Courts don’t actually need to deal with vary many cases though. I suspect the average person needs to deal with the legal system for anything more complex than a speeding ticket less than once per decade.
And as it turns out five minutes in front of a judge can easily handle: “The speed camera is showing a picture of a pickup truck, I drive an SUV.”
It’s only a minute fraction of cases that take significant time to resolve. The UK has ~700 homicide victims per year and significantly fewer murder trials. Individual trials can be long and expensive without it actually adding up to a significant expense.
So, looking at stats for England and Wales about 80% of homicide incidents result in one or more suspects being charged and a small number of those end up being acquitted (though it often takes some time for people to be charged). I guess that counts as significantly fewer, but wasn’t the impression I got from my initial reading of your post.
80% of incidents, but each incident can have multiple victims. 2020 for example had one unfortunate case of 39 people being found dead in a truck relating to human trafficking.
And as it turns out five minutes in front of a judge can easily handle: “The speed camera is showing a picture of a pickup truck, I drive an SUV.”
It’s only a minute fraction of cases that take significant time to resolve. The UK has ~700 homicide victims per year and significantly fewer murder trials. Individual trials can be long and expensive without it actually adding up to a significant expense.