The Crown Court trial queue needs to be cut urgently and experienced trial resources already exist . Isn’t it time for magistrates to be empowered to direct summary trial if they determine that their 12 months sentencing powers are sufficient if the defendant is convicted?
Keep, of course, the existing right to appeal to the Crown Court judge sitting with lay magistrates. (Not too dissimilar to an intermediate court).
By reserving jury trials for those facing 12 months+, the queue with its remand prisoners and waiting victims will bring a balance of justice by the change.
You may recall I fought against any reduction to the right to elect trial by jury when I was chairman of the Criminal Bar Association over 20 years ago when several attempts were made to do precisely that. At that time public opinion and a more considered approach led to those proposals being defeated. The arguments for keeping trial by jury are as good if not more important than ever. Despite this, by a process of attrition the criminal justice system has now been placed in an intolerable position. The delay is caused by disgraceful underfunding the system consistently for years (which you seem to suggest may be deliberate), and by poor decision-making or deliberate inaction by some of the recent Lord Chancellors ( I specifically acquit Alex Chalk of this charge). The result is that some revolutionary and imaginative action is now needed.
Lord Timpson has suggested that one third of prisoners did not have been sent to prison. This would almost certainly have been the case had there been practical and imaginative alternatives to prison available. Sentencing guidelines although well reasoned have allowed sentences to creep up in a way that I suspect none of us might have anticipated. This is an obvious case for study. In order to make alternatives more readily available , we must ramp up our rehabilitation services, improve the state of our prisons, and concentrate more on creating decent citizens rather than damaging their chances forever. It is nonsense to say that prison works. It is just a necessity in the case of serious offending and for those for whom rehabilitation has failed. I certainly think that some kind of intermediate court may be worth looking at. I am however not convinced by some of the current arguments to justify it. These seem to be a little more than a response to the truism that ‘something must be done’. We can all agree with that. There are so much to say on all of these subjects. There is also so much evidence already available to inform a new approach. We do need a retired senior judge assisted by a carefully selected body of reforming individuals to have a look at this whole question as a matter of urgency. It should however be done quickly. These kinds of investigations have taken too long of late. I am delighted that Lord Timpson has taken some of this burden on the shoulders of his department. He seems the kind of man who might affect some sensible reforms. There is an appetite for it across the country, I feel. We must now get on with it.
I have this profoundly uneasy feeling that prison “policy” as in its sparing use for the violent and dangerous and the truly egregious is once again slithering down the agenda. I am with the LCJ in that ANY further tampering with or diminution to jury trial for “either way” cases NEEDS to be informed by a genuine rather than token consideration of the many reasons why retention of that right is so much valued and its removal so feared. I understand and sympathise with those judges who find its exercise frustrating but they- and bean counters in government- should surely NEVER be the principal arbiters. I still very strongly suspect that some of those groups in
positions of power and influence are in truth GUNNING FOR jury trial for ALL jury trials by starting with the least and at the other end the most serious of cases and then - once having had their way at each end- Cornish pasty-like munched their way through until able in their minds to maintain that there is nothing then left worth salvaging. As to the “last resort” as it ought to be of prison, let us please- THIS time- have some intellectual stamina and the courage of our convictions. Less squinting at what this or any other administration may fear the opinion polls and the more rabid media outlets are telling them. Indeed, how about a sustained spasm of courage and sanity over sentencing TOGETHER WITH a bold and adequate funding of the Probation Service ?AND a return to an ethical and humanitarian management of our prisons, with adequate and FULLY TRAINED, vocational staffing? Finally, finally, let us empty the prisons of those thereby sucked into a more determined criminality and drug use.
The Crown Court trial queue needs to be cut urgently and experienced trial resources already exist . Isn’t it time for magistrates to be empowered to direct summary trial if they determine that their 12 months sentencing powers are sufficient if the defendant is convicted?
Keep, of course, the existing right to appeal to the Crown Court judge sitting with lay magistrates. (Not too dissimilar to an intermediate court).
By reserving jury trials for those facing 12 months+, the queue with its remand prisoners and waiting victims will bring a balance of justice by the change.
Hi Malcolm. I rather agree.
You may recall I fought against any reduction to the right to elect trial by jury when I was chairman of the Criminal Bar Association over 20 years ago when several attempts were made to do precisely that. At that time public opinion and a more considered approach led to those proposals being defeated. The arguments for keeping trial by jury are as good if not more important than ever. Despite this, by a process of attrition the criminal justice system has now been placed in an intolerable position. The delay is caused by disgraceful underfunding the system consistently for years (which you seem to suggest may be deliberate), and by poor decision-making or deliberate inaction by some of the recent Lord Chancellors ( I specifically acquit Alex Chalk of this charge). The result is that some revolutionary and imaginative action is now needed.
Lord Timpson has suggested that one third of prisoners did not have been sent to prison. This would almost certainly have been the case had there been practical and imaginative alternatives to prison available. Sentencing guidelines although well reasoned have allowed sentences to creep up in a way that I suspect none of us might have anticipated. This is an obvious case for study. In order to make alternatives more readily available , we must ramp up our rehabilitation services, improve the state of our prisons, and concentrate more on creating decent citizens rather than damaging their chances forever. It is nonsense to say that prison works. It is just a necessity in the case of serious offending and for those for whom rehabilitation has failed. I certainly think that some kind of intermediate court may be worth looking at. I am however not convinced by some of the current arguments to justify it. These seem to be a little more than a response to the truism that ‘something must be done’. We can all agree with that. There are so much to say on all of these subjects. There is also so much evidence already available to inform a new approach. We do need a retired senior judge assisted by a carefully selected body of reforming individuals to have a look at this whole question as a matter of urgency. It should however be done quickly. These kinds of investigations have taken too long of late. I am delighted that Lord Timpson has taken some of this burden on the shoulders of his department. He seems the kind of man who might affect some sensible reforms. There is an appetite for it across the country, I feel. We must now get on with it.
I have this profoundly uneasy feeling that prison “policy” as in its sparing use for the violent and dangerous and the truly egregious is once again slithering down the agenda. I am with the LCJ in that ANY further tampering with or diminution to jury trial for “either way” cases NEEDS to be informed by a genuine rather than token consideration of the many reasons why retention of that right is so much valued and its removal so feared. I understand and sympathise with those judges who find its exercise frustrating but they- and bean counters in government- should surely NEVER be the principal arbiters. I still very strongly suspect that some of those groups in
positions of power and influence are in truth GUNNING FOR jury trial for ALL jury trials by starting with the least and at the other end the most serious of cases and then - once having had their way at each end- Cornish pasty-like munched their way through until able in their minds to maintain that there is nothing then left worth salvaging. As to the “last resort” as it ought to be of prison, let us please- THIS time- have some intellectual stamina and the courage of our convictions. Less squinting at what this or any other administration may fear the opinion polls and the more rabid media outlets are telling them. Indeed, how about a sustained spasm of courage and sanity over sentencing TOGETHER WITH a bold and adequate funding of the Probation Service ?AND a return to an ethical and humanitarian management of our prisons, with adequate and FULLY TRAINED, vocational staffing? Finally, finally, let us empty the prisons of those thereby sucked into a more determined criminality and drug use.