Down at the local
Wednesday 27th July 2011
Until a few years ago I was a regular visitor to my local magistrates’ court. Indeed, I spent almost every working day there as a full time criminal lawyer. I was therefore quite shocked on a recent rare visit to see how the fabric of the building appeared to have deteriorated.
Not only was it tatty, but the court office had closed and all the staff I knew had gone. In the interests of efficiency, all office work is now transferred to Norwich. This has apparently caused some significant problems when someone forgets to send the court or prosecution a file for the day’s case, resulting in unnecessary delays and adjournments.
When I came to Norfolk in 1981, there were many local courts across the county. Relatively small towns had their own magistrates court, such as Diss, Thetford, Wymondham, Swaffham, North Walsham. Now, Norfolk has only three, at Norwich, Great Yarmouth and Kings Lynn.
Quite literally for centuries and into modern times the perceived benefit of a legal system with lay involvement through magistrates was said to be that justice was local. A system not only administered locally but manned by local people sitting as Justices of the Peace gave the courts public confidence and legitimacy and decisions benefited from the local knowledge of the magistrates sitting in court.
Not only that, but a court system which dealt with around 90% of all criminal cases using lay magistrates was cheap; far cheaper than having paid judges (by comparison, a District Judge sitting in the magistrates’ court earns in excess of £100,000 per year).
One very useful characteristic of magistrates courts was the Clerk to the Justices. He was not only the head of the local court’s administration, but also the principle legal advisor to the bench and he was generally approachable. He was a person who both understood the legal issues and practical problems that could arise day to day but also had the power to manage the courts administratively to resolve problems.
Under the guise of compliance with human rights legislation, this role has gone and legal advice and administration have been split, a change which is unlikely to have made the courts more efficient.
The same considerations applied to County Courts, the first level civil courts. County Courts were created in the early nineteenth century to provide a cheap, accessible local forum for civil disputes. Up to that point there were only the expensive common law courts, the courts of Queen’s Bench, Exchequer and Common Pleas (the forerunners of the High Court), which sat only in London and which was prone to huge delays. County Courts were accessible, local and had a simple and cost effective procedure. Today Norfolk has been reduced to only two county courts, at Norwich and King Lynn.
Justice today is unfortunately no longer as accessible as a result. Not only do people have to travel further to lodge their cases and have them heard but it is far more difficult to actually talk to anyone to easily resolve an issue. Lest this be thought of as a special pleading for criminal defendants, who are one of the biggest users of the courts, it has to be remembered that magistrates also exercise a significant civil and family jurisdiction as well as dealing with criminal cases.
Often the people affected by these changes the most are those least able to be able to travel the longer distances required, whether because of finances or disability. In the case of County courts, their staff have now pulled up the drawbridge and it is no longer possible to actually speak to anyone on the phone other than through a call centre which covers multiple courts.
It has always been an argument that justice must be visible, local and thereby meet the needs of the people. None of this now happens and today magistrates find themselves sitting, not in their local communities but in courts often many miles away. The link between the local benches and their communities has been largely broken.
Yet, in this modern age we should expect the opposite to be happening. Far from reducing the places where courts sit, modern technology should enable courts to sit more frequently in a greater number of locations. Knowing the way these things sometimes go, I would not be surprised if before too long to governments comes out with a revolutionary new strategy to have some local justice!