Number of miscarriage of justice claims soars by a fifth as independent Criminal Cases Review Commission says it is investigating four new cases a day

• Data shows 1,424 people insisted conviction or sentence was unfair or unsafe
• CCRC referred 25 cases back to the courts, including six murder convictions
• Seventeen convictions or sentences were overturned in last year up to March

The toll of people who claim to have suffered a miscarriage of justice has surged by a fifth.

The independent Criminal Cases Review Commission says it is investigating an average of four new cases a day.

In the year to March, the number insisting their conviction or sentence was unfair or unsafe totalled 1,424, a rise of nearly 20 per cent on the previous 12 months.

The CCRC referred 25 cases back to the courts, including six murder convictions.

Seventeen convictions or sentences were overturned.

The independent Criminal Cases Review Commission says the number of people claiming to have suffered a miscarriage of justice has surged by a fifth, but last week it refused to support Michael Stone, who was jailed for battering to death Lin and Megan Russell in Kent in 1996

Among them were subpostmasters wrongly convicted of theft and fraud because of faulty software.

But last week the CCRC refused to support Michael Stone, who was jailed for battering to death Lin and Megan Russell in Kent in 1996.

It is still considering the case of Jeremy Bamber, jailed for shooting five family members dead in Essex in 1985.

The CCRC, which has 40 case review managers, said in its annual report that it was struggling to cope with its number of investigations.

Chairwoman Helen Pitcher said: ‘This has been a challenging year but I’m proud of my hard-working team.’

Other high profile cases in the last 12 months include Oliver Campbell’s murder conviction from 1991 and the case of the Putney Young Liberals who blocked the England rugby team’s coach from setting off on a tour of South Africa during an anti-apartheid protest in 1972. 

The figures – set out in the CCRC’s Annual Report – show where the recent rise in CCRC cases is coming from across Britain. 

The number of men applying to the CCRC went up from 908 to 1,051, while the number of women increased from 81 to 121. 

The number of people who cannot read or write rose from 135 to 255.

 But the largest increase relates to people aged 25 and under, which rose from 99 to 134; a rise of 30 per cent in one year. 

Based in Birmingham, the CCRC has forty case review managers and twelve Commissioners. 

But with case numbers now rising significantly by twenty per cent a year, the CCRC is struggling to keep pace with the growing number of submissions. 

The CCRC is still considering the case of Jeremy Bamber, pictured in 2011, who was jailed for shooting five family members dead in Essex in 1985

Unveiling its latest annual report, the CCRC admitted: ‘The backlog of cases still under review at the end of the financial year grew significantly from 605 to 718.’

 The body was set up in 1997, after four major cases in the 1970s – The Guildford Four, The Birmingham Six, The Maguire Seven and the Judith Ward case – which showed how convictions could be given out by the courts based on miscarriages of justice. 

These cases included false confessions, police misconduct, non-disclosure and issues about expert testimony. 

Between 1999 and 2015, 736 Post Office managers were convicted for theft, fraud and false accounting after faulty Horizon software gave the false impression that they had stolen money from the Post Office.

The case is now seen as the ‘most widespread miscarriage of justice in UK history’. 

And in 1991 Oliver Campbell was jailed for the murder of an Asian shop keeper in Hackney, East London. 

Mr Campbell suffered brain damage when he was a baby and has severe learning difficulties. 

After fourteen police interviews, he confessed to a crime he did not commit. 

Mr Campbell spent eleven years in prison, always maintaining his innocence.

Helen Pitcher OBE said: ‘It is now clear that, at the time of Mr Campbell’s trial and appeal, the full extent of his vulnerabilities were not properly understood. This meant that the judge didn’t have the full picture when deciding whether his admissions should have been admitted as evidence.’ 

Helen Pitcher said during its investigation the CCRC saw ‘evidence of deliberate and persistent non-disclosure by the police which was sanctioned by senior officers.’ 

She said the court was misled in 1991, and Mr Campbell’s basic legal rights were breached. 

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