Another Climb Down

It appears that the govt have decided to drop proposals to increase the
discount for an early guilty plea from a third to half.

Had they acknowledged that this measure was designed purely to save money as
prison sentences for those pleading guilty quickly would have been reduced
and thus the costs of keeping them in prison would be reduced than I could
see the point of it but that was not their argument. They claimed that it
would reduce the number of cases that go right through to the trial date
before the punter finally pleads guilty so that all the costs of preparing
the case have already been incurred and, of course, that it would save
witnesses the stress of giving evidence on more occasions.

I really don't think, from my experience, that it works like that.
Solicitors are directed to inform their clients of the 1/3 discount before
they plead and most of them are going to give their clients responsible
advice on the likelihood of being convicted at trial once they have seen the
evidence against the client. Increasing the discount is unlikely to change
that advice.

The reason why so many cases go right through to the trial date before a
change of plea is that where the evidence leaves some issues to be argued
experienced defendants may decide to hang on to see if prosecution witnesses
actually turn up on the day. If they do then they grab for the 1/10
discount that is still available and plead guilty at the last minute.

I don't think increasing the discount for early guilty pleas would impact on
this situation to the smallest extent.

One way of reducing costs in the criminal justice system would, of course,
be to increase magistrates' sentencing powers from 6 to 12 months. That
way a higher proportion of cases could be dealt with by magistrates' courts
which are a helluva lot cheaper than are crown courts.

That does not mean that mags would hand down longer sentences than now but
that could deal with cases that currently have to be passed up to Crown
court simply because if the punter is convicted the sentence is likely to
exceed our powers so we decline jurisdiction.

I do not know how much money that would save but whereas crown courts are
over-worked many magistrates courts are short of work as a result of so many
minor offences being dealt with by fixed penalty notices handed out by the
police.

John Waghorne