Over the last fifteen years, there have been a number of research papers and reviews of the role of magistrates, with many observations being made:
Composition of the bench Magistrates have been perceived as middle-class, middle-aged and middle-minded and this has some foundation in fact. The majority of magistrates are within the 45–65 age range and the appointment of magistrates under the age of 30 is still rare although there are a few notable exceptions. For example, in 2006 a 19-year-old law student, Lucy Tate, was appointed making her Britain's youngest magistrate. The majority (56%) of magistrates are female. This compares to 32% of professional judges. Ethnic minorities are reasonably well represented. According to
The National Strategy for the Recruitment of Lay Magistrates (2003), 6 per cent of magistrates are of an ethnic minority background which is close to the 7.9 per cent of the population as a whole. Again this compares favourably with the professional judiciary which only has 1 per cent membership from ethnic minorities. This comparatively high level of ethnic minorities in the magistracy is largely a result of campaigns to attract a wider range of candidates, such as that launched by the
Lord Chancellor's Department in March 1999. In announcing the campaign Lord Irvine stated: Typical recruitment campaigns have been supported by local newspapers and magazines. In efforts to target minorities adverts are placed in publications such as
Caribbean Times, the
Asian Times and
Muslim News. The Lord Chancellor also encouraged disabled people to apply and this has resulted in the appointment of a blind magistrate. The narrowness of magistrates' backgrounds has been blamed on the selection process with magistrates on the advisory committee tending to appoint people from similar backgrounds to themselves. However, this criticism has been ameliorated to some extent by the widening of advisory committee membership to include non-magistrates. The Auld Report (2001) commented that it was unrealistic to expect the social composition of magistrates to be close to that of the general population. This was partly because many people found it difficult to obtain support from their senior managers to be released for magisterial duties, and because of other reasons relating to employment. Therefore, the bench would never be a true cross-section of society. Government figures published in 1995 showed a
Conservative Party bias among magistrates, although the significance of this finding is inconclusive. The Labour Government later concluded that it was no longer necessary to seek a political balance on benches because people no longer voted along class lines. A 1998 White Paper stated: "Perhaps most importantly, political balance, as this consultation paper attempts to show, no longer acts as a guarantor or viable proxy for someone's position in society. Historically voting was class based, but, it is argued, this is no longer the case." The term "bench" is also used collectively to describe a group of magistrates assigned to a particular
local justice area, for example "The Midshire Bench".
Public confidence In their report, Professor Rod Morgan and Neil Russell demonstrated that there was lack of public understanding about magistrates: 33% of the public thought that magistrates were legally qualified. Projects are in place to improve public confidence in the criminal justice system (CJS) as a whole. The British Crime Survey of September 2010 reported that 61 per cent of adults thought that the CJS was fair and 42 per cent thought that the CJS was effective.
The importance of local knowledge The Auld report noted that local justice was seen as "a bridge between the public and the court system which might otherwise appear remote". However, locality could encourage inconsistencies between areas and created a risk of magistrates knowing defendants too well. On appeal
Lord Justice Woolf noted that this was a case where magistrates' local knowledge had been useful.
Cost and timeliness The use of unpaid magistrates is cost effective, in terms of cost and timeliness, saving the tax payer from the high cost of employing full-time judges. The report ''The Judiciary in the Magistrates' Court'' (2000) found that at the time the cost of using lay magistrates was £52.10 per hour compared with the cost of using a stipendiary at £61.90 an hour. The cost of a trial in the magistrates' court is also much cheaper than the cost in the
Crown Court both for the government and for those defendants who pay their own legal costs. However, it should remembered that the Crown Court generally deals with more complex and lengthy cases than the magistrates' court.
Legal adviser The issue of the legal qualifications of legal advisers has come under scrutiny in recent years. Following reforms in 1999, all legal advisers were required to be legally qualified. Any existing legal advisers under the age of 40 in 1999 were required to gain a legal qualification within 10 years. The Assistants to Justices' Clerks Regulations 2006, in regulation 3, set out the qualifications for assistants to justices' clerks who could be employed as clerks in court. They provided that people who have qualified as barristers or solicitors and had passed the exams for either of those professions or had been granted an exemption were qualified to be assistants to justices' clerks which meant that they can carry out matters on behalf of the justices' clerk. The 2006 Regulations also enabled the Lord Chancellor to make temporary appointments of people to act as clerks in court where he was satisfied that they were, in the circumstances, suitable and that no other arrangement can reasonably be made. However, the Assistants to Justices' Clerks (Amendment) Regulations 2007 replaced regulation 3 of the 2006 Regulations. The effect was to clarify that those: (i) who were in employment as an assistant registered by the Law Society under regulation 23 of the Training Regulations 1990 (ii) who held a valid training certificate granted by a magistrates' courts committee before 1 January 1999; or (iii) who acted as a clerk in court before 1 January 1999 and were qualified to act as such under the justices' clerk (Qualification of Assistants) Rules 1979 (as amended) to carry out the duties of assistant clerks could act as clerks in court. These changes have brought a greater degree of professionalism to magistrates' courts, thus helping magistrates in dealing with points of law and procedure. Furthermore, the training of magistrates has become more consistent with the involvement of the
Judicial Studies Board.
Few appeals Comparatively few appeals are made against decisions made by the magistrates' court, and the majority are made against sentence rather than verdict. The
Judicial Statistics Annual Report (2006) showed that only 12,992 appeals were made to the
Crown Court from the magistrates' court. Of these only 2,020 were allowed and 3,184 resulted in a variation of sentence, out of a total of 2 million defendants dealt with in the magistrates' court. There are also very few appeals allowed because an error of law was made. This is shown by the fact that only 100 appeals were allowed by way of case stated to the Queen's Bench Divisional Court, of these only 42 were allowed. In 2008, there were only 72 appeals, on a point of law, to the Queen's Bench Division, of which 30 were allowed.
Obliged to give reasons The
Human Rights Act 1998 imported the European Convention on Human Rights into English law. Article 6 of the convention gives an accused the right to a fair trial. Implicit in this right is the requirement that magistrates give reasons for their decisions, unlike jury verdicts in the Crown Court.
Prosecution bias One criticism of magistrates' courts is that they have high conviction rates in comparison to jury trials in the Crown Court because, it is suggested, magistrates have a bias in favour of the prosecution. Unsurprisingly, in a 1982 study commissioned by the
Home Office, it was found that direct evidence from prosecution witnesses whose credibility was not challenged led to a high level of convictions. Weaknesses in the prosecution case, such as unreliable witness evidence, a lack of confessions or direct evidence against the defendant led to higher likelihood of acquittal. However, in those cases where a defendant's credibility was not demonstrably undermined, there was a conviction rate of 63 per cent. In the majority of these cases, there was first-hand evidence (mainly from police witnesses) of the defendant's behaviour from which criminal intent was inferred. Since the inauguration of the
Crown Prosecution Service in 1986, the proportion of weaker prosecution cases has declined as a result of the CPS' review function which requires a "realistic prospect of conviction" before a prosecution can be commenced or continued. In 2009, the conviction rate of defendants tried in magistrates' courts for all offences was 98% and in the Crown Court, 80%. One contributor to Lord Justice Auld's
Review of the Criminal Courts of England and Wales (2001) drew attention to the "dichotomy in people's attitudes towards the magistracy, according to whether they are considering the elective right to trial by jury in 'either-way' cases or the relative advantages of lay and professional judges in summary cases. On the former issue magistrates are often portrayed as part of the establishment, being used to deny defendants a basic human right; on the latter they are depicted as the near equivalent of a jury – the peers of people who appear before them, ordinary people with experience of the real world, bringing common sense to bear etc." The need for magistrates to demonstrate impartiality in criminal trials was emphasised in the case of
Bingham Justices ex p Jowitt (1974). A motorist was charged with exceeding the speed limit and the only evidence was contradictory, in the form of the statements of the defendant and a police officer. The defendant was found guilty and the chairman stated "My principle in such cases has always been to believe the police officer". The conviction was quashed on appeal as the magistrates clearly demonstrated bias.
Inconsistency in sentencing It has been demonstrated that magistrates in different regions have passed different sentences for what appear to be similar offences. The Government's White Paper,
Justice for All set out differences found in criminal sentencing in the magistrates' court. • For burglary of dwellings in
Teesside, 20 per cent of offenders were sentenced to an immediate custodial sentence, compared with 41 per cent in
Birmingham; 38 per cent of burglars in
Cardiff Magistrates' Court received community sentences compared with 66 per cent in
Leicester. • For driving while disqualified, the percentage of offenders sentenced to custody ranged from 21 per cent in Neath Port Talbot (South Wales) to 77 per cent in Mid-North Essex. • For receiving stolen goods, 3.5 per cent of offenders sentenced in
Reading Magistrates' Court received custodial sentences, compared with 48 per cent in
Greenwich and
Woolwich and 39 per cent in
Camberwell Green. Statistics published in 2004 showed no improvement. For example, magistrates in Sunderland discharged 36.4 per cent of all defendants, compared with 9.2 per cent in Birmingham. In Newcastle, magistrates sentenced only 7.2 per cent to an immediate custodial sentence, whereas in Hillingdon this figure was 32 per cent. The Prison Reform Trust Report on Sentencing (2009–2010) highlighted a number of issues including the following: • Youth courts in Merthyr Tydfil issued custodial terms for just over 20 per cent of all sentences over the period, the highest in England and Wales, and ten times the equivalent rate in Newcastle. • Case hardening: It can be argued magistrates are susceptible to finding over time that circumstances are not shocking and passing sentences becomes less of a big issue so leading to a more cynical approach.
Reliance on the legal adviser The lack of legal knowledge of magistrates should be offset by the fact that a legally qualified clerk is available. It is suggested that, in some courts, magistrates place too much reliance on the clerk, to the extent that a few cases have been quashed on appeal. For example, in
R v Birmingham Magistrates ex parte Ahmed [1995], the defendant was accused of deception and handling. When the magistrates retired to consider their verdict, the clerk joined them. Since there was no point of law arising, this created a suspicion that he was taking part in deciding the verdict, and therefore the verdict was quashed. In the case of
R v Eccles Justices, ex parte Farrelly (1992) the
Queen's Bench Divisional Court quashed convictions because the clerk had apparently assisted and participated in the decision making process. In
R v Sussex Justices, ex parte McCarthy (1924), a motorcyclist was involved in a
road accident which resulted in his
prosecution before a magistrates' court for
dangerous driving. Unknown to the defendant and his solicitor, the clerk was a member of the firm of solicitors acting in a civil claim against the defendant arising out of the accident that had given rise to the prosecution. The clerk retired with the magistrates, who returned to convict the defendant. On learning of the clerk's provenance, the defendant applied to have the conviction quashed. The magistrates swore affidavits stating that they had reached their decision to convict the defendant without consulting their clerk. ==Magistrates' Association==