INEQUALITY OF ARMS + UNLEVEL PLAYING FIELD

The Victim Personal Statement scheme was introduced in England and Wales in 2001 following a commitment in the Victims' Charter of 1996. The right to submit a VPS is contained in the Victims' Code. In contrast to other jurisdictions the right is not currently based in statute. The Code of Practice for Victims of Crime in England and Wales is available here. The concept of equality before the law or level playing field is supposed to convince British citizens that long standing traditions now brought up to modern standards are the birthright of all. And despite rare exceptions we are expected to believe that the old adage British is Best applies to the forms of justice encountered daily not only through the legal system but with myriad councils, tribunals and supervisory bodies etc. In polite terms there will be little disagreement that the preceding sentence is now wishful thinking or perhaps colloquially, bollocks.




Early training as a magistrate in the years before the millenium emphasised that the so called legal level playing field between state and defendant was a pillar of justice. How compliant my colleagues and I were to listen blithely to the trainer. Equality of arms was another euphemism employed to imbibe we newbies with the philosophy that nowhere on this Earth was there a justice system where individuals were more able to be assured that they would receive a fair hearing and trial where they would have every opportunity to plead their innocence.




I think my disillusionment was triggered by the establishment of the victim surcharge introduced in the UK in April 2007 as a flat rate of £15 initially only applied to offenders receiving a fine; however it has since been expanded to apply to most criminal sentences with the amount varying depending on the severity of the sentence and the offender's age, essentially making offenders contribute to the cost of supporting victims and witnesses of crime. The current rates are available to view here. But the proceeds are not ring fenced for actual victims of crime: proceeds are pooled into a general fund used to finance victim support services in general. Unlike fines the charge is not means tested.




Level playing field or equality of arms is currently just a joke akin to the Hollywood advice, “Never bring a knife to a gunfight”. A ruinous combination of legal aid lawyers` derisory fees and increasingly raised income levels before an application for legal aid is possible, loads the odds firmly with the state and against the defendant. The introduction of the Single Justice Procedure in 2015 was an anathema to those who considered that it was a step too far in favour of the state. Between 1 April 2019 and 30 September 2023, some 3,102,392 criminal cases were processed by the Single Justice Service as the S was renamed.

Statistics on SJP are hard to come by.  What can be said is that about 40,000 cases monthly are processed but the whole process is a carbuncle on the face of justice.   A Freedom of Information Request of 2021 is copied below. 

request-@whatdotheyknow.com
Disclosure Team
Ministry of Justice
102 Petty France
London
SW1H 9AJ

data.access@justice.gov.

5th July 2021

Dear 
Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Request – 2xxxxxxxx
Thank you for your request received on 5th June 2021 in which you asked for the following information from the Ministry of Justice (MoJ):

Since its inception;
1. How many cases have been dealt with by the Single Justice Procedure annually?
2. Of the above how many defendants in each of the years above responded with a
plea?
3. Of the pleas from question 2. how many were guilty pleas?
4. Of those pleading not guilty in each of the above years since inception how many actually went to trial at magistrates courts?
5. Of those at trial per Q4. how many were acquitted?
6. How many cases brought under Covid 19 regulations have been pursued through the SJP in 2020?
7. Of the numbers per Q6. how many responded with a plea?
8. Of those in answer to Q7. how many were guilty pleas?
9. Of those pleading not guilty in Q7. how many elected trial at magistrates court?
10. Of those electing trial as per Q9. how many were acquitted?
11. How many magistrates are currently trained and eligible to be included in the approved list as Single Justices?
12. Please list the courts where the SJP is functioning.

Your request has been handled under the FOIA.
It has been answered by Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunal Service (HMCTS) on behalf of MoJ.

I can confirm that HMCTS/MoJ holds the information that you have requested. However, to provide it as the request currently stands would exceed the cost limit set out in the FOIA. Section 12(1) of the FOIA means a public authority is not obliged to comply with a request for information if it estimates the cost of complying would exceed the appropriate limit. The appropriate limit for central government is set at £600. This represents the estimated cost of one person spending 3.5 working days determining whether the department holds the information, and locating, retrieving and extracting the information.

The MoJ publishes information regarding the outcomes of criminal proceedings. However it is not possible to separately identify case outcomes for Single Justice Procedures (SJP) from the centrally collated Courts Proceedings Database. As such it is not possible to answer questions (5) and (10) within in the specified cost limits.

The information that you have requested in these questions would be held in individual case files for the last three years (In accordance with MoJ Record Retention and Disposition
Schedules), but in order to provide it HMCTS/MoJ would have to identify the files in question and then locate them, retrieve and extract the information requested. We believe that the cost of doing that would exceed the appropriate limit. Consequently, we are not obliged to comply with your request.

Although we cannot answer your request at the moment, we may be able to answer a refined request within the cost limit. You may wish to consider, for example, reducing the
time period covered by your request and / or specifying particular Courts to be included in scope. Please be aware that we cannot guarantee at this stage that a refined request will fall within the FOIA cost limit, or that other exemptions will not apply. In particular you should be aware of the FOIA exemptions that apply under Section 32 and which relate to information that is only held for the purpose of the Court Record.

Where Section 12 applies to one part of a request we refuse all of the request under the cost limit as advised by the Information Commissioner’s Office. I am therefore not obliged to answer the remainder of your questions. However, under Section 16 of FOIA It shall be the duty of a public authority to provide advice and assistance, so far as it would be reasonable to expect the authority to do so, to persons who propose to make, or have made, requests for information to it. Within that, I can tell you that some of the data that you have requested is held within different HMCTS / MoJ systems and we have extracted it as below. Please note that this data is taken from different sources and cannot necessarily be reconciled with other data provided.

Regarding questions (1) and (6):
Year 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020
The number of cases dealt with by the Single Justice Procedure annually since its inception. 12,660 357,006 687,645 738,028 786,546 529,408
The number of cases brought under Covid 19 regulations and pursued through the SJP in 2020.3,610

NOTES relating to the above data.
• The case count is based upon the case completion date falling between each reporting period (eg. 1st January 2015 to 31st December 2015) where the initiation type is equal to Single Justice Notice.
• Data are taken from a live management information system and can change over
time.
• Data are management information and are not subject to the same level of checks as official statistics.
• The data provided is the most recent available and for that reason might differ slightly from any previously published information.
• Data has not been cross referenced with case files.
• Although care is taken when processing and analysing the data, the details are subject to inaccuracies inherent in any large-scale case management system and is the best data that is available.

Regarding questions (2) to (4) and (7) to (9), it has been assumed that they all relate to numbers of defendants.

Year All defendants
Plea entered
Guilty No plea entered
plea
Not guilty plea
2015 12,031 2,779 286 8,966
2016 329,406 83,333 10,196 235,877
2017 696,935 169,585 24,121 503,229
2018 761,995 185,107 26,276 550,612
2019 784,325 199,279 23,136 561,910
2020 535,590 145,605 11,612 378,373

Of which: COVID-19 offences
2020 4,007 437 23 3,547

NOTES relating to the above data.
• SJP offences under the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015, allows cases involving
adults charged with summary offences to be dealt with in a single magistrate sitting without the prosecutor or defendant being present.
• Only one offence is counted for each defendant in the case. If there is more than one offence per defendant that complete on the same day, a set of validation rules applies to select one offence only and these relate to the longest duration, seriousness and the lowest sequence number of the offence.
• Includes cases completed in the magistrates' courts during the specified time period,
where no further action is required by the magistrates' courts.
• Includes cases that are committed to the Crown Court.
• SJP cases are identified in the centrally collated data based on the ‘initiation type’ recorded against the case. It is known that a small number of cases have incorrect initiation types recorded against them, with incompatible offences under SJP included within the overall reported counts, e.g. triable either way, indictable and summary imprisonable offences categorised under 'Other offences'. It is estimated that this accounts for well under 1% of the total defendants dealt with across the series. Where errors do exist the levels are monitored and appropriate action to understand and improve data quality are taken.

• Estimates from Q3 2020 exclude a small number of cases which have transitioned to the Common Platform system in the early adopter site (Derby and Chesterfield magistrates' courts) from September 2020.
• Following a technical issue during the LIBRA Management Information System refresh, a small amount of data was not included for a single day in September. It is estimated this that has resulted in a small number (less than 1%) of case disposals being omitted from the latest quarterly totals. A refresh of the data will take place next quarter.
• Offence classification and categorisation as per the latest published 'Offence group classification' available at the following link
(https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/criminal-justice-system-statistics-quarterlydecember-2020).


• All Not Guilty pleas under SJP are regarded as going to trial.
• The defendant counts supplied are sourced from the same underlying administrative system as the case counts, however they are distinct extracts taken at different points in time and as such caution should be taken when comparing absolute
volumes across the series.
• The defendant counts form the basis of the published criminal court statistics timeliness measures released by the Ministry of Justice. The overall counts may differ from HMCTS caseloads due to the validation which is applied to this data stream, e.g. defendants removed from underlying counts where timeliness validation checks are failed such as blank dates or dates out of logical sequence.
• Published criminal court outcomes statistics released as part of the Criminal Justice Statistics bulletin series does not allow for the separate identification of Single Justice Procedure cases. As such it is not possible to produce statistics which detail the volume of acquittals for SJP cases/defendants dealt with. Also, regarding Question (11), as at May 2021 HMCTS had 12333 adult magistrates. As a matter of practice, newly appointed magistrates are not allocated until they have passed heir appraisal (threshold appraisal). This takes approximately one year and so not all of these may be finally allocated at the date of writing this letter. HMCTS management information systems do not hold data specifically regarding the number of Magistrates within their first year and the FOIA does not oblige a public authority to create information to answer a request if the requested information is not held. The duty is to only provide the recorded information held.

Regarding Question (12), I can confirm that SJP is regarded as functioning at all Magistrates Courts in England and Wales. However, the information requested is exempt from disclosure under FOIA Section 21 because it is reasonably accessible to you. The information can be accessed via the following links:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_courts_in_England_and_Wales and https://www.gov.uk/find-court-tribunal

For guidance on how to structure successful requests please refer to the ICO website on the following link: https://ico.org.uk/your-data-matters/official-information/
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2004/3244/pdfs/uksi_20043244_en.pdf 

Appeal Rights
If you are not satisfied with this response you have the right to request an internal review by responding in writing to one of the addresses below within two months of the date of this
response.
data.access@justice.gov.uk

Disclosure Team, Ministry of Justice
You do have the right to ask the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) to investigate any aspect of your complaint. However, please note that the ICO is likely to expect internal
complaints procedures to have been exhausted before beginning their investigation.

Yours sincerely (on behalf of MoJ),

On the topic of equality before the law the situation is becoming very clear that that supposed fundamental is now but a historic myth. Over the last few months the attitude to public disorder by police is either confused or deliberately slanted so that some miscreants are more liable than others to be arrested many for s.5 offending. As an example "speedy justice" was applied to those found guilty after the riots following the Southport murders.  In addition they were punished in many cases at the upper end of the scale whilst offending non violent keyboard behaviour in some cases was more harshly treated than many observers considered it was warranted. 

A highly publicised case of the MP who assaulted a constituent in the early hours is interesting.  His sentence of immediate custody was appealed and subsequently suspended for two years.  Surely for a person in his position the sentence should have increased on a similar basis to that of another offender whose personal circumstances and/or status are used to seek to minimise the sentence; eg the doctor on call who succeeds with "exceptional hardship" to reduce a driving ban or the father with extensive caring responsibilities whose custodial sentence over Christmas is suspended.  A person in a highly responsible position with all the trappings of a good life should not be molly coddled.  

Immigration is a huge topic in the western world.  When our legal system seems to be operating in woke mode that perception rightly or wrongly can often speak louder than any pacifying  statements from government.  Below is a story from Today`s Times.  It wasn`t the first of its type and most certainly not the last.

The criminal justice system might be beyond repair.  With current developments demanding that circumstances unforeseen even a month ago necessitate budgetary rethinking it would take a brave [or foolhardy] observer to have much confidence in court waiting times to improve to any great extent although if some police forces continue to ignore requests for neighbourhood crimes to be investigated running to stand still might be an accurate description for the Ministration Of Justice.