The jury waiting list would open in Year 7

Court delays would turn jury service from something that happens to you into something you apply for. Under a scheme modelled for 2040, families would register children at eleven so that the summons arrives while they can still attend. The estimated wait would be nineteen years.

In several countries with jury systems, backlogs of criminal cases have grown sharply since the pandemic, and some trials are listed years after charge. At the same time, response rates to jury summonses have fallen in a number of jurisdictions, and deferral and exemption rules have widened, shrinking the pool of people who actually serve. Courts have responded with reminders, penalties and reform proposals, including limiting jury trials for some offences. Separately, waiting lists have become a routine feature of public services, from nursery places to healthcare, and parents are used to registering children years in advance. Schools are commonly used as the channel for reaching every household with official information.

“Dear parent or carer, following guidance from the Regional Court Service, pupils in Year 7 and above may now be placed on the jury service waiting list, and we would strongly encourage you to do so before the October half term.” So, under a scheme modelled for 2040, would begin a letter sent to every family at a secondary school in a mid-sized county town. A second page would explain that the estimated wait for a first summons stands at nineteen years and four months, that the school cannot answer questions about the queue, and that the sponsored walk is still on Friday.

The scheme would follow from two trends that spent the 2020s moving in opposite directions. Trials waited longer to be heard, and citizens grew less willing to be heard from. Random summonses would be replaced by a register of people who have asked to be summoned, sorted by the date they asked. A child registered at eleven would expect a first call at around thirty. An adult registering at forty would, on current projections, be called shortly after retirement. The court service would describe this as planning certainty for households.

Dawn Pritchard, whose twins are in Year 7, would fill in the form on the evening the letter arrived and discover that it allows one place per household per academic year. “I had to choose,” she would say. “I went with Ellis, because he's better at sitting still.” His brother would be added the following September, eleven months behind, a gap that would be raised at most meals. Mrs Pritchard would say she had not expected to rank her children by the quality of their attention. “But then, that's what the court is going to do.”

The list would be divided into bands. Households with no record of jury service would sit in Band A. Anyone who had deferred a summons since 2031 would be placed behind them, and anyone who had ignored one would be placed behind the deferrers, with a note. A separate fast track would exist for citizens willing to sit on trials lasting more than six weeks, the long fraud cases that empty a jury box faster than any exemption, and parents at the school gate would speak of it the way they once spoke of the good school with the ninety-minute bus ride.

The school would be chosen as the channel for the same reason it distributes dental checks and the census: it is the last institution that reliably reaches every household. The letter would go out through the app that notifies parents of lost PE kit. Martin Okoro, who teaches citizenship, would say the change had simplified his syllabus. “I used to teach them that jury service was a duty you couldn't avoid. Now I teach them how to check their position.” Year 9 pupils would compare estimated call dates the way earlier generations compared trainers.

The arithmetic would run in both directions. A defendant charged in 2040 could be tried, on the scheme's own projections, by twelve people who were in Year 7 at the time of the alleged offence. The guidance notes would call this a jury of one's peers, eventually. Defence lawyers would begin asking for the registration dates of the panel, and a small consultancy in the county town would offer to estimate, for a fee, which year group a client's jury was likely to have been drawn from.

Registered children would receive a letter each birthday confirming their position, which for many would be the only post addressed to them by name. Several parents would report that the letters are kept in drawers, next to swimming certificates. Ellis Pritchard would keep his in a folder marked Court. His estimated date is March 2059. He would ask, most weeks, whether it has moved, and his mother would tell him, most weeks, that it has, by a day, in the wrong direction.