we better implement and refine plea bargaining, which we already have in the CrPC but use very cautiously and often half-heartedly?
As someone who has watched trial records and appeal papers for over two decades, I can tell you: unless we innovate procedurally, “reform” will remain a slogan.
3. Sentencing: Independence vs Accountability
Chalk draws an important distinction:
- Individual sentences — must remain independent; politicians cannot dictate what a particular accused should get.
- Sentencing framework — the overall structure of how categories of offences are punished; here he argues the Lord Chancellor should have a veto over guidelines framed by the Sentencing Council.
He is worried that an unelected body framing sentencing guidelines can become “independent but unaccountable.”
He also criticises ideas like giving lighter sentences just because someone is from a deprived socio-economic background, calling it patronising.
What does this mean for India?
India does not have a body like the UK Sentencing Council. Our sentencing law is a mix of:
- Broad statutory ranges in the IPC and special statutes
- Judge-made principles (proportionality, reformation vs deterrence, etc.)
- Limited guidance from the Supreme Court, often on a case-by-case basis
The result is:
- Two similar cases can receive very different sentences in different courts.
- There is often little transparency in how mitigation and aggravation are weighed.
- Victims and society sometimes feel sentencing is too lenient or too harsh, without understanding the rationale.
For you as law students, this raises some fascinating questions:
- Should India consider a Sentencing Commission or guidelines like the UK, but with democratic oversight?
- How do we balance judicial discretion with consistency?
- How should we treat socio-economic disadvantage in sentencing? As a factor for leniency, or as an irrelevant consideration, or something in between?
Chalk’s core warning is relevant to India too:
Independence is essential, but total insulation from democratic accountability can also be dangerous.
4. Prisons, Remand and the “Irrecoverable” Point
Chalk makes a very stark claim:
If the UK doesn’t act decisively on backlogs and prisons now, the system may become “irrecoverable.”
He points out:
- The remand population (pre-trial detainees) has shot up dramatically.
- Emergency schemes for early release are already being used.
- Without speeding up trials, prisons will keep filling, and governments will face repeated pressure to release prisoners in ways that risk public trust.
Again, does this sound unfamiliar in India?
We have:
- Over two-thirds of our prison population as undertrials (often).
- Many undertrials are too poor to secure bail or legal representation.
- Periodic directions by courts and committees to decongest prisons, usually treated as administrative inconveniences rather than constitutional emergencies.
As someone who has seen countless bail matters reach the Supreme Court because the system below did not respond in time, I can tell you:
A criminal justice system choked by undertrial incarceration is not just inefficient; it is unconstitutional in spirit.
For Indian law students, Chalk’s warning should be read as a cautionary message for India as well: there is a point beyond which delays and overcrowding cannot be reversed easily.
5. Politics, Populism and the Home–Justice Tug of War
One of Chalk’s sharpest insights is institutional, not emotional.
He explains that in the UK:
- The Home Office can push for tougher laws and longer sentences (to appear “tough on crime”).
- The Ministry of Justice then has to deal with the consequences — more prisoners, more cost, more overcrowding.
He calls it a situation where:
The Home Secretary’s “ego is writing cheques that the Lord Chancellor can’t cash.”
This should immediately remind Indian students of our own structural tensions:
- Populist demands for harsher punishments after every high-profile crime.
- Pressure to introduce new offences and higher minimum sentences.
- But nowhere near matching investment in courts, judges, prosecutors, forensic labs, legal aid, and prisons.
We are very good at legislating symbolic “toughness”. We are much weaker at funding functional justice.
As students, you must train yourselves to see beyond newspaper headlines like “life sentence increased” or “death penalty introduced” and ask:
“Who will investigate? Who will prosecute? Which court will hear this? Where will they be jailed? Who will monitor compliance?”
Law without logistics is optics.
6. International Law, Immigration and the Rule of Law
Chalk also touches on immigration, the European Convention on Human Rights and the temptation in some political circles to withdraw from international obligations for short-term domestic gain.
His stance is nuanced:
- He opposes illegal migration and recognises public anger.
- But he does not support unilaterally pulling out of the European Convention.
- Instead, he suggests using the UK’s influence to reform international frameworks collectively.
Why should this matter to Indian law students?
Because India is increasingly part of global legal conversations — on refugees, climate, trade, cyber, human rights, extradition, and more. There will always be pressure to say:
“Let’s just ignore this treaty; it’s inconvenient.”
But as Chalk points out, powerful countries don’t always influence the world by walking out; often, they shape the conversation from within.
India, with its constitutional commitment to the rule of law, should aspire to that level of legal statecraft.
7. The Human Side: A Lawyer, a Murder Case and Emotional Burnout
Amid all the technical talk, Chalk shares something deeply human.
He speaks about prosecuting the murder of a 15-year-old girl, Elianne Andam in Croydon. Despite a long career in serious crime, he admits this case shook him:
- Meeting the parents
- Watching them live with unimaginable grief
- Receiving a letter from them after the case ended
As a Supreme Court lawyer, I can tell you this: no amount of black-letter law prepares you fully for the emotional weight of criminal practice.
Law students often focus on:
- Ratios
- Sections
- Case summaries
All of that is necessary. But if you intend to practise criminal law — or even constitutional law touching criminal justice — you must understand:
- Every file contains a family.
- Every adjournment has a human cost.
- Every sentencing decision travels with real people for decades.
The best lawyers are not those who only know the law; they are those who also understand the human drama that law tries to regulate.
8. What Should Indian Law Students Take Away?
Let me leave you with a few pointed takeaways, from one practitioner to future practitioners:
- Delay is not procedural; it is substantive injustice.
Whenever you see a five-year delay in a rape trial or a bail hearing adjourned for months, remember: this is not a technicality. It is the system failing its most basic promise. - Be interested in structure, not just cases.
Don’t just memorise case names. Ask:- How is the trial designed?
- Who frames sentencing policy?
- Who funds the justice system?
- Respect judicial independence, but think hard about accountability.
Courts must be free from political interference in individual cases. But systems — like sentencing frameworks — need transparent, democratic oversight. - Think institutionally, not emotionally.
After a shocking crime, public anger is natural. But as lawyers, your duty is to ask:- Will this new law actually work?
- Will it reduce crime or just sound satisfying?
- Remember the human beings behind the statistics.
Whether it is a victim’s family in the UK or an undertrial prisoner in India, the system exists for them, not for our professional convenience.
A Final Word from the Author
Having spent more than 25 years arguing matters in the Supreme Court of India, I can tell you this much with conviction:
A justice system does not collapse in a single day.
It erodes — through ignored backlogs, underfunded courts, overcrowded prisons, and reforms forever “under consideration”.
Listening to conversations like Alex Chalk’s is valuable not because we want to copy the UK, but because it reminds us that even mature democracies struggle with the same tensions we do.
Your generation of lawyers will inherit not just the Constitution, but also the crisis points in our system. I hope you choose not to normalise them — but to confront them, intellectually and professionally.
If you’d like, you can further develop this into a class presentation, a seminar paper, or a blog article for a student law review.
Written By Adv. Tarun Choudhury, Supreme Court of India
Practising Lawyer, 25+ years at the Bar
