Matt Shea: “The UK justice system is entering dangerous, uncharted territory with devastating results”

This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine.

As part of a major new investigation for Dispatches, I’ve uncovered a shocking rise in the number of criminal suspects skipping court – many of them accused of rape, robbery and serious violence. The UK justice system is entering dangerous, uncharted territory with devastating results for victims and their families.

When a defendant doesn’t turn up to their hearing or sentencing, a judge can issue a Failure to Appear (FTA) warrant. As part of our investigation, we submitted Freedom of Information requests to 43 police forces in England and Wales and discovered that, in 2025 alone, police received nearly 60,000 of these warrants.

That figure – potentially nearly 60,000 criminals who have opted to skip court – is unprecedented and up almost 50 per cent since 2020. In Crown Courts alone, where the most serious cases such as murder and rape are heard, the number of these warrants has more than doubled.

It’s a similar story in Scotland when you adjust for population. Police Scotland had 5,808 outstanding warrants in early 2026, and hundreds of these fugitives have been at large for several years.

Some criminals are eventually brought to justice. However, we uncovered that there are more than 30,000 outstanding FTA warrants (meaning police have not yet located these individuals) in England and Wales. Over 7,000 of these date back to before 2020. These people have been on the run for many years without ever getting caught.

How has it got to this, and why is it happening? To find out, I spent months tracking down some of the UK’s most wanted fugitives. As it turns out, the problem isn’t simply a case of criminals becoming harder to catch. In the film, I located and spoke to five British fugitives – including a face-to-face interview with one of the National Crime Agency’s most wanted targets.

All the criminals I spoke to appeared to share the same concerning perception: that attending your trial is now a personal choice. For these individuals, skipping a trial was “as easy as buying a plane ticket”. How have we got to the point where justice has become optional in the UK?

It’s difficult to overstate how devastating it can be for victims’ families when a suspect flees. Ciara Ryan’s brother was run over and killed by a man named Rashid Ali, driving at twice the 20mph speed limit. When Ali fled his trial and returned to his home country of Pakistan, it completely eroded her faith in the justice system. We tracked him down – and were shocked to find that he had, at one point, returned to the UK unchallenged. He is yet to face justice.

The crisis in our justice system gets remarkably little attention. When it does make headlines – prisoners released by mistake, criminals freed early, aborted talk of scrapping jury trials – the news cycle moves on with no real solution in sight.

But the crisis is growing. The backlog of Crown Court cases is on course to hit 100,000 by the end of next year. Some defendants charged today are already being told their cases won’t be heard until 2030. The Rt Hon Sir Brian Leveson QC has warned of “total system collapse”.

With their trials so far in the future, many think: why bother attending? As Alex Chalk, the former justice secretary under Rishi Sunak, said: “Delay is toxic. Prosecutors know it gives defendants more opportunities to disappear. That’s why this is a horror show.”

When Chalk was justice secretary, he says he tried, in vain, to get Sunak, the then prime minister, to act on this.

Now our politicians must do their best to pick up the pieces of our crumbling justice system.

Hunting Britain’s Fugitives is on Friday 29 May at 8.00pm on C4

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