Not Fit For Purpose

I’ve just finished the latest round of Judicial training, this time on the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act, 2012.

I can’t speak for the Act in its entirety, and suspect that most of it will have little relevance to either the Magistrates’ Courts, or indeed the punishment of offenders, something this Government seems determined to avoid doing at all costs.
However, one clause, buried deep in Schedule 11, section 8, sub - section (3), paragraph (d) will have a considerable effect, on the courts, the administration of justice and the safety of the public in general, and it is this:

“A justice of the peace may not remand a person in, or commit a person to, custody if it appears to the justice of the peace that there is no real prospect that the person will be sentenced to a custodial sentence in the proceedings.”

So what does that mean in real terms?

Where a petty criminal, whose crime might not in itself merit imprisonment, comes before the court and who, on his or her past record will, as soon as they are released, go on to commit further offences, it will no longer be possible to give society some respite from his or her activities by keeping them in jail until they are sentenced. Out they will go to re-offend, and it all probability keep on doing so such that it will be impossible to ever keep them in one place (prison) long enough to sentence them.

Where a court has substantial grounds to believe that if released on bail an accused person will threaten or otherwise intimidate witnesses into not giving evidence against them, in a case where again prison might not be a realistic option, but a high-level community order might be, such as most cases of common assault and the less serious assaults occasioning actual bodily harm, then the court will have to release the accused and accept that witnesses will be intimidated and the case will never come to trial.

Where a court imposes conditions on an accused’s bail, such as residence, a night-time curfew, or staying away from their victim/s, in cases such as harassment or racially or religiously aggravated harassment where no violence is threatened, and the accused decides to ignore a condition, or all the conditions, the court will have no option but to release the person to go on doing whatever it is he or she wants.

Where the court knows damn well that if released the person before them will abscond and not turn up for trial, because he’s done it umpteen times before, but his crime is not so serious that he faces jail, then we will just have to let him go and accept we’ll never see him again.

Now if all this sounds to you like the “Punishment of Offenders” then you’ll be content.

Me?

I’m disgusted at this back-door attempt by a weak-willed government to reduce the prison population and it’s total lack of any attempt to tackle crime in this country.
The first duty of any government is the protection of its citizens – by that measure alone this government is not fit for purpose.