So I see that Sir Brian Leveson has made his much awaited recommendations for reform of teh court system.
There are some bits I really agree with offences like Assault Emergency Worker have no place in a Crown Court. It was poorly thought out legislation in the first place, from a policing point of view all of needed was a tweak to the sentencing guidelines for assault police, so I see this would be a positive change.
My concern about some of the others like Criminal Damage under £10K is that we will end up like we did with shoplifting, saying “ah well it’s less than £200 it’s not important”.
What do others think? I sense a lively debate coming in based on recent discussions around Palestine Action.
We don’t have the courts, court staff, lawyers, or magistrates to run the present system. None of this changes those problems, while removing rights in a pretence of fixing them.
We need to invest in the current system. Legal Aid is so paltry that it won’t attract lawyers, plenty of my colleagues are leaving because they can be paid more, for less in other sectors. I’m not saying we need commercial rates, but we need enough to stop the brain drain.
We need a complete review of the current caseload, there’s so much crap in the system that is now capable of alternative resolutions, because of delays and disengagement, we did it during COVID to reduce the backlogs in the South West and it worked, but it needed strength of will. We prosecute way too many bad breakups as Stalkings and high level harassment, they could be resolved easily with Restraining Orders in many cases.
We need a massive recruitment push for Magistrates for minorities, the Magistracy is old, white, and mostly male. We need younger Magistrates from all backgrounds. They’re crap, but they’re free and their legitimacy would improve if it was seen as a useful piece of public service for working age people, as opposed to something to do for retired white people.
Make the imposition of the Notification Requirements a judicial decision in more cases, lots of low level sex cases are run to trial because the secondary impacts are worse than the sentence you get if you lose, if you put the decision into judicial hands, they can use it as a carrot for pleas in those cases where it makes sense and a stick for people who run silly trials.
Re-open the Nighingale Courtrooms, so that more trials can take place.
The thing is, the CJS, compared to other budgets, is cheap.
Take this example. In 2012, the legal aid bill had apparently grown to silly levels. Everyone agreed, people welcomed it, thanks to all those Mail stories where the cost of defending the guilty in high profile trials had been lamented as huge wastes of money. So it was cut, but not just for crime, but civil and family legal aid too.
In the next budget, George Osborne heralded a cut to tax on the price of the pint of a penny.
That penny on the pint would have paid for the Legal Aid cuts. (And you may think that booze paying for the CJS has a poetic justice to it.)
Removing lawyers wastes money elsewhere, family cases take longer with only one side represented, and then the court has to pay for cross-examination lawyers anyway, on a higher rate. Criminal trials being abandoned for lack of counsel leaves people waiting in custody longer, which costs the state money to house them.
The reduced court capacity means that courts have to do more work before the trials start, so trials last longer than they should do, and trials incur daily costs for the lawyers.
Interesting we are currently getting a push that we are treating too many stallings as harrasments, I’ve just done a full day of e-learning on the matter. I suppose that’s a symptom of cuts too, stalking is a PIP2 investigation and goes to CID, whereas harrasment is a PIP1 and stays with uniform.
It really bugs me, just because you are probably guilty doesn’t somehow you deny your right to offer a defence and to proper legal counsel on how to do it (especially since if you are guilty that legal council will be advising you to take your 1/3 off and not waste everyone’s time. Seeing loads about the airport clowns at the moment, yes they clearly are guilty but if a Jury decides differently then the crown has failed to make its case properly.
There’s a difference between the investigation art and the charge/court progression where the problem with Stalking is that it’s actually easier to prove than Harassment, even when in layman’s terms the activity isn’t actually ‘stalking’ it’s easier to use the Stalking offences under the PFHA. Defendants won’t plead to Stalking, because of the stigma around the word, plenty of punters would admit harassment on exactly the same facts. The sentencing guidelines are also exactly the same for s.2 and s.2A offences, and s.4 and s.4A offences.
But generally, we’re dealing with way too many Crown Court cases which at their core, are just bad breakups. I think a lot of them could be diverted out of the system entirely with decent mediation and education.
Correct me if I’m wrong here, but doesn’t guilt in England & Wales refer to guilt of act and guilt of mind, and this is how “preventing the greater harm” arguments work? That essentially yes, they did break the law, but in doing so can usually argue that their illegal actions prevented a greater harm from occurring?
EDIT: Realised that this refers to the ABH case and not the JSO cases…
Well the ability of the CPS to lose cases is never beyond my imagination, I’m just interested to see what he defence is going to be.
The only thing I can think of is that they will argue that the officers weren’t acting in the execution of their duty/they didn’t know it was the police and therefore they can argue self defence.
I know that one of the first officers questioned was asked if he has identified himself as a police officer and replied with words to the effect of “no because I was in full uniform including hat and gun so it was obvious who and what I was”. Unless there is something outrageous on the Bodyworn I can’t see that defence going far.
Looking at the sentencing guidelines for ABH they are probably at a 3 year starting point, so a guilty plea and a bit of mitigation and if not a suspended sentence (unlikely due to the Optics) they are still looking at being out in a year. Whereas with a. Not guilty and a bit of aggravation/a good Victim Personal Statement they are looking at 3.5 years so almost double the amount of time inside.
The problem I see with them running a greater ill defence is that a) the aircraft they attacked were UK based so not involved in that conflict at all b) aren’t compatible with Israeli aircraft (they use flying boom) c) the RAF’s only contribution that can be proven is shooting down Iranian drones/rockets aimed at Israel. (Not sure you can claim that you are preventing something worse when the thing you are preventing is to enable the killing of Israeli civilians).
They’re running self defence to excessive force, considering the original video was heavily criticised for the police’s actions, I’d say they have a run. Especially considering the Crown have to prove they weren’t acting in self defence.
Manchester Evening Post has a decent running update page on it, one officer today being accused of stamping on them, and arguing he was just trying to break his radio cable? This was after tasering the guy to the ground.
The problem with that idea is that all of the police use of force, such as the stamp and smacking the mother in the face with a Taser was AFTER the assaults had taken place not before.
You could and I’m sure the IOPC are looking at running a persecution saying they Red misted and retaliated after they had been assaulted, but that doesn’t make the original assaults on the police lawful.
The level of violence used by the suspects was pretty significant from what I have seen. And clearly was not expected either. The level of force used in return seems pretty valid. The only thing that stands out to be as above appropriate force was the kicks directly to the head of the guy who was down. But, I also understand it’s very easy for me as a layperson to think that. I’ve never been in that situation and have had 0 training for it. Given he had already been down once and got back up, I can sort of see why the officer might have done that.
But saying he was trying to kick his radio is a load of
