The Justice of the Peace [magistrate`s] Blog:

It is well known that those moving at up to 88 ft/sec on our roads enclosed in metallic boxes with all round safety glass for protection tend to be more forthright with their language when observing others` shortcomings in their metal boxes than they would were they ambling down the road having similar inclinations. So it appears, do some of those who choose to communicate by Twitter a medium which this blogger eschews. They have a similar tendency to let the keyboard run ahead of their brain`s ability to control their fingers. Last week the High Court in its judgement showed a common sense others were lacking. But I suppose with millions of tweets/hour there are bound to be some which cause a slight legal flurry but surely tweeting failed [so far ] medal seeker Tom Daley ,”You let your dad down I hope you know that.” before apologising to the 18 year old diver does not require a comment from Dorset Police, “Regarding tweets to @tomdaley1994 – we are aware of the issue and we are actively looking into it”. Indeed they are. The suspected perpetrator was arrested earlier today on suspicion of malicious communications.

Notwithstanding some further exchanges re Tom Daley and his troll we are living in a state of fear that would do the Stasi proud. How did this country, home of Speakers` Corner and what once was termed free speech, reach this level of thought control? Because that is what it is coming to……..think it but don`t say it; it might cause offence. I was in Bulgaria well before 1988 and nobody was offended in that country in those days. I was in Franco`s Spain where once again nothing even approaching offence was taken or made. Portugal in the reign of Salazar was offence free but not free of fear. The salami slicing of our freedoms is alive and well. There is no longer freedom to offend.

There are those who are doers and those who are talkers about doing. We all know people and organisations in both categories. The common description of the latter is a “talking shop”. It is generally not a description which implies admiration. Of course there must be communication in all walks of life but when that becomes an end unto itself derision is perhaps an accurate description. Perhaps the League of Nations was a prime example and laterally its step child, the United Nations, is following in its footsteps. Closer to home there is a grand grouping known as Partnerships Against Crime. This appears to be a talking shop par excellence.

Whilst it is becoming progressively more obvious that those employed at the Home Office and Justice Ministry do not have access to the font of all wisdom the increasingly farming out of their ancillary functions is now somewhat routine. Perhaps the genes I have inherited from my dinosaur origins and which inhabit my reptilian brain are not quite as repressed as they should be but at the first large scale public outing for this CRP talking shop which was held recently it was said, “.......He also gave powerful statistical evidence to demonstrate the effectiveness of exclusion schemes.” This could be simply described as displacement theory………push a problem out of sight so it becomes somebody else`s problem. It is a case of now you see now you don`t.

Sooner or later the treatment for binge drinkers and repeated anti social behaviour will have to return to more basic methods of control. It will be a matter of “when” not “if”.

One of my very first posts since I started this blog concerned a defendant`s right to choose trial by jury in low value charges of theft; an either way offence. The English legal system is unique in its allowing a defendant the right to choose mode of trial in certain cases. By all logical thinking this anomaly should have been eliminated long ago. With the funding of the justice system having been hacked to pieces by the cleaver of Kenneth Clarke the retention of the right to choose is in itself an anomaly for its cost to the budget irrespective of the legal positions. It is mainly the opposition of lawyers which shoulders the blame for this continuing aberration their main argument being that for certain defendants of previous good character a conviction for theft of however minute an amount can be a devastating blow to career and lifestyle and therefore they should take their chances with a jury of their peers. Except their so called peers might be virtually illiterate lacking basic English and unable to follow even a simple conversation never mind complex argument. But the corollary of that position is that what is good enough for the common man.....summary trial, is not good enough for higher profile professional defendants. This appears to be flying in the face of a justice system where all are equal before the law. Or perhaps it is the cash available for high priced non legal aid barristers to defend their wealthy clients. Unlike the magistrate quoted in this report, “ it was the first time he had committed a case like this to the higher court,” benches where I have been involved have committed about 1% - 5% of such cases to the Crown Court. I wonder whether in the current climate Mr Clarke will have the cojones to grab this nettle and initiate the mooted long overdue changes?

For those who have followed the Twitter joke case it has finally ended at the High Court with a victory for common sense. It should never have been taken that far. It began two years ago at Doncaster Magistrates` Court and should have been thrown out at that stage. I know not whether the case was heard by a District Judge [MC] or a bench of three J.P.s. As an outside observer it seems to me that our legal processes are becoming increasingly codified and woe betide a tribunal that attempts to get behind the verbiage presented to it. The erudite blogger ObiterJ has a brief history.

A few months ago I was sitting on a breach matter which hinged on the defendant`s claim that he had written permission to miss a supervision appointment. Unfortunately for him in his disorganised life he had been unable to obtain the letter from his mother`s address which he used at the time in question some weeks previously. The probation officer/prosecutor told us that there was absolutely no record of any such letter being sent so our L/A began making enquiries re a trial date. Just to ensure we were all quite clear as to what was in dispute I asked her to confirm that if indeed there were such a letter that had been sent to the defendant would the prosecution be withdrawn. She answered in the affirmative. A brief exchange between the bench and the defendant`s lawyer confirmed his position about which he was quite adamant. She agreed that without the letter he would admit the breach. The case was adjourned for a week for the letter to be produced.

Sometimes sight of the tree is obscured by the wood.

Barnstaple can hardly be described as a typical English town; it is too rural in a nation increasingly metropolitan in character but it can be fairly described as a typical country town. It is hardly a hotspot of criminal activity as that term would be defined in any of our large cities. But the current and proposed reductions in courts` services there are perhaps not so different from those being contemplated elsewhere. The local on-line report reflects the reality of the situation in general with regard to our current and future contributions to the administration of justice.

Cases of domestic violence by instructions from on high should have all the resources of the courts available to ensure swift sure justice for the complainant and the offender. That means that the agencies involved are under an obligation to pull out all the stops and have the matter work through the justice system as castor oil through the bowels. All agencies include the police, the victim support unit and the Crown Prosecution Service. All the buffoons wandering about Whitehall with their Blackberries glued to their ears are just that; baffoons. They have cut the cloth of funding so tightly that there is not enough left to cover their embarrassment. Their parts are exposed and it is not a pretty sight. While the Minister is still exhorting his minions to extract an 80% utilisation rate from the magistrates` courts [this blog 20/02/2012] which he asserts are at present utilised only 64% of the time his boss has decreed that funding must be cut by 23%. This is supposed to come from increased efficiency in the use of resources. Now that makes everything clear. So by reducing the number of lawyers at the CPS and working as legal advisors in the courts, cutting back on police officers undertaking duties away from that invisible front line, centralising victim support units miles away from the courts requiring their input and creating a situation where legal aid lawyers have fled the job like rodents leaving a sinking ship not that many such lawyers made Ferrari purchasing amounts out of legal aid the incumbent Kenneth Clarke expects his bluff blokey manner to be an answer to all criticism. The reality of the situation at my court cannot be anything but an example of the situation countrywide and the CPS is so fundamental to the rotation of the wheels of justice that I make no apologies for returning to this subject.

Not so long ago we had the defendant, a young man of previous good character, meet his bail requirement to appear for trial on assault on his partner. CPS represented by counsel {presumably costing a lot more than an in house lawyer except our local area has sacked a good number of its lawyers} told us that notice to both their witnesses including the complainant had indicated that the trial would take place the following day so not surprisingly he was unable to proceed and applied for an adjournment which was opposed by the defence who were ready to proceed. On further questioning we discovered that the last personal contact that had been made with the complainant had been on the day of the alleged assault some two months previously when she was interviewed by police and had given a statement. Apparently that statement had been withdrawn a few days later. Nobody at CPS had considered applying for a witness summons. According to CPS she and the defendant had resumed their relationship and were once more living together; a situation denied by the defence lawyer who for her part informed us that her client had self harmed since the alleged incident, denied the charge and no longer was involved with his accuser. The CPS application to adjourn was granted and a rescheduled trial was hurriedly arranged for the following week with the bench issuing a witness summons for CPS to serve that same day. Some weeks later a legal advisor mentioned that the complainant failed to attend and although she could not recollect any further details she did say the defendant was cleared.

From our position it seems that there is no overall control at the local CPS. Functions are being effected by staff working above their levels of competence with apparently nobody being held to account for the systemic failures in the chain of procedures required to bring a matter to court with a reasonable prospect of conviction. Problems owing to centralisation of victim support units and interpreter supply are merely added irritants by comparison. Naturally it is at Crown Court where judges` statements of failure and/or inefficiencies make local headlines. Sooner or later there will be tragic consequences from a system failure blamed on lack of resources. It is a pity that it will take such an event for sense perhaps to prevail in Petty France London SW1. Meanwhile the Juggernaut continues into a black hole of its own making.

ADDENDUM 26th July 2012

Although the report doesn`t specify the reason why this offender was not remanded in custody it does state that his trial was adjourned owing to a lack of court time related to financial cuts within HMCTS the result of which was a tragedy for the new victim.

Allied Language Services aka Capita plc were contracted to provide all interpreters to HMCTS on the basis that they undercut any possible opposing contractor. It is public knowledge that this organisation has contributed to court delays as much as any other. The cause is undeniable………….we are heading to a justice system unfit for a major world power albeit vastly diminished.

I`m quite sure that every day dozens of defendants consider that they have had a raw deal from the justice system such as it is. I`m equally sure that just as many complainants consider that they too did not receive the quality of justice they had expected. I also think it not unlikely that in both categories above there is an equal number who would respond if asked about the quality of justice in their own personal circumstance that they did not expect any better. The standard of justice dispensed daily in our courts could be considered the tip of the judicial iceberg the unseen 90% being the hundreds of years of legal precedents and statutes upon which our legal system is based. However to most of the public that history means nothing at all. Considering that confidence in the terms of our law `n order is an essential requisite for a civilised society it is a mistake to think that it can withstand the many apparent aspersions thrown at it from the likes of the Daily Mail and other media.

One area of public concern is the ability or otherwise of this country to have control over its own borders and to be able to deport those who transgress our laws. The Human Rights Act has nothing to do with the European Union but confusion easily arises in a generally accepted sceptic population. The result is a disrespect for the lawmakers.

An article in the Daily Telegraph has highlighted the fact that in 2011 250 foreign nationals convicted of serious offences were spared deportation. A legal system cannot be based on “populist” support but equally it must be felt by most people, using that favourite word of D. Cameron, to be “fair”.

Equally puzzling to some might be the hiding from the jury in the recent Tomlinson case of the accused police officer`s employment history insofar as it was considered prejudicial to him. Apparently the matter of this disclosure was argued in the jury`s absence. Perhaps some time that argument will be made public. In the Stephen Lawrence trial much was known about the history of both men accused who were subsequently found guilty. Of course there were many years for the topic to make the headlines prior to the trial so in an imaginary time shift if the Tomlinson case had come to court some years in the future when the defendant`s unsavoury past would have almost certainly become public knowledge it would have been known to the jury and the verdict might have been different.

Prolific low level thieving, and by that I mean by an offender aged between 30 and 50 usually male whose “previous” runs to at least three pages, is committed to buy alcohol and/or drugs. There is no appropriate sentence. Of course he can be imprisoned for up to 26 weeks but that`s a waste of time and money; he can be fined in theory and set free for time deemed served whilst remanded overnight in custody and have that repeated until he dies an early death. The numbers of such offenders must be in the hundreds of thousands annually when other related low level offences eg drunk and disorderly and public order offences are included. It is sitting on such matters that for the only time in my magisterial career I feel depressed. Yesterday was such a day.

With two very serious very public trials having ended with the acquittal of the defendants, verdicts which will be questioned to say the least, surely it is time for there to be academic research into the functioning of the jury system in the 21st century? With very loose controls on the eligibility for jury service and an education system such that many employers are in despair, if public confidence in the jury system is to be retained we must be certain that the guilt finding process is understood and applied by those chosen for this fundamental civic duty.

It takes real insiders to reveal the inner workings of any large organisation and its shortcomings. Liz Calderbank, Chief Inspector of Probation, and Nick Hardwick, Chief Inspector of Prisons are insiders par excellence. The coalition is throwing or has tried to throw the probation service to the wolves of the private sector. Perhaps the lessons of G4S will eventually be recognised but until then all the re-organisations which have been trumpeted over the last few years for the reformation of offenders within the prison service will be seen as wanting. No doubt the “punish in the community” brigade will once more be telling us prison doesn`t work. Whilst the truism that offenders cannot re-offend while they are incarcerated is self evident this report should be alarming all who take an interest in the subject.

For many years I was a politically active member of a profession which more or less kowtowed to every request from government and very rarely was steadfast in its opposition to whatever was proposed by said governments of various hues. The result is that average incomes of members of that profession are about half in real terms of what they were twenty years ago. The Magistrates` Association although it has developed some longer canines with its recent change of leadership reminds me of that professional representative body of which I was a member; it is scared to bite back. Lawyers, many of whose livelihoods have been drastically affected by changes in legal aid provision, are not so reticent.

The proposals for weekend courts have been soundly and rightly criticised by both parts of the legal profession. To quote the M.A.`s response to Swift and Sure Justice ; ” The MA has broadly welcomed the proposals”………no caveats there except perhaps what might be added in future press releases. Bearing in mind that it is more than likely that these weekend courts if they do proceed from a paper exercise to reality will be presided over by District Judges my initial hopes for a change in tone from our representative body are probably doomed. I fail to understand why it cannot be said out loud that magistrates will not benefit in any way from weekend courts and their implementation will be another sign of our leaders voting for a full turkey dinner at Christmas. Any case made on behalf of Justices of the Peace, the only participants in the whole legal scenario who have no financial axe to grind, can be made from a high moral standpoint. Rarely if ever is this card played.

There is a small minority within our membership who consider that retiring J.P.s should be awarded some sort of medal as recognition for their service……..I am certainly not one of their number. Perhaps there are some more senior with an eye on higher honours when their terms of office are up and will be steadfast in preventing the apple cart from being upset?

Some months ago in the retiring room I inadvertently overhead part of a conversation between two colleagues the gist of which was the apparent continual complaining of others` actions by “that J.P. blogger”. I mentally telepathed the reply that there wouldn`t be a lot to blog about if everything and everyone were to be praised.

On 26/05/2012 my topic was the Justices` Clerks Society ostensibly a representative body but in reality just a spoke in the overwhelming umbrella of the body that goes by the name of Her Majesty`s Courts and Tribunals Service. Whilst I have the highest regard for most of the legal advisors I have encountered since my appointment I cannot say the same for their “Society”.

Their latest “advice” to we magistrates is that whilst defendants appearing in custody should appear in and remain within a secure dock, “those appearing on bail or in answer to a summons should be placed outside the dock unless there is an appreciable risk of them causing disruption or becoming violent.” I disagree. For a decade or two it is and will continue to be a magistrates` court where those defendants will be appearing and within general guidance and good old fashioned common sense it is for the bench to decide where a defendant should be placed. There has to be order and efficiency within a courtroom setting without justice or defendants being compromised and it is our duty to ensure that as far as possible there is no impediment to this simple function. Other agencies might have their obvious deficiencies but we are always in court fully prepared and equipped at 10.00am six days a week. The Justices` Clerks Society instead of finger pointing J.P.s should stick to what it was presumably established for all those years ago:- to represent its ever diminishing membership.

Last week I mentioned in passing London Probation`s tie up with SERCO. Now I am not a natural sympathiser of the trade union movement but in UNISON`s response to that re-organisation I must admit to being generally in agreement. Harold MacMillan, a very Tory prime minister fifty years ago, in a speech in 1985 referred to Margaret Thatcher selling off the family silver with reference to the Tories` privatisation programme of the time which involved mainly utilities. This current obsession with outsourcing public requirements within the remit of the Home Office and Ministry of Justice eg probation services, prisons, police services, etc will eventually be seen for what it is: a disgraceful scandal which will come back to the programmes` authors and bite them hard where it hurts most……..in their colleagues` memoirs when they are living off the publicly funded out of reach for many of the rest of us....... pensions.

Every action of the coalition is viewed through a prism of cost benefit analysis just as surely as Isaac Newton first viewed and postulated on the colour spectrum through the original glass prism. The position of the lay magistracy is being viewed in just such a manner. The most recent report on the cost of unpaid J.P.s compared to the cost of all magistrates` courts being presided over by professional District Judges points to the conclusion that if low grade clerical workers clerked for D.J.s in place of fully qualified legal advisors it would be a close call as to which bench were cheaper.

The only voluntary organisation that can be compared to the lay magistracy in terms of history, importance to society and its functioning alongside and on equal terms with its professional counterpart is the Special Constabulary. Each works for expenses only and has equal powers to his/her professional colleague. One major difference is that some Specials used to undertake the role with perhaps a distant thought that one day they might want to become full professionals. Rarely does a J.P. harbour thought of becoming legally qualified even if I have known one such person although there is a not insubstantial proportion of lawyers who for their own reasons sit on the bench. The policing situation changed about two years ago when the Met announced that in future its intake of new constables would be chosen from its rank of special constables. In simple terms if an individual wished to make a career in the police force s/he would be required to serve unpaid as a special constable for at least eighteen months. This could be described as an apprenticeship by any other name and was a radical and in my opinion welcome change in recruitment policy. Many honourable professions offered training of this type….law, accountancy, optometry and even surgery many years ago. However in such a situation as policing there must be a considered thought as to the proportion of voluntary part time to full time officers. It does not take an Einstein to conclude eg that having “x” pairs of low paid poorly educated PCSOs on the streets is an adequate substitute for “y” warranted professional police officers.

And that brings me to ACPO; an increasingly discredited shadowy organisation funded by public money and seemingly unaccountable to any but the Home Secretary which has pronounced that increases in the numbers of special constables are not based on the enormous cuts facing all constabularies.

With respect to Her Majesty`s Royal Marine Commandos I say tell that to them.

Everybody has had a say on the John Terry affair. I venture to add a comment as far as I am aware, previously unconsidered. If this whole matter had taken place and been tried over the border by a Sherriff sitting alone as Sherriffs do it is beyond reasonable doubt IMHO that a verdict of Not Proven would have been brought. Is that not worth a brief moment of contemplation?

For those for whom the world of criminality and all it entails can be summed up in numbers the 2012 Compendium of re-offending statistics and analysis should prove to be a bean feast. Read and enjoy and have your prejudices reinforced.

Scandals amongst society`s big players are nothing new except hiding them from we the general public is not as easy as it was prior to the age of Twitter and similar sites. The age when a king`s mistress was known to that certain few who kept it from the populace’s prying eyes is well and truly historical. Well perhaps it`s not that simple. M.P.s, bank chiefs, senior police officers and others of similar ilk have all been in the spotlight of late; thankfully the judiciary with some insignificant exceptions has not been tarnished by squalid tales of self aggrandisement. However with senior police officers the picture is somewhat different. The Met has been shown to have been almost a law unto itself. But the last time until recently that a Chief Constable was fired was that of Lancashire in 1977. Since then at least two have been sailing close to the wind. Grahame Maxwell was sacked a couple of months ago for misconduct in his position as Chief Constable of North Yorkshire. The Chief Constable of Fife Norma Graham has picked an odd time to resign her post. She was charged with careless driving over an incident in February and is due to appear in court on August 7th. In April she announced she would retire in August.

There have been not a few senior officers found guilty of misconduct or worse. Details are difficult to obtain but there is enough dirty washing to ask whether the washing machine is not cleaning well enough and whether this is an increasing phenomenon.

It is all too common for those who have held senior positions in public office to reveal their true thoughts after they are living comfortably on their pensions or have been given new jobs on the public sector roundabout. A quite public example is former Cambridgeshire Chief Constable Tom Lloyd. His time in office was not without controversy which cost him his job seven years ago. Apart from his incompetence in the Soham murders of two little girls he was alleged to have been more than friendly with a female against her wishes. Nevertheless he felt rehabilitated enough to tell the House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee that he now favoured the decriminalisation of illegal drugs. Perhaps if aspiring Chief Constables of that opinion share it with the soon to be elected Police Commissioners we will find the real level of support for the current discredited but apparently politically inescapable policy.

The attractions of private sector involvement with public service is unending. The Private Finance Initiative beloved of Gordon Brown has brought many hospitals to the point of bankruptcy; G4S is of course the current headline maker with the fiasco of security at the forthcoming Circus. SERCO can`t get prisoners to court on time and with some police forces still considering having such companies assist in their duties the London Probation Trust has been forced to throw in its lot with the that same SERCO to fulfil its obligations to reduce rates of re offending. Twenty years from now such policies will be seen as misguided to say the least.

For a generation food served in our schools and hospitals was an afterthought. Whatever money was left over in the annual budget was good enough. Thankfully things are now different. Physiologically and psychologically food is almost as necessary as sex [obviously not in the case of schools] for human survival at a modicum level of satisfaction. When I last made a prison visit to one of the country`s largest such establishments the governor told us he had 80p per day to feed his inmates who ate in their cells using the lavatory as a seat for at least one of the two or three sharing a cell. I would hazard a guess that Battersea Animals Home spends similar on its four legged charges. Anyway the dogs and cats don`t have cocaine or heroin readily available to calm the nerves and cool the aggression.

The civil servants employed by the Ministry of Justice might have been taking performance enhancing drugs such is the volume of new initiatives recently paraded before all who would listen.

With loud trumpeting we are told that this government wants to place victims of crime at the centre of a revamped criminal justice system and to that end has produced a new scale of charges so straightforward that nobody knows for sure how it will apply in some complex sentencing matters. But that doesn`t matter; full instructions on the set up will be available the day or two prior to implementation. And why should J.P.s be too concerned? After all it will be Crown Court Judges who will be sentencing murderers to life imprisonment and the proposed £120 surcharge also. This ludicrous imposition of a financial penalty on a life sentence devalues the whole concept of the sentence. Heaven only knows how such an anomaly will be allowed to become the law of the land. The full range is available here. If this money were going into a fund to be directly accessed for victims` compensation there would at least be the basis of an arguable case but it isn`t. It will be going to quangos and charities whose functions are to assist victims of crime; a vastly different proposition.

About three years ago we had justice simple, speedy and summary known to its users as CJSSS. Last year we had STOP DELAYING JUSTICE. A few months ago we were introduced to the STREAMLINED PROCESS and now Nick Herbert is telling us of his SWIFT AND SURE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM. Included within this latest stunt will be Sunday courts, increased use of defendants appearing by video from police stations and, to quote the press release,” We will also explore how single magistrates could provide a more visible link between the summary justice system and local communities”. This probably alludes to remarks testing the water three years ago by Police Chiefs and others when “Tesco Courts” were mooted. I suppose some freezer cabinets could be converted into docks and the fresh fish counter provide an area for a witness box with a magistrate sitting at a check out desk. This is just a stage in persuading Justices of the Peace that their function being demoted from the courtroom is in no way reducing their position within the overall system…………….bollocks I say.

With all this pussy footing to disguise its prime aim of reducing costs to the bare bone a summary justice system perhaps in need of updating but a system nevertheless that offered true local honest justice is being destroyed by an establishment with no political boundaries determined to do away with an unpaid magistracy over which it has only limited control. Half a generation from now there will be Euro justice with professional Judges sitting alone to decide an ordinary defendant`s fate; not just that of a multi millionaire footballer.

The tragic case of the murder of 13 year old Casey Kearney by Hannah Bonser, a woman with a history of serious mental disorder, is a reminder to all magistrates of the onerous task of granting or refusing applications under the Mental Health Act s.135 made by approved mental health professionals.

Recently I have posted on my early days on the bench with senior colleagues virtually rubber stamping entry warrants by utility companies and police search warrants. My more recent experiences indicate that with warrants to detain an individual under the Mental Health Act there is a definite disinclination to refuse such applications. I can recollect two occasions in the last eighteen months when, sitting with one other, we agreed that the information presented was lacking enough weight to allow us to grant the warrant to detain. Indeed on one of these occasions the applicant was merely the “message boy” and had no knowledge of the case apart from what had been written by his colleague which in itself was vague and mostly hearsay with virtually no medical history. He was advised, that if the matter were considered so serious, he should have a colleague with detailed knowledge make a further application ASAP.

I would urge all colleagues to consider very carefully, as I`m sure most do, such applications which are usually of high standard and be aware that as in findings of fact at trial there are certain thresholds to be met; the problem being that they are often more difficult to determine and upon them hangs a person`s liberty and our duty of public protection.

All who are involved in the criminal process are familiar with the “no comment police interview”. Those who have been appointed prior to 1994 will be aware of the significance of the change in the wording of the police caution that year as a result of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act which altered the terms of a suspect`s right of silence. As arbiters of fact magistrates, when considering the weight to be attached to such a no comment interview, often have to rely on what might loosely be termed “wisdom”. An article on this topic in an edition of the Law Society Gazette is worth a few minutes reading time.

I don`t read The Guardian. It`s editorial slant is not a good fit with my view of the world and its peoples, their actions and reactions. However its coverage of matters criminal sometimes shows more lucidity and common sense than its overall political approach. Such was and is its reporting of the riots last August. This report is an interesting commentary apart from one omission; no mention is made that the vast majority of cases was dealt with by District Judges{M.C.} Indeed I have not read any report that informs exactly what proportion of these cases was dealt with by a bench of magistrates. Perhaps there are such statistics and perhaps not. I personally was involved in only a single case resulting from the mayhem; a charge of handling stolen goods and in the pre court preparation we were advised that direction had come from “above” and correspondingly approved by the Deputy Justices` Clerk that the defendant should be remanded in custody on a not guilty plea. She did plead not guilty and we remanded on bail as her individual circumstances demanded notwithstanding the so called “guidance”.

With the monstrosity of the forthcoming extravaganza rapidly approaching it appears that the Ministry of Justice is preparing for a further period of speedy justice ostensibly for those non residents charged during the Games. I would hazard a guess that similar rapidity will not be lifted for home grown miscreants. How many will face justice from a lay bench is imponderable but is likely to be a very small minority. This is the future for J.P.s writ in microcosm.

ADDENDUM 11/07/2012

An interesting exchange from yesterday`s parliamentary business.

Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed, Liberal Democrat)

When fast-track courts were used following the riots, there was a feeling among magistrates that district judges had been used extensively and the lay magistracy had not been used as much as it could have been. Will that happen in Olympic cases, or is the Solicitor-General looking carefully at this?

Link to this
Hansard source (Citation: HC Deb, 10 July 2012, c165)

Edward Garnier (Solicitor General; Harborough, Conservative)

I am sorry, but I found it quite difficult to hear my right hon. Friend, but in so far as I heard his question, the courts will be manned by all appropriate judges. At the Crown court, clearly there will be Crown court judges; in magistrates courts, district judges will be deployed and, where appropriate, justices of the peace will sit in banks of three.

Somewhere deep in the bowels of the Ministry of Justice hide the statistics that would make merry with all the protestations by coalition spokesmen that cuts in the financing of our courts generally and the current contracts made for eg the supply of court interpreters or the transportation of prisoners to and from those courts do not and will not affect the day to day efficiency of the courts in their prime function of convicting the guilty and acquitting the innocent. Lawyers in Kings Lynn would be interested. Perhaps one day the seekers will discover what the hiders have hidden.

I`ve been doing this job for a while and when something new happens or a procedural change surprises me I am not surprised. Earlier this week the bench was mailed a multi page document on supposed best practice in dealing with interpreters in court. A day or two later with a defendant in the secure dock and the interpreter having affirmed her details and language I requested as I have many times previously that she join the defendant at which point our L/A told the SERCO person and the defendant to leave the dock and go behind the secure door until the interpreter was in place in the dock subsequent to which they should return. He later explained that that was the latest advice from the J.C. If, however the interpreter were already in the dock the defendant would be able to join him or her. Needless to add but I shall, that latest “advice” was absent from the multi page advice note. It was more concerned with the most simplistic of points eg “the chairman should ensure that court officers speak slowly enough and give due consideration to there being an interpreter translating proceedings”. Am I surprised?..............................

Snippet…”a small piece of something”. Sometimes snippets are just as or more significant than the whole thing whether it be a piece of upholstery fabric, an overheard conversation or a piece of news.

Depending on one`s political and/or philosophical viewpoint private schools and private health insurance should either be abolished or cherished as part of a free society, where the individual decides where to spend his/her money. Not before time a legal entrepreneur has decided the time is ripe to offer criminal legal insurance. The latest controls on legal aid availability indicate that this is a market ripe for exploitation. Time will tell what demand there is. In a few years perhaps such insurance cover will be available as an add on to house hold policies or be taken up by currently established companies.

I am not entirely hostile to the concept of Police Community Support Officers but I have previously criticised their low minimum educational requirements and their inclination as witnesses in court to be parroting well known phrases or sayings such as, “he approached me in a menacing manner, his fists clenched, his shoulders hunched and his eyes bulging”. Those in charge of such matters in Nottingham have decided to increase the powers of these people. I think it is a bad idea and so does former police authority chairman John Clarke. Read all about it. It could be coming to a constabulary near you.

I am not a great advocate of teaching recalcitrant adults how to think; if parents and soon enough thirteen years of school cannot do the job what hope is there for an underfunded, undermanned, poorly managed outsourced probation service?

With probation services set to undergo further changes Liz Calderbank`s
HM Chief Inspector of Probation recent letter to the Justice Ministry is a political work of art in her subtle criticisms.

She is not alone in her concerns. Lord Ramsbotham, a former prisons inspector, is quite forthright in his own criticisms of the proposals on the table for the probation services.

I have commented on delays at crown courts and the obfuscating and oleaginous responses of Her Majesty`s Courts and Tribunals Service to any criticism. It`s going to get worse. This time Judge Sean Morris at Lincoln Crown Court had made public his frustration and once again HMCTS evades all responsibility; "Listing of individual cases is a judicial function; however HMCTS actively works with the judiciary and other criminal justice partners on listing issues and in particular on meeting the needs of victims and witnesses. Courts will always seek to list cases at neighbouring courts, where possible, in order to avoid delays."

The principle of displacement orders……..my terminology……..to shift a socially disturbed and disturbing offender to another area is a complete waste of time and money. It is a sign of total failure in there being no facility to put such people away from society in low security accommodation where they might realise that liberty is a precious commodity. The shifting of such offenders from one post code to another sums up much of what is wrong with our ideas of punishment and rehabilitation.

Snippet…”a small piece of something”. Sometimes snippets are just as or more significant than the whole thing whether it be a piece of upholstery fabric, an overheard conversation or a piece of news.

When I was a newbie on the bench I now recollect that there were many occasions where the chairmen appeared to endorse the “rubber stamping” of evidence brought by government agencies particularly applications for warrants of entry and search warrants by utility companies and police respectively. I well remember one occasion, when in the retiring room on a particular case, and explaining my point of view the chairman, a woman nearing retirement, exclaimed, “God save me from new magistrates”. Eventually she apologised after some heavy persuasion from the respected third member of the team that day. Thankfully, although there is much to criticise in the courts systems, these outdated attitudes by a previous generation of J.P.s are indeed now outdated.

A sitting not too long ago brought back for me a couple of the above memories. On having before us a series of applications by police for search warrants it was noticed that there was a request for two occasions at each address; usually a single occasion is requested. On being questioned the officer told us that they simply wanted a second opportunity if the first yielded insufficient evidence. When asked on what grounds more evidence might be available on a subsequent search eg an expected future delivery of stolen goods to the address, we were told that there was nothing in particular except perhaps they`d be lucky. We asked the officer to change the requirement to a single occasion and initial the change.

Despite its being almost impossible nowadays for a utility company to cut somebody`s domestic electrical supply for non payment such a threat was made by one such company`s representative applying for an entry warrant. When questioned she said quite blatantly that they never cut off electricity supply but they`d never get paid if the threat weren`t made in writing. We signed the warrant when the appropriate redaction was made.

To cap it all a series of prosecutions by the Vehicle and Operator Services Agency relied upon very poor quality analogue tachometer print out copies without any mileage details. Although there is a statutory requirement that such instruments must be calibrated and checked every two years the prosecutor could give us no information at all on whether or when these tests had been carried out on the lorries in question. We decided that the combination of evidence before us was not enough to meet the required standard. At the end of the sitting the prosecutor mentioned that she had had a learning session as no bench previously had questioned her similarly. At the post court review our L/A agreed with our scrutiny and conclusion in all these matters above. As magistrates we should not shirk individually from such scrutiny however reticent a colleague might be.

The spectacle that the great and good in their wisdom from Tony Blair and Ken Livingston downwards wished upon Londoners and the rest is nearly upon us. Learning from that great democrat Nero huge stadia have been constructed to entice the populace, if they can afford a ticket from the incorruptible Olympic Organising Committee, to forget for a while the penury into which many have been engulfed by the so far non criminal activities of those for whom the British version of capitalism allowed so many flaws to exist in the constructions to contain this beast which when allowed to go feral reverts to its unencumbered tooth and claw to monopolise its environment. And so to the envisioned disorder during the spectacle which the authorities are determined to snuff out at the earliest opportunity or at least ensure the perpetrators get their just deserts.

Alison Saunders, Chief Crown Prosecutor from CPS London, told The Times newspaper in a recent interview: “Many people who come to the Olympics won’t live here, so it is important that if offences are committed, we act quickly. “People who commit offences on Tuesday will be before the court on Wednesday.” Every magistrate in the country is well aware that people who commit offences whether in Newcastle or Newquay , and are arrested whether on a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday will, if they are to be charged, appear before magistrates the following day. Such offenders don`t have to be coming from Eastern Europe in organised gangs to wreak havoc on those watching the running and jumping; they are doing it every day of the week already.. It is all about perception. We won`t be told that having interpreters in court at short notice for such offenders is currently rather a hit and miss affair under the new cost cutting contract. So anyway why is this press release being made? IMHO the CPS like all the others uses its press office to fool the public. It has come to the state that the more that this becomes common place the less confidence , belief and trust will exist between the bodies involved and those they are trying to convince.

The financial, social and moral decline that could be said to exist eg in Greece and Italy and which was taken for granted in eastern Europe did not happen overnight; it was and is an insidious change in the very bases of a society eg one law for the rich and another for the poor, only the not quite poor pay taxes etc.etc. When the nazis invented propaganda in its modern form little did we realise that half a century later it would become de rigueur amongst all British public organisations. The CPS is not doing what is not being done amongst virtually every publicly funded body already.