STATISTICAL GAPS LEAVE ROOM FOR SPECULATION : SOME FURTHER THOUGHTS

I was appointed to the magistracy in the closing years of the last century: a time of musical effervescence, cool Britannia, relief of the Good Friday Agreement, "education, education and education", "we are the servants of the people" and much much more.  A time when the average prison population was 65,000 and the terrorist crime of 9/11 was avoidable if the few discerning members of security agencies of the West had been able to convince their political masters of scenarios which were discernible even through the wrong end of  a Mossad or CIA telescope. 

In those far off days as a newbie one of my first training sessions was on the subject of bail with the starting point for discussion that every defendant has the right to bail such right open to argument by the prosecution.  This topic was discussed here on June 9th.  At the crown court over the last three years just under half of those defendants remanded were released on bail.  In 2024 95% of defendants at magistrates courts were given bail.  Of course prison overcrowding is a major driver when deciding to remand on bail or in custody.  However my question today when we know how many are granted bail is how many Fail to Appear to answer their bail; a statistic currently unavailable but  was included in Criminal Justice System Statistics Quarterly until March 2015. It was discontinued because data supplied by police forces became increasingly incomplete. Although the MOJ began publishing "experimental statistics" on FTA warrants again from December 2019 using a newly developed methodology labelled as experimental there is no bottom line saying "X% of people bailed at magistrates court subsequently failed to appear."  Is that by choice or reluctance on the part of MOJ? 

In 2018 His Majesty`s Courts and Tribunals Service quietly handed over some numbers via Freedom of Information requests.  It seems that now in 2026 the statistics are still "experimental".  The one figure that would actually answer the question everyone in this trade wants answered: of those granted bail what proportion failed to appear and had a warrant issued? MOJ will tell you how many people were bailed. It will tell you, separately, how many FTA warrants were issued. It will not join the two together at the level of an individual defendant. You are left doing the arithmetic yourself, on the back of an envelope, using historical parliamentary answers from a different decade and calling the result "roughly one in ten to one in seven" because nobody with better data will say it plainly.

At one time the excuse would be that several computer systems didn`t talk to each other: a similar excuse for hold ups and mishaps in the NHS and other government related organisations.  That get out clause is gradually nearing end of life status.  Building a linked defendant-level dataset connecting "bailed" to "failed to appear" to "warrant issued" is not, in 2026, beyond the wit of a department that runs prison population projections five years into the future down to the hundred. It would simply require someone to decide it mattered enough to fund. And that's the rub as the man from Stratford wrote in Hamlet.   A clean, published bail breach rate is a number that cuts both ways politically. Publish a low one and it's a quiet vindication of current bail practice at a moment when everyone is nervous about the remand population. Publish a higher one and it becomes ammunition for anyone arguing bail decisions are too soft;  not a comfortable position for a department also trying to reduce the remand population to relieve prison overcrowding.

For politicians when a number is awkward whichever way it lands the safest bureaucratic posture is not to produce it cleanly at all and to let "experimental" quietly do the work of "not our fault, still working on it."  The tale of the three monkeys comes to mind: no problem to see, no problem to  hear, no problem to speak of. 

So as I posed above, "Is that by choice or reluctance on the part of MOJ?   Perhaps both.  Genuine historical logistics got government into the gap. The absence of any urgency to close it, now the technology exists, looks rather more like choice.  The old saying "what you don't know won't hurt you" often gives us a comfortable illusion of safety.  But in a political context the idea that "what we don't know won't hurt us" represents a dangerous illusion because government secrecy and a lack of transparency almost always harm the public.  At a time of increasing signs of a population being distanced and/or disillusioned by government policies, to conceal critical information whether on the courts, NHS, social services etc etc fuels widespread conspiracy theories and deeply damages civic engagement.  Citizens cannot use their vote effectively if the true actions, failures or motives of elected officials are kept secret.  

Democracy and its dependent institutions are now on a high wire in a high wind.  As the lullaby says "when the wind blows the cradle will rock".  Gales are forecast!

THE GREAT AND THE GOOD AND THE NOT SO GOOD

It`s easy to say that those with the longest memories appreciate the old adage that George Santayana, the Spanish philosopher famously warned, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."  Age and long memories in this country count for little.  Whereas some societies large and small venerate the wisdom of the ages or the aged others like to think that their opinions, decisions and subsequent actions are using innovative methods and controls to eradicate situations and problems failed by opposing factions. Today we might describe our society as rule by supervisory quango; a conniving government method of supposed supervision of many public bodies and institutions but at a "nothing to do with us" arms length from 10 Downing Street and Whitehall.   

This week Valerie Amos, a Labour peer and former diplomat, published her long-awaited review into maternity and neonatal care across England.  It was damning.  But it and others similar as I will explore, are not unique.  

This site was quiet whilst my wife and I were in Crete. At one of the most luxurious [and expensive] hotels on the island during a face to face digital check in staff were at pains to note on their system whether either of us had any allergies.  We made it very clear that my wife was allergic to shellfish to such sensitivity that she has to investigate if any prescribed medicament for oral or topical use contains oil from shellfish; many do.  Before sitting for dinner at the hotel`s ethnic Greek restaurant we were asked by the manager if there were any allergy that could be significant.  Of course we made clear that of shellfish as above.  During the meal we were served with a plate for two which I immediately recognised as prawns.  Needless to say I prevented my wife putting her fork anywhere near the platter and spoke to the manager in rather vociferous terms.  Later that evening I told the reception staff and they assured me that the catering and banqueting manager would be informed. I, in my fading belief in the efficiency of management when things go wrong, expected a reply and apology in person, by phone or by e mail.  None was received. Four days after coming home I had a "we would love to have your feedback on your stay" e mail from the hotel manager which I answered in direct but polite terms.  There came back a reply which was an abject apology and nothing more: not even an offer of a free day`s accommodation if we return not that we will. 

Thus is management today at whatever level it functions. 

Between 1945 and 1950 this country functioned on an almost laissez faire basis.  In 1948 the NHS was created but hospitals before that were a patchwork; voluntary hospitals, municipal hospitals and cottage hospitals each with their own boards of governors answerable to local trustees or local councils. There was no national regulator. 

Police forces were entirely local answerable to Watch Committees (borough forces) or Standing Joint Committees (county forces) made up of local councillors and magistrates. The Home Office had only limited oversight powers. Chief Constables were directly hired and fired by local elected bodies. This created inconsistency and local corruption but also genuine local democratic accountability.

With regard to child protection there was no formal system. Children in care fell under local Poor Law institutions transitioning to local authority control governed by local council committees. The Curtis Report (1946) exposed appalling conditions in children's homes directly leading to the Children Act 1948 which created Children's Committees in each council. Accountability was local and thin but scandals were harder to suppress across hundreds of independent councils.

When building and/or housing safety is considered local authorities were both builders and inspectors of their own housing stock; an obvious conflict of interest but decisions were made by elected councillors directly answerable to local voters. There was no national building regulator. Central government guidance was minimal.

Taking public corporations as an example the Post Office had always been a Crown body under direct ministerial control with a Postmaster General sitting in Cabinet and answerable daily to Parliament through questions. It was therefore more directly democratically supervised than the arm's-length commercial model that later allowed the Horizon scandal to fester for decades.

And what do we have now three quarters of a century and three generations later? Some might say we have multiple supervisory authorities whose members are appointed by a relatively small coterie itself selected by the great and the good of the establishment.  Indeed we can go further down this road of "not me guv" and see where it leads.

With regard to policing in its final report the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA, Final Report: October 2022) concluded that police forces and local councils were still failing to tackle child sexual exploitation and set out further recommendations for change. None of the 20 recommendations from the inquiry has been implemented.

The outcome of the Manchester Arena Inquiry (Report: 2021–2023)  into the 2017 bombing found serious failings in how MI5 and the police handled prior intelligence about the attacker and criticised the emergency response, including the actions of security staff on the night.

Child protection or its failings always gets top billing.  The Casey Report exposed systemic failures in tackling group-based child sexual exploitation leading to the announcement of a new Grooming Gangs Inquiry in June 2025. Councils and police in Rotherham, Telford, Oldham and Greater Manchester were specifically found to have ignored or downplayed abuse over many years.  Multiple police forces, councils and social services were found to have failed children catastrophically. No chief constable or director of children's services was dismissed as a direct result of the inquiry findings but some councils were placed in special measures.

The Grenfell Inquiry (2024)  led to 58 recommendations to overhaul "seriously defective" regulation of the construction industry, calling for defragmentation of the sector and bringing different wings of the industry under a single regulator. Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (as landlord) was also criticised for its indifferent relationship with residents. 

As of April 2026 the proposed Hillsborough Law  which would impose a statutory duty of candour on public bodies during inquiries has still not been passed, despite the Prime Minister having committed to introducing it.  It seems likely this current PM will have another example for the historians of his proving Peter`s Principle of having risen to his level of incompetence. 

The recurring culprits across these inquiries are NHS bodies, police forces, local councils, central government departments, regulatory agencies and quasi-public corporations  with the justice system itself (courts and prosecutors) also implicated in several cases.

Despite the scale of the scandals uncovered the number of people actually dismissed as a direct consequence of inquiry findings is remarkably small  and in most cases even that distinction blurs between being fired, being pushed out, or choosing to resign.  Former health secretary Wes Streeting has said that those senior staff who refused to engage with the largest maternity scandal in NHS history should be hauled before Parliament.  Who would wager that will happen or that those culpable will not return to their highly pensioned new senior posts or enjoy a well financially cushioned retirement? 

Competing for one of the most disgraceful examples of successive governments turning blind eyes to blatant law breaking by senior management was aforementioned Post Office scandal.  Paula Vennells (CEO of Post Office 2012–2019)  was not fired. She had already left the role before the inquiry concluded. Under enormous public pressure following the ITV drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office she resigned from her non-executive directorships at Dunelm and Morrisons in 2021 after 39 subpostmasters' convictions were quashed. Her CBE, awarded in 2019, was revoked in 2024 for "bringing the honours system into disrepute". She was not prosecuted. Currently  no Post Office or Fujitsu employee has been held criminally accountable, though the Metropolitan Police is investigating potential offences including perverting the course of justice and perjury. 

When policing goes wrong there is the appearance that those at the top sail on blithely to their tax payer funded pensions.  Such is the case of Dame Cressida Dick  not fired but effectively forced out. On 10 February 2022 Dick announced her resignation as Met Commissioner stating that "the Mayor no longer has sufficient confidence in my leadership." The triggers included the murder of Sarah Everard by PC Wayne Couzens, the subsequent mishandling of the vigil and the serial rape case of PC David Carrick. She reportedly felt "entitled" to a £500,000 severance after being pushed to stand aside. She was not disciplined through any formal misconduct process.

 

No senior council official, government minister or building industry executive has been fired or prosecuted as a direct result of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry. 

Perhaps the most atrocious example of government collusion and cover up on a grand scale is the Infected Blood Inquiry. There was a a deliberate cover-up spanning decades across government and the NHS. The then Prime Minister Rishi Sunak issued a full apology in May 2024. He acknowledged that victims had "died without seeing anyone held to account." That remains the situation: no prosecutions, no dismissals of senior figures and the Health Secretaries over that prolonged period of scandalous indifference during which thousands of families lost their loved ones.

Decade after decade, inquiry after inquiry, the ritual is identical: shock, sympathy, solemn promises, a report, some recommendations partially implemented, then silence  until the next catastrophe. The centralised post-war settlement replaced local democratic messiness with professional expertise and national consistency. What it could not replace was the simple, brutal accountability of an elected councillor facing angry neighbours at the town hall. Instead it created elaborate supervisory architecture; boards, regulators, inspectorates, audit committees  whose very complexity obscures the question of who is actually responsible when children are abused, patients poisoned,or buildings burn.  How it is that the Criminal Cases Review Commission, the very last resort for those wrongly convicted, demands an admission of guilt before it can recommend parole the case of Andrew Malkinson being just about the most defining example of an institution not fit for purpose although Helen Pitcher former chair and Karen Kneller former CEO both resigned albeit with some reluctance. 

Those of us who sat on the bench long enough developed a certain immunity to surprise. We watched defendants appear before us for the third, fourth and fifth time for offences whose causes nobody in authority had seen fit to seriously address. The pattern repeats. The paperwork multiplies. Nothing changes.

It would appear that those who govern our great institutions have acquired the same habit. Grenfell, Infected Blood, The Post Office, Maternity services, Child sexual exploitation. One reaches for the word unprecedented and then recalls that one reached for exactly that word the last time and the time before that.

What strikes this observer and it is not an original observation, merely one that is consistently ignored,  is that the supervisory bodies which fail so spectacularly are not staffed by villains. They are staffed by people who know one another rather well. Estimates of the pool from which non-executive directors, quango chairs, NHS trust boards, police authorities and regulatory bodies are drawn tend toward a figure somewhere between three and five thousand individuals nationally. They lunch together. They sit on each others advisory panels. They write each others references. It is not a conspiracy. It is something rather more comfortable and therefore considerably more dangerous than a conspiracy. It is a disposition.

The appointers bear examination here. When a board appointment goes wrong, when a trust chair fails to notice what any competent ward sister could have told him in five minutes  the question rarely asked is who put him there and on what basis. The answer is almost invariably: someone very much like him, applying criteria very much like the ones by which he himself was appointed.

The Curtis Report of 1946, exposed conditions in children`s homes that would shame a Victorian poorhouse.  One might have supposed that 75 years of legislative activity since then would have resolved the matter. The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse reported in 2022 that institutional failure remained widespread. Rotherham, Telford, Oldham; the files are thick. The consequences for those at the top have been notably thin.

During my time as an active presiding magistrate  when a pattern of offending repeated we enquired via the probation service  carefully into the conditions which produced it. We did not simply fine the offender and congratulate ourselves on a proper process. Those who design the supervisory architecture of this country might with profit adopt a similar approach. The inquiry is not the accountability. It is, too often, the substitute for it.

That the Hillsborough Law requiring simple honesty from public servants  remains unenacted tells one everything one needs to know about the appetite for genuine reform among those in a position to deliver it. The pattern will repeat. It always does.

.

MORE MAGISTRATES: THAT`S THE TARGET

Whilst I am still dealing with my domestic affairs during my absence, readers might like to read yesterday`s exchanges on magistrates` recruitment:-

 https://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2026-06-30a.739.3&s=%22magistrates%22#g739.4

STATISTICAL GAPS LEAVE ROOM FOR SPECULATION

The Ministry of Justice has been accused of many errors in policy and practice but what it cannot be accused of is the production of statistics.  We might not be told the ethnicity of the magistrates on any one sitting but we do have information of the magistracy as a whole.  We do not have or need to know the age or sex of those advocates appearing for a defendant but myriad gigabytes  are in the ether telling us of eg  the elapsed time from a defendant`s first appearance to sentence or indeed the delay from charge to that first appearance.  A major court function where there appears to be a gap in published information is the failure-to-appear (FTA) rate among defendants granted bail.

The MOJ isn`t short of employees being paid to provide the numbers that politicians and others pour over relentlessly.  The MoJ's Data & Analysis Directorate is described as a multi-disciplinary team of around 500 staff, covering analysts, statisticians, researchers, economists and data scientists across the department. A precise breakdown of how many of those 500 are specifically classified as statisticians (as opposed to other analytical professions) doesn't appear to be publicly published in an easily accessible form. The closest public data would be the Government Statistical Service (GSS) workforce statistics, which track statisticians across all government departments.  Nevertheless we do know that the approximate numbers granted bail at magistrates' courts were:

The question of how many failed to answer bail and had warrants issued is another matter. The Ministry of Justice does not publish a direct national statistic linking magistrates court bail grants to subsequent failures to appear. However, a recent investigation reported that nearly 60,000 arrest warrants for defendants failing to attend court were issued in England and Wales in the most recent year, with the annual figure having risen by about 50% since 2020. Although the Ministry of Justice no longer appears to publish a current annual figure there are some useful historical benchmarks. A Parliamentary Answer stated that across all courts in England and Wales, approximately 11–12% of bailed defendants failed to appear during the late 1990s and early 2000s. For 2006 the figure was about 10%. Ministry of Justice statistics noted that FTA warrants had been falling and that by 2012/13 police forces received about 70,400 FTA warrants annually with 88% executed. The MoJ expressly linked this to declining numbers of defendants who failed to appear on bail or summons. Trying to make some sort of sense of the available numbers is that a single defendant can fail to attend more than once and not every failure to appear arises from a defendant who was granted bail. Around half a million defendants were granted bail in magistrates courts over 2022–2024. Historical Ministry of Justice and NAO evidence suggests that somewhere between one in ten and one in seven bailed defendants may fail to attend at least one hearing, implying a broad range of roughly 50,000–75,000 failures to appear over a three-year period, but no current official national statistic appears to be published.

A Parliamentary Answer in 2021 disclosed HMCTS management information on FTA warrants. The answer confirms that HMCTS can extract warrant data directly from court systems and that the figures are management information rather than official statistics. Some police forces have recently released data on outstanding FTA warrants.  Dyfed-Powys Police reported 108 outstanding FTA warrants as of January 2026 of which 95 related to magistrates court matters and 13 to crown court matters. West Yorkshire Police reported 2,148 outstanding FTA warrants as of January 2026 covering Bail Act and magistrates  court warrant categories.

The Ministry of Justice publishes numbers granted bail,  numbers remanded in custody and the numbers of FTA warrants. It does not appear to publish a dataset linking those events at defendant level. Consequently, there is no routinely published national figure saying: "X% of defendants granted bail at magistrates courts failed to surrender and had a warrant issued."  The key historical figures published by HMCTS were:-

Currently there is no simple straightforward answer to the question:-  of those granted bail how many failed to answer that  bail?

To sum up; Roughly half a million defendants were granted bail by magistrates' courts during 2022–2024. Magistrates courts have historically issued tens of thousands of FTA warrants annually, typically around 90,000 in the published HMCTS series. The Ministry of Justice does not publish a defendant-level statistic showing what percentage of bailed defendants subsequently fail to surrender.


With all the facts at its disposal yet such a gap in the published statistics one wonders why such basic information is not available for all to see and comment upon. Where there is such a deficit there is always room for speculation by those with an interest in the subject.

IT`S ALL GREEK TO ME

I am soon travelling to warm pastures where sun, sea and sand will be my daily view for breakfast al fresco and antikristo will be accompanied by a bottle of liatiko at dinner.

Accordingly tomorrow`s post will be the last until early July.

 τα λέμε τότε

ENGLAND 12 SCOTLAND 15 BUT STILL NOT PROVEN

The title of today`s post does not reflect the result of an international rugby match: it is the number of jurors in criminal trials in England and Scotland. I have long favoured the long standing practice of Scottish criminal courts in having at the jury`s disposal the "3rd verdict" namely not proven that was available until Victims, Witnesses and Justice Reform (Scotland) Act 2025 received Royal Assent on 30 October 2025 and is in force with staged commencement. To appreciate this fundamental change in Scotland in comparison to the current decision making system in England some historical facts are helpful.

The English criminal jury of 12 emerged gradually during the 12th–14th centuries as part of the common law system. By the late Middle Ages 12 had become the settled and accepted number. It was not originally fixed by a single statute; rather it became entrenched through common-law practice. The number was regarded as so fundamental that courts later treated it as an essential characteristic of a jury.

Scottish criminal juries settled at 15 members by the late 16th century. Unlike England, Scotland developed its own legal tradition and never adopted the English 12 person criminal jury. The number 15 became a distinctive feature of Scots criminal procedure.  

To understand how the neighbouring countries developed such a fundamental difference  Scotland retained its own distinct legal system after the Acts of Union 1707 and its larger jury number likely reflects older continental European civil law influences on Scots procedure and perhaps deliberate retention of distinctiveness from English practice post Union.  In essence the differences were well established before the two kingdoms were politically united. 

Majority verdicts were introduced by the Criminal Justice Act 1967 before which a criminal jury in England and Wales had to be unanimous.  This change allowed a 10:2 verdict after the jury has deliberated for at least two hours.  The main reasons for such a change were the fear of jury nobbling or corruption, intimidation and the ability of a single juror to force a retrial.

For many people this previously ethereal legal matter  has become a social and political point of argument. Of equal importance one might inquire if there is a statistical difference in mistrials and hung juries between Scots and English juries.  The recent second mistrial of airport attackers has brought this previously little regarded aspect of the English jury system under the spotlight as has the recent spate of perverse verdicts. 

In the English procedure even after the 1967 reforms  juries can still fail to reach a verdict eg 9:3, 8:4, 7:5.  Thus England necessarily experiences more mistrials arising from jury deadlock than Scotland.  Under the traditional Scottish system 8 votes for guilty equals conviction and anything less is an acquittal. Scotland's three verdict system historically allowed jurors uncomfortable with outright acquittal to reach for not proven which arguably reduced hung juries by providing an escape valve.  Below is an interesting comparison. The conviction thresholds are surprisingly different.  

The abolition of not proven was one of the most controversial Scottish criminal justice reforms in decades and there was significant opposition from parts of the legal profession.  Not proven and not guilty had exactly the same legal effect: the accused walked free from court.  Critics argued that if two verdicts have identical legal consequences but very different social meanings the system lacks clarity.  Victims' organisations argued that the verdict denied closure because it seemed to acknowledge suspicion without conviction.  Defence lawyers pointed out the opposite problem: acquitted defendants could remain permanently stigmatised because the verdict appeared to imply lingering guilt.  Campaign groups argued that not proven was used disproportionately in rape and sexual assault trials and may have contributed to lower conviction rates.  Thus under pressure Scotland moved from 8 of 15 (53.3%) to convict to 10 of 15 (66.7%) to convict.

Many[a majority?] in the legal profession objected to the abolition of the third verdict.  They argued in essence that the reality of a juror`s thinking was now subsumed in translating that to a convenient legal process.  However the change was effected by intense lobbying by victims' groups particularly by those concerned with sexual offences. The higher 10:15 conviction threshold reassured many MSPs that defendants were not losing protection without receiving something in return.

The results of these changes will be analysed in the years to come. Considering a legal system must attempt to deter, punish and rehabilitate those who break the boundaries set by government the benefits of this profound change in a 300+ year old tradition must for some time to come be considered not proven.    

THE AUGEAN STABLES OF JUSTICE

 

"Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose,"

"What goes around comes around"

"Same soup, just a different ladle."

Three common adages to which, the longer one lives, the more often one can relate.  With regard to revolving doors scandals  the relationship becomes narrower.  Refine that narrow connection to those where separate legal scandals collide and we have what can be termed a confluence of scandals.  

This commentary on this site [earlier posts can be found at  https://amagistratesdiaries.blogspot.com/ ] began in 2013 and it is a post from 16th August that year which is regularly the most visited post apart from whatever happens to be the current offering and which readers might visit to appreciate the nature of this long standing complicity by HMCTS in what was, is and possibly will continue to be a carbuncle on the face of British justice. Thirteen years is quite a long time for any topic to be a reference for present day problems or questions.  That problem was a situation I encountered in my first few weeks on the bench.  Those posts within 16/08/2013 apparently have not changed the substance of this scandal; namely the rights of consumers versus the rights of utility companies to force fit pre payment energy meters.   

I, and some of my then colleagues and a sympathetic legal advisor,  did our best within the very narrow limits available to bring this injustice to higher levels with the system.  We failed except when I was active I made it known to the Deputy Justices Clerk that I would insist in processing at an "applications court" in the manner that I and my colleagues thought appropriate.   The Magistrates Association for ever loyally toadying to government was useless and disinterested.  It would appear by all accounts that since my retirement procedures that a few of my colleagues and I tried to expose and eradicate  were allowed to continue unchanged. 

It takes two (scandals) to tango ( conflu).  I objected to the second activity before it became a "procedure" and retired before that "procedure" became the norm; namely The Single Justice Procedure of which many posts have been made over the last decade.  As I understand it there is no compulsion for magistrates to sit within the SJP.  The legislation (the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015) simply creates the power for a single magistrate to hear cases in this way; it does not direct which magistrates must do so. In practice, SJP sittings are allocated by local bench/HMCTS scheduling and magistrates are rostered on to them much as they are rostered on to any other sitting. Whether a JP can easily decline is a matter of local practice rather than statutory right but there is no compulsion in law.  The MA has itself recommended that to sit alone on SJP cases magistrates should have passed their threshold appraisal and sat for one additional year in the adult criminal court  implying that currently there is no such formal gate and magistrates can effectively be put on SJP sittings without that experience.  Between 1 April 2019 and 30 September 2023 over 3.1 million criminal cases including applications to force fit utility meters were received into what is now termed The Single Justice Service. 

This second scandal has been deliberately engineered by HMCTS in a feeble attempt to speed up the reduction of a backlog existing before Covid but essentially magistrates courts were not in crisis before Covid: 290,000 outstanding cases. That backlog was large but stable unlike the present position. The crisis came after March 2020 when the pandemic drove outstanding cases sharply upward from that already substantial base.

Once again as with the current debate over judge only trials allied with the recent spate of perverse verdicts an astute observer must question the ultimate purpose of the SJS.  It`s  difficult to believe it`s justice driven.  With no official figures it functions within a system for magistrates who feel that once in the club they must obey the rules. 

In 2024 The Magistrates' Association carried out a snapshot survey.  The findings were striking. The MA found that many of its members were uncomfortable with the SJP process as it currently works and a significant proportion felt they did not always get as much time as they needed to properly consider each case. The MA also found that although training on the SJS was available members felt that it was largely focused on how to use the system and did not emphasise that the SJP was a judicial process in which magistrates could exercise their discretion as they do with cases heard in court. That second point is particularly telling; JPs were feeling the procedure was stripping them of the judicial identity that was central to why they volunteered in the first place. It was significant that the MA Chairman commented of the SJS that the principle was sound but the concession was plain: magistrates should not be put under any pressure "to complete a certain number of SJP cases within a certain amount of time"  ironic in the face of the evidence that that was exactly why the SJS was originally formulated. 

JPs joined the magistracy to sit in open court, weigh evidence, exercise judgment visibly and be part of a community of justice. The SJS asks them instead to work through paper files, often rapidly, in private and  crucially  without the bench colleagues they would normally deliberate with. Because magistrates sit alone on SJS work rather than as a bench of three the MA believes there is a case to extend further training to ensure that magistrates have more experience and confidence for this work and has recommended that two magistrates sit together initially so there are opportunities for observation and collaboration before undertaking the work alone. 

 A significant portion of the magistracy finds it uncomfortable, under resourced in terms of time and training and at odds with why they chose the role. "Rubber stamp" anxiety, the fear of becoming a processing function rather than a judicial one, seems to be an underlying theme of magistrates` opinions. 

And now there is public awareness of another legal failing associated with SJS.  First it was the non payers of the BBC License and now  hitting the financially disadvantaged members of our society  with debts on their gas and/or electricity meters.  

Since the beginning of this century 15 MPs have held the post of Lord Chancellor with 9 different people having held the post since 2015 alone. Is it any wonder that the so called justice system is in disarray? From complete incompetents such as Chris Grayling (September 2012 to May 2015) to incumbent David Lammy who assumed office 5 September 2025 and whose brown tongue is his helping hand, management and philosophy seem be run by the Treasury and sycophants with their eyes on higher office.



The history of legal scandals colliding in this country is quite outstanding: when one disappears below the public horizon another appears within months.


Post Office scandal + Infected blood scandal


Chris Pincher scandal + Partygate scandal


Guildford 4 and Birmingham 6 cases + West Midlands Serious Crime Squad scandal


Jimmy Savile sexual abuse scandal + Operation Midland


Hillsborough Disaster cover up + Orgreave Dispute allegations


Cash for honours scandal + MPs` expenses scandal


One of the strongest examples:
Post Office scandal colliding with wider disclosure failures in criminal justice.


Strictly by overlap in active public controversy:
Operation Midland + Rotherham child sexual exploitation scandal strongly overlapped during 2014–2016.



These are just a few but the pattern of failings is undeniable. The Augean stables of justice need a Hercules. In our current economic and foreseeable political situation the second coming is more likely.

IS REMOVAL OF JURIES COCK UP OR CONSPIRACY?

What was once considered just another of the reasons that this country could hold its head up high in combining social cohesion and centuries old tradition was people`s and parliament`s faith in the jury system; a system that has been copied wherever justice is based upon the common law.  However bigwigs such as Lord Sumption have questioned the near sacred status it enjoys. The Court of Appeal, in Webster & Ors v The King [2026] EWCA Crim 9, has reminded us that jurors have an immunity from punishment for their verdicts rather than any positive right to defy the law, a distinction which, as the Vice-President of the Criminal Division acknowledged, may be lost on some.   Is it possible or perhaps credible that  part of the political calculus behind proposals to reduce jury trials be a concern, unspoken and perhaps unacknowledged even within government, about the composition of juries in an era of demographic concentration and, in particular, about the attitudes of certain communities to Jews, to Western legal values and to the obligations of civic life? Having been a magistrate for seventeen years and reaching conclusions based on the evidence presented this post will attempt to find an answer to the preceding question. 

First some statistics published here a couple of months ago.

 Top 5 areas by number of Muslims (England & Wales) are

1. Birmingham        341,800

2.Bradford               166,800

3.Tower Hamlets    123,900

4.Manchester           122,900

5.Newham                122,100

Top 5 areas by percentage Muslim  population

1.Tower Hamlets                                    39.9%

2.Blackburn with Darwen                     35.0%

3.Newham                                                34.8%

4.Luton                                                     32.9%

5.Redbridge                                             31.3%

Nationally Muslims are about 6.5% of England and Wales so all above areas are far above average. The top 5 wards by % Muslim population exhibit even higher concentrations of Muslims.

1.Bastwell (Blackburn with Darwen)        73.5%

2.Shear Brow (Blackburn with Darwen)  70.3%

3.Whitefield (Pendle)                                   67.1%

4.Toller (Bradford)                                       64.3%

5.Small Heath (Birmingham)                     62.1%

Trials begin with the selection of a jury.  Jurors are drawn from the electoral register of the crown court catchment area. Consider the London area.  Inner London Crown Court, Woolwich, Snaresbrook and  Wood Green Courts  draw their panels from populations that have, in a generation, been transformed in ways that are demographic fact rather than editorial opinion.  As listed above London is not the only area transformed in a generation.  The Policy Exchange report of 2024, drawing on fieldwork conducted by a reputable polling organisation, found that a significant minority, around a quarter,  of British Muslims did not consider themselves bound by British law in matters where they perceived it to conflict with their religious obligations. A separate survey, conducted by the Campaign Against Antisemitism, found that Muslims in Great Britain held antisemitic attitudes at rates substantially above the national average with around forty percent agreeing with at least four of a battery of antisemitic propositions. These are not fringe findings plucked from partisan websites. They are peer-reviewed and methodologically defensible data points.

A jury of twelve is selected at random. In a catchment area where one in four or one in three residents holds the views described above the statistical probability of those views being represented on the jury panel is not negligible.  In any of the areas listed above in a trial touching however loosely on facts or allegations concerning Jews and/or Israel who is to say that a verdict would be based solely on evidence presented and not influenced by prior prejudicial opinions.  Indeed on Islamist protest activity or on any matter which might engage religious or communal solidarity, the risk of a verdict driven by something other than the evidence is real. The Webster appellants were environmental activists, predominantly white, middle-class women. What happens when the defendant is a young Muslim man charged with a knife offence and three jurors share his background and his community? What happens when a Jewish complainant gives evidence of fraud against a Muslim defendant in East London? 

One need not posit conscious bias. The Court of Appeal in Webster cited Lord Devlin's observation that the jury system is "an insurance that the criminal law will conform to the ordinary man's idea of what is fair and just." The insurance pays out only if "the ordinary man" shares certain foundational commitments about the rule of law, about equality before the courts and about the irrelevance of the complainant's faith or ethnicity to a verdict. Where those commitments are not universally shared the insurance policy begins to look rather threadbare.

Those who designed the current proposals to move either way offences into the magistrates court, to expand judge only trials in fraud cases and to revisit the thresholds for crown court election will not say this. A minister who watches perverse acquittals accumulate in certain court centres, who reads the survey data and who understands that the problem can only worsen as demographic concentration deepens, has a powerful incentive to reduce the jurisdiction of the jury without ever providing the real reason for doing so. The official justification; court backlogs, costs, efficiency,  is real enough in itself. It need not be the only reason for a policy to nonetheless serve its unsaid purpose.

However strange, unusual, unexpected or unexplained events are not necessarily the basis on which to establish a conspiracy.  These  could be  adequately explained by incompetence, fiscal pressure and institutional inertia:  features hardly unknown within British governments of recent decades.   The criminal courts backlog is, by any measure, a genuine catastrophe. The average wait from charge to crown court trial stands at over five hundred days in many jurisdictions. The remand population is swollen. Witnesses disappear, memories fade, complainants withdraw. The government's proposals to divert either way offences downward have been advanced by every administration since at least the Auld Review of 2001. They require no ulterior motive. They are the default response of Treasury dominated governments to a justice system  chronically underfunded since 2010.

Moreover, if demographic concern were genuinely driving policy, one would expect the government to be restricting jury trial in precisely those courts and for precisely those offences where the risk of communally influenced verdicts is highest. It is doing nothing of the sort. The proposals are blanket, bureaucratic and generic. They are the work of officials who think in spreadsheets rather than of politicians who think in community relations statistics.

There is also a logical objection to those who would tend to believe in conspiratorial avenues of belief. The magistracy, to which these diverted cases would flow, is itself drawn from the same communities. It too is subject to the same demographic pressures, the same communal solidarities and the same survey findings. If a religiously motivated juror troubles the government, a religiously motivated lay magistrate should trouble it equally.  The distinction between twelve random citizens and three sitting magistrates may matter considerably less than is supposed, particularly as the magistracy has been actively recruited from previously under represented communities over the past two decades.  Problem is that this government refuses to publish details of magistrates` religious affiliations if any. A Freedom of Information request on this topic was refused as per below:-

Information on the religion of those recruited to the magistracy was collected for applications to the magistracy made from January 2022, following the launch of a revised recruitment process. MoJ does hold information on the religion of magistrates who were subsequently appointed via this revised process, however this information is exempt from disclosure under section 22(1) of the FOIA, because it is intended for future publication. This is a qualified exemption which means that the decision to disclose the information is

subject to the public interest test. When assessing whether or not it was in the public interest to disclose the information, we took into account the following factors:

Public interest considerations favouring disclosure

• Disclosure would improve transparency in the operations of Government, and of the justice system in particular.

Public interest considerations favouring withholding the information

• It is in the public interest to adhere to the existing publication process for official statistics, which includes time for the data to be collated and properly verified.

• It is in the public interest to ensure that data used in the compilation of official statistics comply with the Code of Practice for Official Statistics and that resulting outputs are produced to the highest quality.

• Statistics of high quality are produced to sound methods, with all users having easy and equal access that is fair and open and are managed impartially and objectively in the public interest. Premature publication would undermine the principle of making the information available to all at the same time through the official publication process. We reached the view that, on balance, the public interest favours withholding this information under section 22 of the FOIA at this time.

The official magistrate trend data over roughly the last decade is by ethnicity, not religion. Using available statistics a plausible estimate is that Muslims likely comprise somewhere in the low single digits of the magistracy overall,  probably materially below their roughly 6.5% share of the England & Wales population.

The proposition that the removal of jury trials furthers a long term intention to curb the possible increase in perverse verdicts driven by beliefs or religious affiliations assumes a degree of strategic sophistication on the part of this government which its record does not obviously support. Governments which could identify a problem this subtle and design a structural response this elegant would not also have produced the Rwanda scheme, the Post Office Horizon legislation or the procurement disasters of recent years. Hanlon's razor* applies. What looks like cunning is usually muddle.

To the original question in my opening paragraph the honest answer is that I do not know.  The judiciary, the Bar, the Law Society and the academic commentariat have discussed proposals to restrict jury trial almost entirely in terms of efficiency, cost and delay.  The demographic transformation of English jury pools combined with survey evidence of attitudes among certain communities that are genuinely difficult to reconcile with the neutral administration of justice, represents a question that the legal establishment is as yet unwilling to ask in public.

The jury system survives because the public trusts it. That trust rests on the assumption that twelve random citizens will, broadly speaking, share certain irreducible commitments to evidence, to impartiality and to equality before the law. If that assumption is becoming less universally reliable then the debate about jury trial reform is considerably more serious  and considerably more uncomfortable  than the official conversation currently admits.  A sturdy unimpeachable justice system is an essential pillar of a society`s confidence in a  nation`s democracy.  

As Shakespeare wrote in King Henry VI, "Confidence once lost is not easily recovered."

* a philosophical rule of thumb that states: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity (or incompetence/ignorance)."

BELIEVERS ONLY

HMCTS  latest information on "turbo charged" national recruitment is available here.  Those who have confidence this programme will be totally successful without the dilution of standards possibly have confidence that the aeronautical abilities of porcines have been underrated. 

YOUTH JUSTICE OR INJUSTICE?

There are myriad aspects of society which can be used as indicative of the how or why that society is changing, developing, achieving or failing. The blunt truth exploited by those who rule over us is that anything can be proved by anyone with the tools available for the task and government exploits those tools invariably to its own advantage. The degree, depth and direction of such manipulation is dependent upon the tendency or otherwise of authoritarianism within that government. In simple terms the greater the transparency shown by a government the more likely its democratic functions are firmly entrenched and more resistant to control from above. There is little doubt that the greater the open mindedness of statistical analysis of youth criminality the greater is the likelihood of meaningful action of processes in its reduction.



The seeds of serious law breaking in adulthood have often been established within the youth justice system. England has amongst the lowest age of responsibility in Europe and where shoplifting is a concern in the high streets from Plymouth to Carlisle. The legal, social and moral path of magistrates faced with offending children is fraught with difficulties between retribution and rehabilitation. Last week at Highbury Corner magistrates court a bench led by a senior magistrate, Alexia Fetherstonhaugh, opted for the latter pathway for a teenager who pleaded guilty to a two year shoplifting spree of £116,000. A report is available here.



There is a particular brand of English self-flagellation that surfaces whenever crime statistics are published. We are, it is implied by headline writers and opposition spokesmen alike, uniquely delinquent. Our young people, we are told, are feral in ways that would dismay the good burghers of Copenhagen or Hamburg. Before those of us who have sat on the bench and seen something of what courts actually deal with are tempted to accept this grim verdict it is worth pausing to ask whether the evidence actually supports the conclusion being drawn.
The question is a specific one: are the children of England and Wales stealing more than their counterparts elsewhere in the developed world? It is, on the face of it, a simple empirical matter. In practice it is anything but, and the caveats that attend any honest answer to that question are not merely statistical pedantry. They go to the heart of how we understand and misunderstand the youth justice landscape.



To begin with The Youth Justice Board`s most recently published annual statistics, covering the year ending March 2025, record approximately 35,600 proven offences by children aged 10 to 17, a figure that has remained broadly static following two years of modest post-pandemic recovery. Theft and handling, which had fallen to as little as 7% of all proven offences in 2020/21, has crept back up to 14% of that total representing something in the region of 4,900 to 5,000 individual proven offences. That recent uptick merits attention. But it must be viewed against the longer arc: over the preceding decade youth theft in England and Wales fell by approximately 86%. That is not a rounding error; it could be classed as a structural transformation. On the other hand it could also be affected by the reluctance of victims to report criminal acts against them.



With regard to the situation in Europe the caveats begin in earnest. Anyone who tells you they can produce a clean, like for like comparison of youth theft rates across European jurisdictions is either badly informed or being less than candid. The obstacles to meaningful comparison are formidable. England and Wales as mentioned above sets the age of criminal responsibility at ten years old one of the lowest thresholds in the developed world. Germany, Italy and most of the Nordic countries do not criminalise children under fourteen. The French age of criminal responsibility sits at thirteen. When a fourteen year old shoplifts in Düsseldorf no conviction is recorded; the same act in Wolverhampton enters the statistics. The edifice of comparative data is built on foundations that are not remotely uniform.



Prosecution policies diverge further still. Whether a young person is cautioned, diverted or brought before a court; whether shoplifting below a certain value is treated as a criminal matter or a civil one; whether police recording practices emphasise detection or diversion; all of these variables contaminate the official figures before a single comparison is attempted. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law have been admirably direct on this point noting that official crime rates simply do not lead to valid international comparison owing to variations in crime definitions and prosecution policies. I suppose we should be grateful for that scholarly candour even if politicians and commentators rarely heed it.



The more reliable instrument and one that has gained significant traction in criminological circles, is the self-report survey. The International Self-Report Delinquency Study now in its fourth iteration and covering some forty countries asks young people directly about their own behaviour, bypassing the distorting lens of the criminal justice apparatus. These surveys suggest that England and Wales sits, broadly speaking, in the middle of the European pack. We are not Sweden. But nor are we Serbia. Self-reported rates of shoplifting and petty theft among British adolescents have historically been comparable to those in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany when age groups are properly matched. The hand wringing headlines about uniquely degenerate English youth are not, on this evidence, well founded.



What is rather more striking and rather more important is what has been happening across the whole of Western Europe and North America simultaneously. The youth crime drop is one of the most significant and least publicly understood social phenomena of the past thirty years. From the mid 1990s onward youth offending of almost every kind declined dramatically in country after country: the United States, Sweden, Spain, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands and yes, England and Wales. The proportional reductions were in many cases between 50% and 75%. Property crime, including theft, led that decline. The causes remain genuinely contested; declining unstructured socialisation between young people, reduced alcohol consumption, the growth of digital entertainment keeping children off the streets but the fact of the decline is not in dispute.




What is now also apparent is that the decline has, since approximately 2015 and more visibly since the pandemic, begun to level off. Self reported property crimes have been rising in at least five European countries. Shoplifting offences across England and Wales, for all age groups, have reached record levels. That the recent uptick in recorded youth theft in this jurisdiction is matched by similar trends elsewhere should at least prompt us to consider whether we are dealing with a locally generated problem or a shared European one. The evidence rather suggests the latter. The cost of living, the contraction of retail security investment during the pandemic years and the changing social routines of adolescents appear to be common drivers.



There is one structural feature of England and Wales that genuinely distinguishes us from most European comparators and it deserves more attention than it typically receives. The low age of criminal responsibility means that children who in Germany or Denmark would receive welfare or educational interventions are, in this jurisdiction, processed through the criminal justice system. A ten year old cautioned for shoplifting in Nottingham is a statistic; the same child in Nuremberg is a welfare case. This is not merely a question of nomenclature. It shapes the trajectory of a young life, the composition of our proven offence data and arguably the reoffending rates that subsequently haunt our statistics. Children with a theft index offence, we are told, reoffend at a rate of over 44%. One might enquire whether that reflects the criminogenic character of young thieves or the criminogenic character of early criminal justice contact itself. Several decades of research across European jurisdictions point rather firmly toward the latter.

Those of us who spent years on the bench know something that statistics struggle to capture: the extraordinary ordinariness of most of them. They are not a different species. They are children making poor decisions in circumstances that adults have frequently had a hand in creating eg inadequate housing, fractured families, failing schools and communities starved of youth provision. The Youth Justice Board notes that the average time from offence to completion at court now stands at 230 days, the highest ever recorded. Whatever one thinks about the merits of swift justice the idea that a fourteen year old connects a court appearance eight months after the event with the act that prompted it strains credibility.



The conclusion that honest engagement with the evidence compels is an uncomfortable one for those who prefer simple narratives. The youth of England and Wales are not uniquely delinquent. They are part of a Western pattern that rose, fell dramatically and has recently shown signs of modest reversal. The data that purport to show otherwise are built on definitional foundations too shaky to bear the weight of confident assertion. That is not a counsel of complacency. It is a demand for intellectual rigour, something which, in the discourse around youth crime, has rarely been in plentiful supply.

FACIAL RECOGNITION TECHNOLOGY OR PUBLIC ANONYMITY?

It was in Tokyo 1880 that the first conviction based on finger printing took place. In due course the technique spread and its development and implementation in the first years of the 20th century led to high profile convictions in UK in 1902. Around this time Scotland Yard had built massive data bases which revolutionised the conviction rates of police forces throughout the country.

It was 10 September 1984 at Leicester University that the world's first genetic fingerprint emerged. Since that Eureka moment DNA has revolutionised the science of criminology amongst many medical and other scientific innovations which have benefitted millions of people worldwide. However both these aids to police enforcement initially met with some scepticism as did the introduction of new techniques throughout history from the bow and arrow to the steam engine or spinning jenny.


Today it`s almost impossible for a week to go by without news of some controversy on the subject of police using facial recognition AI. As with the argument employed over a century ago enhanced crime solving is at the root of the argument for those charged with enforcing the law but finger printing was applied mainly to those whom police suspected were in some way connected to an offence however remotely or for the elimination of their involvement. Mass facial recognition can rapidly match suspects to CCTV footage, cold case evidence, or wanted databases cutting investigation times from weeks to hours. Socially, communities with high crime rates might welcome the tool but over time risk normalising pervasive surveillance as a permanent feature of public life. Proponents of facial recognition technology [FRT] argue the technology can flag known terrorists at airports, stadiums or large events before an attack occurs. FRT has been used to identify trafficking victims and missing children giving it a strong humanitarian framing. If this argument prevails it becomes politically toxic to oppose the technology outright forcing critics into a defensive posture. Socially it creates a permissive norm "if it saves children" that can be extended to far broader applications. The question is how far can or should the technology be extended.


There are classic arguments against the use or wider use of FRT. Perhaps the most persuasive is what effects does mass surveillance have on civil liberties. Even when accurate the knowledge that one's movements are tracked in public fundamentally alters behaviour. People might avoid protests, places of worship or political gatherings. Political success of this argument energises civil liberties coalitions across the left-right spectrum (libertarian conservatives and progressive liberals often unite here). Socially, if the argument fails, democracies quietly cross a threshold into infrastructures of control previously associated with authoritarian states with little prospect of reversal. Currently there is a lack of legal framework and accountability. In some jurisdictions police have deployed FRT with no specific legislation governing its use, data retention or oversight. In such a scenario the precedent is set that novel surveillance technologies can be adopted by executive agencies without democratic consent weakening legislative authority over policing.


There is the old adage; "Give the devil a finger and he will bite off your arm". In many cases the government is that devil. Technology introduced for serious crime quickly migrates to minor offences, immigration enforcement and political monitoring. The political repercussion of ignoring this argument is substantial: governments that promise limited use rarely deliver it and once infrastructure exists successive administrations inherit and expand it. Socially, this gradually redefines the relationship between citizen and state moving from presumption of innocence in public spaces to presumption of identifiability.


Studies have shown FRT systems have significantly higher error rates for darker-skinned faces and women, meaning black and minority communities face disproportionate risk of wrongful identification. If this argument gains political traction it can lead to legislative restrictions or outright bans (as occurred in several US cities).


Most FRT systems are built and maintained by private companies raising questions about who ultimately controls the data. Political success of this critique can lead to data sovereignty legislation and restrictions on private-sector involvement.


The core tension is fundamentally one of collective security -v- individual liberty; a perennial democratic dilemma. What makes FRT particularly consequential is its scalability: unlike a stop and search, it can surveil millions simultaneously, meaning the stakes of getting the policy wrong are unusually high in either direction. Facial recognition technology is being deployed on British streets by British police forces operating largely outside any statutory British framework. Parliament has not legislated; the courts have not settled the boundaries and the public has not consented. A technology capable of identifying every person in a public space demands primary legislation, not policy guidance. Government must decide: is anonymity in public a right, or merely a convenience it has the authority to withdraw? Do we want more or do we demand less?