Flood of criminals clogging up court system

THE state’s prosecutors are drowning under heavy workloads as more and more criminals are charged with increasingly serious and complicated crimes.

An explosion in the numbers of people being charged with drug trafficking is helping drive the spike in cases that has seen Director of Public Prosecutions Michael Byrne issue an SOS to the Palaszczuk Government.

In his latest annual report, he says he needs more lawyers to help handle the skyrocketing workload, with the numbers of crimes prosecuted growing by a whopping 60 per cent.

More than 9100 people were prosecuted for nearly 51,000 separate offences in 2015-16, up from 8379 people and 40,371 offences the year before.

It amounted to a 60 per cent increase in offences in just three years.

“Drug offences continue to represent a very large component of the increase in workload,” Mr Bryne wrote.

“For example the number of trafficking charges received has increased over the last three years from 508 to 943 (an increase of 85.6 per cent) and supply dangerous drug charges have increased from 3002 to 7950 (an increase of 164.8 per cent).

“These types of prosecutions are routinely very timeconsuming in the preparation and prosecution.”

He described the growth in the past three years as “concerning” and said his office was struggling to keep up.

“I am afraid that, in my opinion, the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions has failed to keep pace with the growth it has and is experiencing in terms of securing funding for more staffing resources,” he wrote.