Whole areas of law, including family, housing, immigration, debt and employment, have been taken outside the realm of publicly funded legal representation, leaving some of the most vulnerable people at the mercy of a system that is designed to be incomprehensible to even the most highly educated lay person. Over the last near decade of austerity, justice has endured the deepest cuts of any departmental spending in the UK. “Despair” is the experience of another in the court of appeal. “Hell” is the word used by one supreme court judge. It is above all a plea to rescue a justice system that has become utterly broken. The book is in part a guide to the system – a reminder of how few of us understand it – and in part a first-hand account of the personal dilemmas facing someone whose professional life is spent in and out of crown courts, police cells and prisons. This is a portrait of the criminal justice system in England and Wales today, as seen by the Secret Barrister, a criminal advocate who keeps his identity a closely guarded secret so that, he argues, he can be unrestrained in his critique.
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