Lay magistrates rarely have any experience of the law before they are appointed

Retirement and Removal

At the age of 70, a magistrate is removed from the full list and placed on the supplemental list. This can also occur at an earlier age if it is considered necessary due to incapacity, infirmity or through neglect – a magistrate must be prepared to sit at least 26 times per year.

A magistrate can be removed for misbehaviour or conduct not becoming of a magistrate which usually involves the commission of a fairly serious criminal offence

Advantages of Lay Magistrates

1. Cost – the 28,000 lay magistrates are unpaid (receiving only expenses and a small loss of earnings allowance). It has been estimate that if lay magistrates were to be abolished then the system would require an extra 4,000 professional judges at an estimated cost of £1,000 million.

2. Acceptance of the People – in the absence of a jury, lay magistrate are seen as trial by your “peers” rather than an anonymous “authority”.

3. Weight of Numbers – lay magistrates sit in benches of three and thus there is a more than just one opinion which you would get with just a single judge and this may be fairer.

4. Local Knowledge – as magistrates must live within 15 miles of their Bench they would be more aware of local issues than a judge who may live miles from the area.

Criticism of Lay Magistrates

9. Inefficiency – when a District Judge (Magistrates Court) hears a case they tend to make a decision as soon as they have heard all of the evidence whereas lay magistrates will retire to consider their verdict, obviously taking much longer.

Also cases heard by lay magistrate are often adjourned (on average 2.6 times) before the case is finally dealt with. This does not tend to be the case with District Judges (Magistrate Court).

ii)  Bias towards the Police – a criticism often raised against the lay  magistrates is that tend to believe the evidence produced by the police without any hesitation which may be unfair on the accused.

iii) Magistrates are not representative of the Community – the classic definition of lay magistrate has long been believed to be that they are “middle aged, middle classed and middle minded”, but is this true?

• Back in 1948 a Royal Commission on JP’s found that 75% of all magistrates came from the professional or middle classes. The latest research carried out shows that this is still the case today.

• Research into the political background of our lay magistrates shows that from a survey of 218 magistrates – 91 (42%) voted Conservative,  56 (26%) Labour,  41 (19%) Lib Dem, 30 (13%) other.

• Only 4% of our lay magistrates are below the age of 40.

From the research figures above it does seem to indicate that the description of a magistrate is correct but the question really to be asked is, does it matter?

1. With the selection procedure it is likely to happen. Human nature is that as the committee probably think they are the “right sort of people” then they may well tend to look for people similar to themselves.
2. Younger people tend not to have the time to be magistrates. They are either trying to get on in their careers or family commitments prevent it. It therefore tends to be older people who are established enough to give up the time or who have sufficient free time to sit as magistrates.

3. Most people in authority tend to come from these backgrounds anyway and people accept this. Senior people in education and business etc are primarily middle aged as it takes time to get to that position of authority – it does not mean they cannot do the job properly.

4. The political views of the magistrates seems to make no difference as they all tend to have the same views with regard to society, crime and punishment.

iv)   Inconsistency - you would think that if two people commit similar offences in similar  circumstances then they would receive similar treatment but this does not seem to be the case. If you look at two of the major functions of the magistrates – sentencing and the decision to remand in custody or grant bail – you find great variations between different benches of magistrates

        Sentencing

        In 1985 – Rates of Imprisonment (all offences – adult offenders)

                Devon                 14.3%                        Lancs                15.5%

                Somerset         6.5%                        S. Yorks         7.7%

        In 1985 – Specific offence – Burglary

                Glossop        Tried = 11                8 sent to prison

                Congleton        Tried = 14                0 sent to prison

        In 1990 – Adult male offenders sent straight to prison

                South Tameside                17.44%

                Exeter                        13.22%

                Stourbridge                10.58%

                Barnett                         1.03%

                Yeovil                         0.81%

        North Anglesey                 0.00%

While these are only statistics and cannot give a true picture, surely if places like North Anglesey can maintain law and order without sending anybody to prison, can the people in South Tameside really be that much worse to justify sending nearly 1 in 5 to prison.

People Remanded In Custody Awaiting Trial

These figures are for 1985

Town Where Arrested                        % Remanded in Custody

    Keighley                                        54%

    Bournemouth                                        52%

    Humberside                                        32%

    Bradford                                         5%

    Liverpool                                         2%

    North Bedford                                         1%

Again it is accepted that these are for all offences and therefore in some areas more serious offences may occur but such variations are difficult to understand. This is especially true if you consider Keighley (54%) is only 7 miles away from Bradford (5%).

Possible Improvements

1. There have been several suggestions that have been made which might improve the “background” problems of magistrates. Such suggestions are:-

• Increase the Lost Earnings Allowance to a realistic figure – this way more people may be willing to give up the time to sit as a magistrate.
• Provide crèche facilities at the court – this would encourage younger mother to become magistrates.
• Provide the Local Advisory Committees with updated details of the social make up of the local community so that they might bear this in mind when selecting new magistrates to their bench.

2. Better training

The present training of magistrates is a fault as there is insufficient training to obtain the consistency required.

At the moment the majority of the training is done on the job and so if you are trained by a strict bench you will tend to become the same. This provides consistency among a particular bench itself but leads to variations between benches. The way to overcome this would be to have more and wider training (i.e. nationwide) but this would be expensive.

3. Clearer guidelines

At the moment magistrates have very wide discretion when passing sentences and thus allows magistrates flexibility but also inconsistency. If magistrates were to be given tighter guidelines and less discretion this might improve consistency.

4. Replace magistrates entirely with District Judges (Magistrates Court)

Some have suggested the abolition of lay magistrates in favour of professional magistrates. This would have the advantage of improved consistency and more efficient trials, but would lose the participation of lay persons, the local knowledge of issues and the relative cheapness of the lay magistrate to the system. There would also be the practical problem of where would you find all of these professional judges.