The Magistrates’ Association, the membership body for magistrates in England and Wales, today published a report that lays bare the hidden costs and challenges of volunteering as a magistrate – costs and challenges that threaten to derail the government’s plans to ease the huge backlog of criminal cases.
The report, ‘Magistrates matter: A plan to ensure magistrates are valued, appreciated, and recognised’, is based on its members’ experiences and reveals that despite being vital to the justice system, magistrates – who are all unpaid volunteers – don’t receive the support and recognition they need and deserve, and this is becoming a resigning matter for some. The association has called for fundamental reform to address this and made seven recommendations that it believes will help strengthen magistrates’ morale, increase the number and diversity of magistrates, and avoid resignations.
Mark Beattie JP, national chair of the Magistrates’ Association, said:
“The criminal justice system relies on our volunteer magistrates, who handle over 90 per cent of all criminal cases, and it is fair to say that without them, the system would grind to a halt. However, magistrates are disregarded, neglected, undervalued and often out-of-pocket. While their overwhelming motivation for performing the role is to contribute to their community, and many have been happy to do so despite the lack of appreciation, a lack of support, financial strain, time pressures and insufficient recognition all make volunteering as a magistrate increasingly difficult.
“The government has said that, with the current strain in the justice system, magistrate numbers must increase – and sharply – from the current 14,000 to over 20,000. However, the hidden costs of service outlined in our report are making it harder to recruit and retain magistrates, particularly from underrepresented groups, such as people from lower socio-economic backgrounds, those aged under 35, people with school-age children, or caring commitments to elderly and/or disabled relatives, and people in full-time employment. This goes against maintaining a diverse magistracy, threatens to undo the good work of the government’s recruitment campaign to recruit thousands more magistrates, and undermines local justice.
“That is why this Volunteers’ Week we launched our report to call for a fundamental shift in the strategy for the recruitment and retention of magistrates – with a focus on valuing, appreciating and recognising magistrates for their unpaid and voluntary public service. Our report contains seven practical and achievable recommendations. These will make a big difference in improving the attractiveness of the role and help recruit more new magistrates as well as retain existing magistrates who would otherwise feel they must step down.
“The magistracy has proved its resilience time and again. But at the same time, it is fragile. It is powered by goodwill, and that goodwill needs to be nurtured, not taken for granted.”
Building on the Magistrates’ Association’s 2022 study, ‘It shouldn’t cost to volunteer’ which was based on a survey of nearly 1,400 sitting magistrates, the report proposes seven evidence-based recommendations to the Ministry of Justice, His Majesty’s Courts & Tribunals Service and Judicial Office to address these challenges, drawing on established best practice in volunteer management.
The report calls for a fundamental shift in the magistrates’ relationship with the justice system and says that a multi-year recruitment and retention strategy is essential to attract, train, support and retain magistrates while ensuring a structured transition for magistrates upon their retirement.
The Magistrates’ Association also calls for a Magistrates’ Volunteer Charter, that would outline roles and expectations, supported by an annual Magistrates’ Attitude Survey (modelled on the Judicial Attitude Survey), to track morale and concerns; and stronger engagement between magistrates and senior leadership to ensure their voices shape future policies. Another recommendation is that the Ministry of Justice should formally track magistrates’ volunteering hours, to quantify their contributions, strengthen the case for recognition and inform policy decisions.
The report also recommends that High Sheriffs and Lord-Lieutenants, as local representatives, are empowered centrally – through funding and resources – to lead local appreciation efforts to recognise magistrates’ civic contributions. And, as magistrates are the only major public service volunteers without a long service medal, the association is also calling for a Magistrates’ Long Service Medal, awarded to magistrates after ten years’ service, to align them with peers in other voluntary public service roles.
The full report can be found here.
