The Single Justice Procedure (SJP) serves as a microcosm of broader issues within the justice system, particularly around efficiency, equity, and transparency. In this blog, the Centre for Justice Innovation argues that reforming how the SJP operates can and should be part of wider efforts to shift how our court system manages demand better while improving the quality of justice for all.
The Single Justice Procedure: a fast-track to injustice?
A great deal of the academic and political discourse about criminal justice focuses on jury trials, prison sentences, and conditions and the remuneration of barristers. But it is the everyday reality of the magistrates’ courts which has always been of keen interest to the Centre. It is a well-known fact that 90 per cent of criminal court cases start and end in the magistrates’ courts. It will also not be surprising to anyone who sits in magistrates’ courts to learn that over 75 per cent of people convicted each year are sentenced to a fine. Indeed, through the need to pay prosecution costs and the surcharge, almost everyone who is convicted of a crime in a court in England and Wales leaves with a bill to pay.
Increasingly, those financial impositions are made via the Single Justice Procedure (SJP). Brought in to streamline the processing of non-imprisonable cases where defendants have either pleaded guilty or not responded to a notification, the SJP has increasingly come under criticism. First, it has highlighted to the public the range of prosecutors who make decisions to bring cases to court. As opposed to the majority of criminal prosecutions that are conducted by the Crown Prosecution Service, which makes decisions based on both evidence and public interest, SJP cases are typically conducted by other bodies, including train operators, TV Licensing and the DVLA.
As Tristan Kirk’s award-winning journalism suggests, these prosecutors generally know very little about defendants and aren’t trained in investigating vulnerabilities, often only knowing a defendant’s name and address. This has led to very vulnerable people, such as those with dementia, terminal illness or disabilities, being prosecuted and convicted. Furthermore, because most people don’t respond to the prosecution notice, the court has to assume guilt, meaning that the overwhelming majority of cases receive fines, often without consideration of their financial circumstances. Earlier this year, the Magistrates’ Association published a report outlining 12 recommendations to address these concerns and improve the operation, transparency and fairness of the SJP. The government is responding, announcing plans to reform the SJP, with some of these recommendations already underway.
Yet we should not fool ourselves that all is well with physical court hearings that result in fines either. Research conducted by the Centre suggests that individuals in receipt of fines regularly highlight inconsistencies and they perceive unfairness throughout all stages, from determining the total amount needed to be paid, to the way this amount was collected. Moreover, our research shows that fines disproportionately affect those on the lowest incomes, forcing some of the poorest in our society into unmanageable debt and destitution, and greatly impacting their mental health.
The bigger picture
Reviewing the SJP and improving how the court fine system works will help to make the justice system fairer and more effective for those in contact with it. But, with the announcement of the Leveson review into the criminal courts, there is clearly an opportunity to think harder and more profoundly about how our courts operate.
At the Centre, we see reform to our criminal courts as a linchpin of better managing wider demand across the whole criminal justice system. Our recent paper, Systems Shift, set out measures that could be taken to rethink our courts, such as moving a number of ‘administrative’ offences like TV licence evasion cases into the civil courts. We argue that we need to move more cases out of the crown court and into the magistrates’ courts.
We propose moving the courts more into line with other jurisdictions, where all cases that could receive a prison sentence of two years or fewer are kept within a reformed magistrates’ court. That is a lower court that is given the care and attention it deserves as the premier site of justice for more people – a lower court bolstered by better technology, and the recruitment of more district judges to conduct magistrate trials. It should be one where, in court fine cases in particular, magistrates and court officials can rely on community advice services to support and refer people to services they need, like housing, mental health and debt. It should be one in which the SJP provides a fair, efficient and transparent way of dispensing with volume cases but only those prosecutions that are truly in the public interest. With an emboldened and rejuvenated lower court, we can shift our system out of its current crises and put our whole justice system back on the road to recovery.
