Labour plans pop-up courts to stop criminal justice seeming so remote

http://www.theguardian.com/law/2014/dec/26/labour-popup-courts-criminal-justice

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Labour is examining ways of creating “pop-up” courts in town halls and civic buildings across the country as a way of restoring local justice.

The radical proposal is aimed at compensating for the decline in magistrates courts which has seen more than 150 close in England and Wales through austerity measures over the past five years.

Lower level cases such as summary motoring offences, non-payment of TV licences, vehicle licence duty evasion and hearings where no plea is entered could all be dealt with in pop-up courts. The party’s plans are more extensive than those currently under government consideration.

The plan to “bring justice closer to the people” would also allow earlier, procedural stages of more serious cases to be heard in local authority rooms and chambers so that the defendants and victims – as well as many magistrates – do not have so far to travel.

Labour’s shadow justice secretary, Sadiq Khan, said: “There’s been a dramatic deterioration in access to justice under this government. Not only have legal aid changes meant that those without financial means find it more and more difficult to get justice, court closures have meant increased distances for people to get to their nearest courts.

“In many of the more rural areas, public transport is just not up to the job of getting victims, witnesses and defendants to court on time. I see little reason why thousands of lower level offences should continue to be dealt with in a decreasing number of magistrates’ courts. Communities the length and breadth of the country are blessed with civic buildings like town halls with underused chambers sat idle for long periods of time.

“It’d be much more efficient to put town hall chambers to good use and hold pop up courts in them.

“By doing this, we’d bring justice much closer to the people, and reverse the steady retreat of justice into the major towns and cities. That’s why, if Labour wins the next election, we will look to move thousands of court cases into publicly accessible and owned buildings up and down the country.”

The party does not believe that primary legislation would be needed to move away from traditional courtrooms.

In 2010, the incoming coalition government announced plans to close 157 magistrates courts as a means of saving money from the Ministry of Justice’s budget. By July this year almost 30 of the buildings had still not been sold, the justice minister Simon Hughes confirmed in a parliamentary written answer to Khan. There are still around 360 magistrates courts operating in England and Wales.

Ministers have struggled with balancing the need to save money against preventing the dispensing of justice becoming too remote from many communities – particularly those found in the countryside and smaller towns.

In the aftermath of the 2011 riots, the Ministry of Justice tried out Sunday and evening magistrates court hearings to make the system more flexible. Most of those experiments have been quietly dropped as too expensive.

The coalition’s criminal justice and courts bill will introduce measures to allow single magistrates – rather than the traditional bench of three Justices of the Peace – to sit on less complex cases where the defendant pleads guilty. Labour has supported these changes. Some uncontested motoring cases heard by single magistrates, the Conservative justice minister Mike Penning has suggested, could be held outside traditional courtrooms in community or village centres.