The latter.
It fixes absolutely none of the current issues, creates whole new ones and removes a largely fundamental right in the process.
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Iâll just leave this here.
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It is a stupid idea, and Leveson is a fool for suggesting it.
Watch the government next go on a blitz telling you how good the Canadian model is, but without telling you that the Canadians donât have magistrates. (Because they decided they were incompetentâŚ) and still retain a right to elect a jury trial.
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Itâs essentially creating a 3rd tier inbetween the existing ones.
Something has to be done to sort out the current backlog, but at the same time speeding through the cases doesnât solve the problem when we donât have enough prison space to send people to even if they do get convicted.
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It doesnât fix that either.
We donât have enough open court rooms, we donât have enough judges, we donât have enough magistrates and we donât have enough lawyers.
Decades of underfunding are coming home to roost.
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But plenty of criminals!
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Yes and no, a huge amount of crime, especially volume crime is commited by the same people. Iâve cut shoplifting where I am by 80% by getting 3 people hefty prison sentences, when they come out there will be an immediate spike until they go back in again.
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I wonder how quickly you could train a load of more senior service personnel and loan them out for an Op RESCRIPT-style effort as magistrates.
Obviously wouldnât solve those other problemsâŚ
Potential risk in having so many people with a similar frame of reference too.
Good effort, not sure which emoji was best for this one!
We should ditch magistrates full stop. Theyâre a scourge of the justice system.
Overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly middle class overwhelmingly prosecution minded.
A better way to reduce the numbers of elected jury trials would be to make the lower court actually fair enough so that people wouldnt elect to avoid them in the first place.
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Your having a laugh, the do gooders in the Magistrates let so many people off it should be a crime.
Just described your own profession havenât you?
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As magistrates are volunteers perhaps there is a mindset shift between London magistrates & the rest of the country?
In general, locally, they er on the advice of the CPS & the police despite the evidence.
the larger issue is the overwhelming inconsistency (which is not an unfamiliar issue with volunteers).
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Perhaps the London Mags are less white. Elsewhere, itâs stark. Only 14% of the magistracy are from ethnic minorities. Even in Bristol, non-white magistrates are very rare
The bar is about 17% ethnic minority, the general population 19%. But in crime itâs only going to get worse as it gets harder to make a living on Legal Aid and pay back the debt you have to take on to get here.
And yeah, the magistrates are pro-prosecution, incredibly and stupidly so.
A friend recently won a judicial review when a bench decided to adjourn a trial because the CPS had simply forgotten to warn a key witness. The reason they told the legal advisor for allowing the completely unmeritorious adjournment was âthey didnât want the defendant getting away with it.â
In view of Lammyâs plans, a comment from His Honour Judge Menury at Liverpool Crown Court at the sudden conclusion of the Doyle case to the jury. And this was not a case that would come under hos plans for the withdrawal of the jury system at this level of offending.
âYou go with the thanks of the court. We couldnât operate without you. You are now released from this case.â
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Well they canât at the moment, because the system says they are needed, in the same way that at present the trains canât operate without drivers, doesnât mean itâs permanant does it.
DLR is driverless, just as UAVs are pilotless from from within the airframe.
Computer to replace train drivers is a viable option, but computers cannot think or deliberate, so in my opinion juries are still very much needed. What about if there is personal animus between a barrister / solicitor and the judge, could that affect the result?
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Could you use AI to replace magistrates or even CPS charging decisions (perhaps calculating a probability of success)
Head of Google has just warned not to rely on AI.
Doesnât seem to be an issue in the Magistrates where the majority of trials take place. They also arenât talking about a single judge sitting in isolation, they are talking about a Judge and 2 District Judges forming a bench.