Not unexpectedly 2025 has begun with the pillars designed to uphold our justice system being further worn away. The erosion being enacted before our eyes can I suppose be compared to the situation where an anorexic patient is verging on self destruction despite the restorative and/or palliative measures family and medical staff undertake. The question arises as to when a point of no return is reached. Sentencers have officially been told to avoid wherever and whenever possible the imposition of immediate custodial sentences. They have also been told with ever increasing volume to put victims first. There is a code of practice to this effect. Personally I have always thought that justice should be blind but such a position now appears to be obsolescent.
When judges follow the first directive mentioned above it would appear extremely unlikely that they are satisfying the second. Every day in every court there are offenders who are benefitting from the overcrowding in our prisons. Each such judicial decision is an afront to justice and each, like the so called Chinese water torture, reduces resistance to opposing such policy by the drip drip effect of undermining public confidence that the application of law will apply in all cases. Public trust is diminished and self reliance becomes the order of the day. Whilst that attitude might be suitable in a country with less strict laws on defending one`s property or person it has been tempered in this country by society`s acceptance that the state will be there to protect the innocent and punish the guilty appropriately.
In 2002 David Howard, a former teacher, engaged in sexual activity while in a position of trust. That society might have been better served had he been jailed is a moot point. What is also questionable is the increasing trend of charges being brought without time limit on their alleged occurrence. There is more on that at the conclusion to this post.
A suspended custody order was also placed recently on George Szulhan for a sexual offence against a young girl. Many observers might conclude that that too was an afront to justice.
Mold Crown Court was the venue where Brett Wilding was sentenced for one offence of assault occasioning actual bodily harm and one of strangulation against his then partner. His 20 month custodial sentence was suspended for 18 months. I remember very clearly the worst case of domestic abuse during my 17 years on the bench. A young man had pulled his heavily pregnant girl friend down a flight of stairs by her hair and was consequently charged with "assault by beating". He had caused her severe bruising but thankfully no harm to the unborn child. We gave him 6 months immediate custody. But around the turn of the millenium there was still arguably a functioning justice system where offenders generally were sentenced in a manner to which their crimes warranted without fear or favour, Sentencing Guidelines or government directive.
As alluded to above there is virtually no statute of limitations under the English legal system. TV programmes of recent years have earned millions of viewers when the topic has been of cold cases: Waking the Dead, New Tricks The rise of the Me Too movement has prompted many hundreds of alleged victims to come forward with claims of unlawful unwanted sexual activities against them. There have also been scandals of such cases where the accuser has been shown to be a liar and has been jailed for perverting the course of justice. Ex MP Harvey Procter has been a long standing example of the harm that can follow such unfounded accusations. For those interested in the arguments for and against a statute of limitations a good place to begin is here , here and here.
With no sign of the courts` backlog decreasing any time soon; indeed it will probably increase, it is likely that defendants and their lawyers will offer "memory lapse" as an argument against prosecution witnesses. With a guilty requirement necessitating a juror to be "sure" of his/her decision this doesn`t bode well for the future. The current Secretary of State for Justice [how long will she last] has offered all sorts of possible proposals to alleviate this situation. However they are but paper tokens in a hurricane. Ministry of Justice permanent secretary Dame Antonia Romeo has been forced to come clean. It would have been interesting to have been a fly on the wall when she subsequently spoke to the Secretary of State.
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