UK Law Articles
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The Times
March 19 1996
Will Hanrahan describes how video came to the aid of the unpaid judges
Will magistrates see the light?
A report is to go soon to the Lord Chancellor detailing the training needs for the 2,000 new magistrates who annually join the bench. The report comes, according to a spokeswoman for Lord Mackay of Clashfern, in response to requests from magistrates themselves.
She said: "Many magistrates had described the existing training methods as too onerous, and irrelevant."
Critics of magistrates, however, say that the report is a direct result of the exposure of inadequate standards on the bench. In one notable case the High Court ordered costs of £10,000, incurred during an appeal, to be paid by magistrates after they jailed a peace protester. Magistrates were also heavily criticised when a Home Office report exposed huge regional variations in sentencing. One Essex court had failed to imprison a single criminal throughout a year of hearing cases. Similar cases in a Staffordshire court led to one in six of those convicted being sent to court.
Paul Boateng, Labour's frontbench legal spokesman, believes that such anomalies can be traced to training standards among magistrates. "The lay magistracy plays a crucial role in the justice system," he says. "However, magistrates are faced with an endless barrage of conflicting signals from the Government and its supporters.
"They are entitled to support and a high quality of training nationwide. At the moment training standards between regions vary; and that is totally unacceptable."
Mr Boateng thinks magistrates should be included in a national "comprehensive training system for all of those working in a justice system". At present the Lord Chancellor's Department provides a syllabus for the training of magistrates. It is then up to individual justices clerks to carry out the teaching. Traditional "talk and chalk" methods have been used. But this approach stands and falls on the abilities of the clerks.
One clerk, Steve Reynolds of Exeter and East Devon, became so concerned that his own training methods were failing to prepare magistrates correctly that he began to use television as a teaching aid. He says: "Vital points and issues were not being registered during training routines."
Mr Reynolds scripted a series of typical magistrates' court cases and recorded them with a hand-held video-cassette camera. His staff became the actors. The results bore fruit. "My own magistrates could immediately see the sort of cases they would be up against," he explains. "They responded to the training extremely positively."
The home-made productions attracted the attention of Central Law Training, one of the country's lead ing legal teaching organisations. It backed the Exeter initiative by financing a professional production of the video, which has so far sold to 60 magistrates divisions.
"We have covered our costs," says the organisation's Chris Mellor. "We weren't certain the project would ever be self-financing; but we recognised a need."
In what could be a signal for future training methods, the Lord Chancellor's Department has welcomed the use of television in training. "So long as what is taught is part of the syllabus," an official said, "it can only be a good thing."
The video covers four training areas:
* Bail;
* Sentencing;
* Mode of trial;
* Trials.
Each programme is followed by a seminar and written back-up. The cases reveal the style and type of hearing that magistrates can expect. The project was filmed in a court with staff playing the roles of the accused, prosecutor, duty solicitor and court usher.
Video training alone, however, is unlikely to be enough for Mr Boateng. He would like to see consistent standards implemented throughout England and Wales. "I warmly applaud individual benches targeting specific crimes in their areas. Local JPs know best what is worrying their community. However, there are certain basic standards which must be upheld."
* The author, a BBC producer and television presenter, helped to devise the 90-minute training programme for new magistrates.
