UK Law Articles
These articles are reproduced from old newspapers. Whether you are looking for old articles about the Lord Chancellor's Department, or trying to find stories on solicitors, judges or courts, the law teacher article database is here to help you. You will find these articles useful for writing your law essays, law dissertations and law coursework.
The Times
March 15 1999
Drive to make JPs blue collar, not blue rinse
BY FRANCES GIBB
AN ADVERTISING campaign is introduced today to recruit more working-class people as magistrates and to rid the occupation of its blue-rinse image.
Although there are no figures for the jobs of the 30,000 magistrates in England and Wales, few are believed to come from manual jobs, where it has always been harder to get time off for the work.
The month-long campaign by the Lord Chancellor's Department, costing £420,000, will use posters and press advertisements depicting people in a variety of jobs bearing the label "magistrate". A spokesman from the department, said: "The Lord Chancellor is keen that the bench should be balanced in terms of gender, ethnic origin, where people live, occupation and age."
A second objective is to reduce the excessive workload in some areas but the Lord Chancellor, Lord Irvine of Lairg, has abandoned an earlier aim of seeking more Labour-voting JPs. Instead, he wants to see a broader social mix and to open the magistracy to as many people as possible. He has already appointed the first six blind magistrates.
Anne Fuller, chairman of the Magistrates' Association, said: "It is vital that members of the general public realise that magistrates are ordinary people."
The campaign coincides with an initiative to make the magistracy more professional. From the autumn, new magistrates will have their performance appraised and be required to reach a standard of competence. The programme, run by the Judicial Studies Board, aims to change the perception of magistrates as amateurs. It has already begun in some areas. When magistrates first sit, their skills are appraised by experienced colleagues.
Details of how to apply to be a JP are available on 0845 606 1666.
