Anyone who wants to see just what depths our criminal justice system has reached should visit his local magistrates courts on the days-usually four or of five a week-when criminal cases are are being heard. I suggest a monthly visit.
First thing to do is search out the court lists and note the names that appear. You will only need to visit three or four times to see the same names turning up again and again. Usually males between 16 and 25. Unemployed and/or uneducated usually with alcohol or drug problems. And if you've been observing these courts as long as I have- thirty years- you will soon see their wives/partners and their children appearing on the lists. They have the same disadvantages.
Nobody seems to ask the cost of this failure- 60% will be reappearing. If a hospital had the same failure rate it would be closed down.
Today, as the prison population is once again at bursting point, the blame game is already under way.
First out of the starting blocks is Jack Straw, Justice Secretary, encouraging magistrates to sent fewer offenders into custody. Not, of course, using words that would hinder their independence but giving them an almighty steer in that direction. After all, his department is spending more money on non-custodial sentences and the annual cost of keeping one offender locked up is £38,000!
Back comes the Magistrates Association with their "don't interfere with us mate" argument. After all, claimed Cindy Barnett, Chair of the Magistrates Association, we " already use community penalties far more than custody". The problem Cindy is not whether you use more non custodial sentences but just how many offenders you are locking up. And how many of those are sent away for a uselessly short period.
And it's preposterous to argue, as dear Cindy does, that Magistrates
are not partly responsible for increase in the prison population. Statistics provided by the Sentencing Guidelines Council show that the ...
"Use of prison in magistrates’ court has risen from 6 per cent in 1993 to 16 per cent in 2004..... In 2004, nine per cent of shoplifters with no previous convictions were sent to prison from magistrates’ courts, against two per cent in 1994.
Both Cindy and Jack know there are far, far too many people in custody. But The Prison Reform Trust research shows a more important feature of the prison population.
“The average prisoner is 10 times more likely to have truanted; 25 times more likely to have been excluded from school; three times more likely to be illiterate and innumerate than the outside population; thirteen times more likely to be unemployed when sentenced and no less than 300 times more likely to be homeless than the general population. And by factors of 10 more likely to suffer mental disorder, alcohol and drug related problems.”
And these features are scandalously and deliberately overlooked in the criminal justice debate.
Before most offenders end up in prison they have probably failed to respond to a couple of community sentences. But why should that be no surprise? Because these individuals have precisely the same problems the Prison Reform Trust identified in the prison population.
As I argued here, this brutal, useless and expensive warehousing operation conducted by magistrates will continue until the power to imprison is removed from them altogether. And Crown Court judges would then be permitted by statute to imprison offenders for a period of less than 12 months only in exceptional circumstances.
It's really the only way that half the prison population sentenced to 6 months or less- an effective incarceration of 3 months- will be reduced.
It's the only way, but politicians, I suspect, lack the courage to face this reality.
