Courting controversy

May 20, 2010 — simonashall

Woking Magistrates Court - photo: Surrey Advertiser

A couple of weeks ago, the Surrey Ad also ran a story about rumours surrounding the possible closure of Woking Courthouse, which incorporates the magistrates court, as well as family and youth courts. It would appear that this is an option being considered and many people at the courthouse are determined to fight any such proposal.

The reasons for keeping Woking Courthouse open are manifold and, I believe, self-evident. We have in this country a superb principle of justice delivered for the community by the community. A person accused of a crime can expect to have a fair and uniform hearing locally in public and by their peers – removing the Woking function and placing it all with Guildford means that people from as afar as Camberley, Addlestone and Weybridge as well as Woking will have justice administered in a different part of Surrey. I feel this is entirely inappropriate.

More so given Woking’s unique ethnic and cultural diversity. The courts service in Woking has a very good relationship with Woking Mosque and other organisations dealing with mental health and social issues in North West Surrey. Moving the court operation to Guildford interrupts many of these good relationships and makes achieving the court’s objectives with large sections of society in this part of Surrey more difficult.

Woking is Surrey’s largest town with an urban population exceeding both Guildford and Reigate. It is unthinakable that we should be without the facilities to cater for the needs of that population and those include the apparatus needed to dispense justice fairly, quickly and locally. Woking’s proximity to Guildford should not be an excuse to ignore these demographics – Guildford is quite busy enough as it is.

Finally, there has to be a question about what happens to Woking Police Station if the courthouse closes. The station is linked to the courthouse via an underground passageway and both the station and courthouse have a suite of custody cells. There is a similar arrangement in Staines, Guildford and Redhill and between this quartet, 95% of people accused of crimes are dealt with in these courts. If Woking courthouse went, there would be little sense in keeping the police station in its present form if it were denied the above role – and that too is a serious worry.

As for the magistrates, I can only speak for myself but I applied to serve my community in my community and while I agreed to sit anywhere the courts service requested, my clear preference was always Woking. For that option not even to exist for applicants in the future would indeed be a very retrograde step.

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Watching your words

May 18, 2010 — simonashall

An interesting story in a few of the papers today is the case of the magistrate in Blackburn who faces disciplinary action after using the term “absolute scum” to describe young defendants in court.

The Daily Mail story (almost verbatim) is interesting because it offers us an insight into some public opinion in the comments underneath, almost all of whom agree with the magistrate and say that his comments were justified and correct. This raises an interesting question about magistrates – whose justice do magistrates dispense?

Justice, of course, is the crown’s and the Queen’s and last Monday I swore two oaths – both included phrases to serve and pledge alliegance to the Queen and her successors. But if magistrates are taken from the local population, shouldn’t they be free to express the views of the society they serve? Well, yes and no. Magistrates are free to express the court’s views on a crime or sentence to defendants within certain perameters if they are serving as a bench chairman.

But the Judicial Oath also contains in it the words:

“I will do right to all manner of people after the laws and usages of the Realm without fear or favour, affection or ill will”

To me, although the bit about the Queen is important, it is this forward-facing part of the oaths that is most relevant on a day-to-day basis. The magistrate on this occasion may feel he was speaking for the community and that by phrasing it the way he did and attributing the “absolute scum” to what “normal people”, rather than he or the court might think he was ameliorating the bane.

But what he has actually done is created the perception – however misplaced – of ”ill will” towards the defendants and reinforced those feelings within the community. That, it my view, goes against the Judicial Oath. The fact that the comments were made in a Youth Court – where particularly sensitive and careful work with young people goes on – is also unfortunate.

The gentleman concerned is an experienced magistrate and has  given considerable service to his community. And the culture of the magistracy generally is one of ongoing training, improvement and support for everyone involved – we all make mistakes and discussion, correction and learning is the positive approach to addressing them.

But, sorry to disappoint the Daily Mail, we can’t have justices appointing themselves as “voices of the community” or stamping their own moral code on the courtroom, however awful the offence and unrepetent the defendant.

Using their reasonable judgement to dispense justice according to the law is the sole purpose of a justice; anything else is politics and that, as we know, belongs in a different place.

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