Scotland has brought the overall criminal-court backlog below its pre-pandemic operating level, but cases involving the most serious offending are moving in the opposite direction. New evidence before Holyrood shows sexual-crime cases resulting in a High Court verdict took a median 1,069 days from the offence becoming known to police to conclusion in 2024–25.
Sexual-crime cases reaching a verdict in Scotland’s High Court are now taking a median of two years and 11 months to travel through the criminal justice system, according to figures that will form part of a parliamentary examination of the court backlog on 8 October.
The figure — 1,069 days — comes from the Scottish Government’s latest criminal-justice journey-time statistics and appears in new evidence submitted to the Scottish Parliament’s Public Audit Committee as it prepares to question senior government, court and audit officials.
Unlike the broad court backlog, which has fallen sharply from its pandemic peak, the waiting time for sexual-crime cases has increased. The 2024–25 median was 22 days longer than the previous year, an increase of about 2 per cent.
Rape and attempted-rape cases in the High Court recorded a median journey time of 1,062 days, up from 1,026 days the year before.
The Overall Backlog Has Fallen — the High Court Backlog Has Not
Scotland’s court system entered the pandemic with an established level of outstanding work, but restrictions on trials caused that backlog to grow dramatically.
Outstanding scheduled trials across the system peaked at 43,606 in January 2022. By the end of 2025–26, the figure had fallen to 13,268, below the historical operating level of approximately 20,000 used by the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service.
That national improvement conceals a different pattern in the High Court, where Scotland’s most serious criminal cases are heard.
There were 390 outstanding scheduled High Court trials in 2019–20. By the end of 2025–26 there were 1,002.
Audit Scotland has attributed the continuing pressure partly to an increase in serious and complex offending reaching the court, including historical sexual cases and organised crime.
The Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service says the volume of High Court indictments has risen rapidly. It expects more than 2,000 indictments during 2026, compared with 935 in 2023–24.
That changes the nature of the backlog problem. Scotland is no longer dealing only with a stock of trials postponed during Covid restrictions. The High Court is receiving substantially more work while still carrying unresolved cases from earlier years.
A Sexual-Crime Case Can Spend Months at Each Stage
The Scottish Government’s journey-time statistics follow cases from the point when an alleged offence becomes known to Police Scotland through reporting to the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service, court registration and eventual verdict.
For rape and attempted rape cases resulting in a High Court verdict in 2024–25, the median period between the offence becoming known to police and a report reaching prosecutors was 71 days.
The median period from receipt by prosecutors to registration at court was 505 days.
From court registration to verdict, the median was another 336 days.
Those stage medians cannot simply be added together to reconstruct the median journey of an individual case, because each is calculated separately across the cases in the dataset. They nevertheless show that delay is not confined to the period after a trial is formally scheduled.
The overall median for all High Court cases actually improved during 2024–25, falling from 890 to 858 days. Sexual cases therefore stand apart within a court where the general measure was moving down.
The Warning Predates the Latest Figures
The pressure at the serious end of Scotland’s court system has been visible for several years.
In May 2023, Audit Scotland reported that while the pandemic backlog had begun to reduce, the time taken to deal with some of the most serious crimes had more than doubled compared with 2020.
Three years later, its follow-up work found the numerical backlog much improved across the court system but warned that the High Court remained under sustained pressure.
The change also sits against a wider shift in the volume of cases entering the criminal justice process. Evidence submitted to the Public Audit Committee records that, compared with 2019–20, recorded crime has risen while the number of criminal reports received by prosecutors has fallen.
Those figures do not establish that cases are being wrongly filtered out. Police reporting decisions and prosecutorial thresholds operate at different stages and offence categories have changed over time. They do, however, leave Parliament with a further question about how increased reported demand becomes the smaller volume of cases progressing through prosecution.
Four More High Court Venues Will Open for Trials
The Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service is responding by increasing High Court capacity again.
From January 2027, High Court trials will also be held at sheriff court buildings in Airdrie, Dunfermline, Edinburgh and Glasgow.
SCTS says that will allow as many as 26 High Court trials to operate on a single day. At the beginning of the decade, the system was capable of running about 16.
Additional preliminary hearings are also being held in Glasgow from October 2026 in an attempt to prepare cases more efficiently before trial dates are occupied.
Increasing courtrooms does not by itself remove every source of delay. Serious sexual cases can involve extensive digital evidence, medical and forensic material, vulnerable witnesses, historical allegations, multiple accused people and substantial disclosure obligations. Prosecutors, defence solicitors, counsel, expert witnesses and court staff all have to be available before additional physical courtroom capacity can be fully used.
Parliament Will Question the Institutions on 8 October
The Public Audit Committee will take evidence on 8 October from Scottish Government Director-General Neil Rennick, Justice Director Catriona Dalrymple and Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service chief executive Malcolm Graham.
Auditor General Stephen Boyle and Audit Scotland director Jillian Matthew are due to give evidence separately.
The hearing will take place against two apparently contradictory trends: Scotland has succeeded in reducing the overall stock of outstanding trials below its old operating level, while the High Court is carrying more than twice the number of scheduled cases it held before the pandemic.
For people whose sexual-crime cases reached a High Court verdict in 2024–25, the median journey now extends across almost three years. The next test for the recovery programme is no longer simply how many old trials can be removed from a national backlog, but whether serious cases can move through police investigation, prosecution and the High Court materially faster than they do now.
Sources
Criminal courts backlog — Public Audit Committee papers
Scottish Parliament, October 2026
https://www.parliament.scot/~/media/committ/13511/Paper-1–Criminal-courts-backlog
Journey Times in the Scottish Criminal Justice System 2024–25
Scottish Government, 2 June 2026
https://www.gov.scot/publications/journey-times-in-the-scottish-criminal-justice-system-2024-25/
Criminal Courts Backlog: Follow-up
Audit Scotland, May 2026
https://audit.scot/publications/criminal-courts-backlog-follow-up
Rise in serious cases strengthens need for criminal justice reform
Audit Scotland, May 2026
https://audit.scot/news/rise-in-serious-cases-strengthens-need-for-criminal-justice-reform
High Court to increase to 26 trial courts a day
Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service, 3 August 2026
https://www.scotcourts.gov.uk/about-us/news/news/2026/august/high-court-to-increase-to-26-trial-courts-a-day/
Criminal Courts Backlog
Audit Scotland, 25 May 2023
https://audit.scot/publications/criminal-courts-backlog
