27 March 2024 , 06:08
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Our legal system creates a horrible sense of injustice all round, and it is no credit to this government that it has failed to act
WE like to comfort ourselves that the British justice system is among the fairest in the world.
Even when it gets things wrong — as it did horrendously with the sub-postmasters wrongfully convicted, or in the case of Andrew Malkinson, who spent 17 years in prison for a rape he did not commit — we still want to believe that the courts come up with the right answer eventually.
Andrew Malkinson spent 17 years in prison for a rape he did not commitCredit: PA
But anyone who thinks that way perhaps hasn’t yet been caught out by the Single Justice Procedure — a system by which half a million minor criminal prosecutions are handled each year.
This secret court makes a mockery of the scales of justice proudly displayed above the most famous criminal court in the land, the Old Bailey.
The SJP involves cases being heard by a single magistrate, often taking little more than a minute and without the defendant having any legal representation.
Remarkably, many people have ended up being convicted without even being aware of it.
Industrial scale
Notionally, everyone who comes up before the SJP is given 21 days’ notice and has the chance either to plead guilty or not guilty.
They can request the chance to appear before the court in person if they want to.
But if they miss the 21-day deadline — which they might well do if the letter is held up by a postal strike, because it went to the wrong address or if the accused was in hospital at the time — a magistrate can convict them in their absence, and in their ignorance.
How, in a civilised country, can we end up convicting a 78-year-old woman for failing to insure her unused car, when she was suffering from dementia and living in a care home?
Or there was the case of an elderly man whose TV licence expired while he was in hospital for 11 weeks.
Even though he renewed it as soon as he came out, his case had already been referred to an SJP court, which found him guilty anyway — without any chance to defend himself.
The TV licence fee is one of the main uses for the SJP, prosecuting 120,000 people a year, 75 per cent of whom are women.
These industrial-scale criminal prosecutions have continued in spite of promises by the Government to decriminalise non-payment of the TV licence, putting it on the same legal footing as other utility bills, which are civil matters.
The Government loves to give us the impression that it is on the side of the poor and against abuse of power by heavy-handed officials, but it created the whole SJP process in the first place.
It was an invention of the Cameron government, supposedly to free up court time for more serious cases.
The TV licence fee is one of the main uses for the SJP, prosecuting 120,000 people a year, 75 per cent of whom are women
Not only that, the Government has encouraged the monster that is the SJP by granting local authorities the power to prosecute motorists for minor traffic violations such as stopping in a yellow box junction — something which previously was the preserve of the police.
The Government has also emboldened train companies to prosecute people caught travelling without a ticket, or with the wrong kind of ticket.
A notice went up at my local station warning that the penalty fare for not having a ticket had been increased from £20 to £100 — in the same week as the lone ticket machine was out of order.
Just as with the litter wardens sent out on the streets with body cameras to catch people in some cases feeding bread to the ducks, train companies have started to outsource revenue collection to private companies on contracts which incentivise them to issue as many fines as possible.
In one case a woman found herself given a penalty fare for standing on a crowded train with one foot inside the first class compartment.
But it isn’t the Government, nor indeed any of our elected politicians, which have finally awoken to the injustice.
It is magistrates themselves who have objected to how they are expected to work.
Sense of injustice
The Magistrates’ Association has written to the Government demanding reform.
One of its complaints is that magistrates are expected to decide cases on written evidence alone, with virtually no time given to read it.
In parts of London, it transpires, magistrates have been set a target of handling a prosecution every 90 seconds.
Our legal system has gone topsy-turvy, pouncing on people for not having a TV licence while they are invalided in hospital — yet leaving the real criminals to go free.
It creates a horrible sense of injustice all round, and it is no credit to this government that it has failed to act.
It is the most minor offenders — and not all of them guilty — who are being dealt with through the SJP
That could result in a conviction which could change the life of the person convicted — but who might not even have known they were being prosecuted.
The magistrates have also demanded that journalists be allowed to report from the courts, from which they are currently excluded.
Of course, we all want law and order.
But it is the most minor offenders — and not all of them guilty — who are being dealt with through the SJP.
At the same time we have police forces who are refusing to investigate burglaries or online fraud, some of it involving tens of thousands of pounds.