Guest Blog 93

Process or Fairness?

After having sat for a year or so as a magistrate in the Adult court, I had my first courtroom experience sitting as a single justice in the Applications court. This unnerving introduction was in the courtroom set aside for such hearings and involved reading and signing myriad warrants including police search warrants, mental health detention and batches of Utility Company right of entry applications which recently have been subject to revised guidance. It was unclear to me if this court was open to the public or the press. But with the introduction of the Single Justice Procedure (SJP) in 2015 designed with admirable ambition to provide efficient and speedy summary for low order, non-imprisonable offences (mainly traffic) that the format and pace of justice moved up a gear!

My first introduction to SJP was quite an instructive one. Located in one of the back rooms at the court with two computer screens on adjoining tables feeding in the days listings of offences was the Legal Advisor. I was more than a little startled to discover that the applicable fines on a finding of proven, beyond reasonable doubt had already been filled in advance! The offences were mainly speeding and driving with No Insurance, with equivocal on line pleas set back for a trial date. As the listings numbered in the dozens, I felt under pressure to complete each case submitted in mitigation, often heart rending and at times near unreadable. It felt unsettling and unethical to my understanding of open and accountable justice. It was clear that the public/press were excluded from this procedure.

One of the more concerning aspects of the SJP process that I struggled with was defendants submitting incomplete information, (literacy and language barriers appeared prominent reasons for this) particularly on financial means. This set in motion an automatic default calculation of 'presumed income' of £440 which often meant with fines, costs and surcharge that sums of money of hundreds of pounds would be deducted on notification. I raised this concern during this period, but the pressures of time meant that further discussion was considered inappropriate.

Often pleas of mitigation seemed to be solidly grounded, that is to say domestic circumstances that might elicit a more favourable penalty in open court would not be fully explored in what was a often experienced as a hothouse sentencing environment.

The submissions to the SJP are premised on early guilty pleas, but where equivocal pleas were entered in my experience the matter was either put back or listed for the traffic court.

But the decision on guilt was that of the single magistrate, with the formulaic 'proven ' entered on the sentencing outcome notice. My expressed concern again was that the sheer weight of SJP cases often meant decision making was hurried and presumptive.

I seldom heard any murmurings of doubt on the SJP process from colleagues, other than the volume of cases dealt with and my reservations when shared on open justice appeared to be side-lined when SJP was considered low end offending that merited process over fairness to defendants.

The Magistrates Association did pick up, albeit late in the day, the disquiet over utility entry warrants and this acted as a catalyst for opening up the SJP to wider scrutiny and openness.

All magistrates on the Adult court rota (6 months timeline) were assigned SJP sittings. It was assumed at first that half day sittings would be sufficient to accommodate this. But once the stark reality of increased volume prosecutions kicked in, expanded to include matters such as TV licencing and with tentative plans to invoke motoring disqualifications (with rights of appeal) as integral to this, whole day sittings were included. SJP was favoured by some colleagues who appeared to revel in the intensity of such busy sittings. But many others (myself included) felt distinctly uncomfortable with this form of closed and opaque justice.

By 2020 the number of case heard via SJP had reached a staggering 535,000 according to the court service and any judicial murmurings of residual concern seemed to go unnoticed. I was often bemused by listening to some of my colleagues in the retiring room extol with almost fetishistic glee the number of such cases they had completed (processed!) in one sitting. I did flag up my misgivings on how this might square with open justice, in the sense that the financial and penal consequences of a criminal conviction were impacting unfairly on those with the least means. But such concerns seemed not to matter. I do not want to impugn the motives of colleagues, given the busy court that I sat in. But SJP seemed very much like a Cinderella feature, with an eager willingness by some to change their rota so that the enthusiasts had the choice to sit.

The House of Commons Justice Select Committee in its 2022 report supported moves to widen access to justice and the Magistrates Association have more recently sought to offer much needed solutions to the current impasse on open and accountable justice, especially around SJP. But it is significant that this move was as a result of some sterling investigative journalism, which meant this unjust gadfly in the magistrates courts now looks like it might be taken more seriously and who knows rectified?

A Former Magistrate