HOW fair are juries? A government-sponsored study published this week offers timely support for a system that used to be regarded as one of the bulwarks of an Englishman's civil liberties but has come under increasing attack of late. In England, unlike America, juries no longer decide most civil trials. And now the government is pushing a bill through Parliament to abolish them in complex fraud cases. Many fear a slippery slope.

In America the selection of jurors acceptable to both the prosecution and the defence sometimes takes longer than the trial itself. The process can involve exhaustive interviews about prospective jurors' beliefs and prejudices. But in Britain jurors are selected randomly from the 94 Crown Court catchment areas in England and Wales. Most accept the call, and there is little chance to challenge a juror unless he actually knows the defendant. This has not prevented assertions that English juries produce verdicts that are racially biased because they do not accurately reflect society's ethnic mix.

A four-year study by a team at the University of Birmingham's law school, led by Cheryl Thomas, has shown those charges to be largely a myth. In over 95% of the 84 Crown Courts that were surveyed, ethnic minorities were not under-represented among either those summoned for jury service or those actually serving as jurors. Members of ethnic minorities and whites were equally willing to do jury service and to support the jury system.

The study punctured another myth too: that juries are largely made up of the retired and the unemployed. Women, young people and self-employed folk were all fully represented, the report's authors concluded. And far from shirking jury duty, fancy people in fancy jobs were found to be more conscientious than others, if anything. All in all, jury pools seem to reflect the local population quite closely in terms of race, gender, age and background.

Yet the perception of racial bias is not always unfounded. In London, where 45% of ethnic minorities live and a quarter of all jurors serve, juries are always racially mixed. But in 74 of the 94 court-catchment areas, ethnic minorities, though sometimes concentrated in pockets, make up less than 10% of the population overall. They therefore have little chance of being selected for jury duty.

Ms Thomas and her team chose to study racially mixed juries to see whether a defendant's race influenced deliberations (a later study will look at racial bias among all-white juries). Contrary to widespread belief, no discrimination was found. In an elaborate case simulation at London's Blackfriars court, which involved more than 300 jurors on 27 juries, the verdicts were all remarkably similar, regardless of whether the defendant was black, Asian or white.

This does not mean that a defendant's race did not influence individual jurors. Black and Asian jury members tended to show more leniency toward black defendants (though not, interestingly, toward Asians), whereas white jurors were usually softer on white defendants. But these individual biases did not affect the collective verdicts of the juries, the report says. Ten of 12 jurors must usually agree for a verdict to be reached, so individual biases cancelled each other out.

Lord Falconer, the newly styled justice secretary, hailed the report as a vindication of juries, which he believes are “utterly vital to our justice system”. This has not, apparently, changed his and the government's determination to abolish juries for complex and lengthy fraud trials, however—despite the opposition of most lawyers, civil-liberties groups and the vast majority of the British public.