Christmas Bonus

I have just received a patronising and unneeded payment of ten pounds as a 'Christmas Bonus' - a ludicrous nonsense that no government has had the courage to dump.

I am going to give mine to a charity. I do a bit of voluntary work for Age UK Buckinghamshire, and I can assure you that the volunteers and staff fill a real need; further, the imminent cuts in the Council's budget may mean that essential work will no longer be funded beyond 2012.

If you want to send them your tenner, even if you are below pension age, the website is: here.

Go on - you may need a bit of support in your old age too.

Age UK Buckinghamshire's bank is 30-90-38, account 32240260.

Relief

A lot of lawyers will be interested to read this.
Despite the commonly held view that lawyers are self serving shysters who manipulate the system to keep themselves in German cars and Tuscan retreats, they are an essential part of the system not just to ensure that justice is done but to help the courts to run smoothly and fairly.

Frustration II

It gets worse. The mobile phone people delved further and found that an account with them had been opened in my name last Spring. No payments were made, so they wrote it off, but added my name to the don't-touch-with-a-bargepole list. I knew nothing about this at any stage. So far so bad, but I now have to get my credit file from Experian, that will require £2 and one week or so to obtain. If I get the sodding phone by Christmas I will be doing well.
I have had broadly sympathetic comments on the other post apart from a fool who suggests that the fraudster must be some one I have under-sentenced in the past, thus encouraging him to continue a life of crime - all in all a breathtakingly implausible scenario. Then another old name (from whom I usually spare you with the Fickle Finger of Fate moderator toy) took the chance to have a good old sneer about what a soft sentencer I am - a subject on which he knows absolutely nothing, but on which he likes to fantasise.
Just to put the cherry on the cake, the phone company concerned happens to employ my daughter in a senior position. I rang her about it, and got a swift 'sorry dad, not my department'.
Sharper than a serpent's tooth, or what?

Frustration

A few months ago, a neighbour who shares my postcode phoned to say that he had a letter for me, addressed to his house. I picked it up and it turned out to be a letter from a major bank confirming the opening of my new account. It soon became clear that this was an attempted fraud. I contacted the bank and put them in the picture, and I thought that was the end of it.
Unfortunately the bank placed a marker on my credit record that has had the effect of making it nigh-on impossible to be accepted by the financial industry. Today I attempted to set up a new mobile phone account online, and subsequently wasted an hour and a half attempting to prove by emailing documents that I live in the house that I own. I was given three different accounts to email, each of which rejected my efforts.
It must have been like this in Honecker's East Germany, in the grip of a system that won't listen. I won't even mention Kafka.

One For Practitioners

The following is self-explanatory. I and many colleagues have attended the Stop Delaying Justice course, and this is the CPS response. All we have to do now is hold them to it, and to avoid blaming police every time someone screws up.

The Chief Crown Prosecutor for London, Alison Saunders, has written to London firms in the following terms:


"As you know 'Stop Delaying Justice' is an initiative led by the judiciary in the magistrates' courts which will take effect in the New Year. The aim is that all contested trials in the magistrates' courts are fully case managed at the first hearing and disposed of at the second hearing. It has the support, amongst many others, of the Director of Public Prosecutions.

I am writing to draw your attention to the approach I will be instructing prosecutors to take across magistrates' courts in the London CPS Area from 1 January 2012. With the challenges faced by all CJS agencies increasing, it has never been more important that principles of good case management and proportionality are followed if the overriding objective of the CPRs, to deal with cases justly, is to be fulfilled. To that end, by 1 January, we intend to ensure that the following actions are either in place, or at least well underway:

All prosecutors will be briefed in the principles and objectives of Stop Delaying Justice and will be working to support those objectives.
All prosecutors will be trained in the principles of effective case management, the CPRs, recent case law developments and the Senior Presiding Judge's 2009 directions in "Essential Case Management; Applying The Criminal Procedure Rules".

Prosecutors will in particular seek to engage with defence colleagues to identify the real issues and deal with as many aspects of summary trial case preparation as possible at the first hearing of the matter including the oral agreement of Section 9 and Section 10 evidence and early special measures directions.

We will seek to limit bureaucracy and interlocutory hearings where appropriate, by asking the court to permit oral notice of hearsay and bad character and to waive requirements for written counter notice. This would give the court the option of deciding whether applications either to admit or exclude such evidence should be dealt with immediately, at an interlocutory hearing, or by the trial court without the need for an unnecessary interim hearing.
We will also seek to ensure that that only those witnesses who are really needed in relation to genuinely disputed relevant issues will be warned to attend court and that cases are presented in a proportionate way. We believe that in the past some unnecessary warnings of for example police witnesses, have occurred when in fact their attendance was unnecessary, and we will be alert not to warn such witnesses for court. In particular we will not provisionally warn witnesses pending agreement of their statement and will not routinely warn officers in the case to attend court.

We will ensure that where appropriate and proportionate, if we rely on a summary of a defendant's interview at summary trial, we will adduce that summary in the form of the relevant section of the police report (MG5) rather than routinely rely on what is presently often called a 'record of taped interview' , or 'ROTI', on a form MG15. We are working with the Metropolitan Police to ensure that in all cases, towards the end of a suspect's interview, the explanation provided by the interviewee is fairly and accurately summarised on tape by the interviewer. As a check and balance, the interviewee of course has an existing right under PACE 1984 to add or clarify anything towards the end of their interview which may include any comment on the interviewer's summary.

Defendants have a right to a copy of a recording of their own interview under PACE 1984 and where defendants or their representatives specify, draft and propose reasonable amendments to the summary in the MG5, or reasonable admissions as to anything additional and admissible said or done in interview, we will be happy to agree such matters.

A case-managed trial should also be a more focused and shorter trial and our prosecutors will be instructed to propose proportionate time estimates and timetables to govern the duration of summary trials in accordance with CPR 3.10 and the principles set out in R v Jisl and Tekin [2004] EWCA Crim 696.

We believe that this approach will assist the court to fulfil the overriding objective of the CPRs and maximise the delivery of fairness, proportionality, expedition and efficiency within summary proceedings.

Fairness must be at the heart of the approach and I would welcome discussions with defence practitioners about any aspect of the approach we will be taking or any ways in which we can deliver efficient and timely summary justice.

Alison Saunders."

Hmmmmm

This depressing letter was apparently written to order by a young offender as part of his ISSP - a last-ditch order that attempts to impose some structure and order on a young chaotic life.

I have been sceptical about this 'say sorry' business since I first raised an eyebrow at the idea of police giving a conditional caution that includes a letter of apology. For one thing, not too many offenders are literate or articulate, and anyone can pretend to be sorry, just as I would do when my mother told me to apologise to someone for something. A mumbled sorry, given with eyes downcast or averted doesn't mean a lot.

I had the idea of producing a pro-forma letter to save time, along the lines of

Dear.............

I am writing to say how sorry I am for stealing/damaging/breaking into/assaulting/swearing at you/your house/your car/your cat. I was angry/drunk/out of my skull at the time and I will try to be better in future.

I hope that you soon get the insurance money/have the stitches out/get a new cat.

All the best

Wayne

Thanks

I see that the blog's hit counter is nudging towards two million unique visitors, and the page views are nearing three million.

Thanks to you all for clicking on to my writings, and even more thanks to the many commenters whose wisdom, humour and abuse make for a good read, and help to keep me on my toes.

Point Missed

A number of papers have now had a go at Bean J over the Section 5 issue, and Robert Crampton joins in in Times 2 today.

Now this wasn't a judgment about swearing at a policeman - it was a decision on what the law says; that's what Appeal judges are for.

The law says:-

Harassment, alarm or distress.
(1)A person is guilty of an offence if he—(a)uses threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, or disorderly behaviour, or(b)displays any writing, sign or other visible representation which is threatening, abusive or insulting, within the hearing or sight of a person likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress thereby.

I have emphasised the key bit. In deciding whether the offence is made out the court has to decide whether a person is likely to be caused harassment and the rest. Effing and blinding in front of a party of toddlers is likely to do so. The same language in front of experienced police officers is not.

Nobody is trying to make the job of the police any harder, but the only law that matters is the law as it stands. There are plenty of potential offences involved in behaving badly to police, but S5 POA isn't one of them. The Judge's job isn't to be popular, but to clarify the law. If legislators want to come up with something to deal with the foul-mouthed yob tendency, then I imagine they will do so.

Section 5 Again - Sticks And Stones

The eminently sensible Mr. Justice Bean has ruled on the vexed question of whether a police officer is likely to be caused 'harassment alarm and distress' by hearing the word 'fuck'. I have been on drinking terms with police officers for a very long time, and I have never yet had to call for smelling salts to revive one who suffered a fit of the vapours upon hearing the now ubiquitous f-word.
I am not disputing that it is rude and horrid to use that word; I myself only use it in extreme circumstances, such as stubbing my toe or hearing the price of a double gin and tonic in a Thames Valley pub, and even then I try to keep it sotto voce. But really - if a copper is such a delicate flower that he comes over all unnecessary at a bit of Gordon Ramsay profanity, isn't he in the wrong job?
His Lordship properly looked at the wording of Section 5 of the Public Order Act and applied common sense. For what it's worth, I think that M'Lud got it spot on.

This Is Making Us Look Silly

Once again the press is making a meal of the story that Charlie Gilmour, the spoilt brat student fun-revolutionary has been freed from a nominal 16 month prison sentence after about a quarter of the time pronounced by the judge.

There are plenty of papers and saloon-bar experts who love the chance to have a pop at the justice system ("You couldn't make it up" and so on). So why is nobody moving to address the absurdity of a judge or magistrate solemnly announcing a sentence that everybody knows will in effect be a fraction of what it purports to be?

A JP's maximum prison sentence in most circumstances is six months (26 weeks). If the offender pleads guilty, that will be reduced by a third to just over 17 weeks. Automatic release comes after halfway, leaving about eight and a half weeks to serve. Then, for the shorter sentences, comes release on Home Detention Curfew (a tag) halfway into that, at little over four weeks.

In the same way, the awesomely named 'Life' sentence means nothing of the sort except in a small number of cases. Now I have no problem with keeping sentences as short as practicable (subject to the need to incapacitate violent and dangerous offenders) but can't we come up with a nomenclature that doesn't patronise the public, and doesn't give rise to corrosive cynicism?

All of us who work in criminal justice have a duty to try to build and retain public confidence in what we do. Misleading sentences don't help.