UK Law Articles
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The Sunday Times
July 2, 2000
JPs in Straw's back yard are most lenient
Jack Grimston and Dipesh Gadher
THE Blackburn constituency of Jack Straw is home to some of the country's kindest magistrates, a Sunday Times analysis of sentencing policy has found.
Home Office figures reveal that the bench at Blackburn, Darwen and Ribble Valley is among five in England and Wales where offenders are most likely to leave court unpunished. When it did sentence defendants, 36.6% received conditional or absolute discharges - compared to a national average of 22.8%.
"We are not known as a hang 'em and flog 'em bench," conceded Margaret Shuttleworth, its chairman.
"We still use the conditional discharge in Blackburn and don't demean it. It is giving someone a second chance, but it is on their record."
Earlier this month Straw criticised the courts for being too lenient. The home secretary told MPs: "There is nothing more disheartening for the police than to spend weeks tracking down prolific street robbers or burglars, many of them addicted to drugs, some with 20 or more offences to be taken into consideration, only to see them walking straight out of the courtroom again."
The latest figures, which cover all 411 magistrates' courts in England and Wales, show that in 1997 the most lenient bench was at Acton, west London, where 43.9% of cases resulted in a discharge. Custodial sentences were imposed in just 1.6% of cases.
Rosamund Reece, its chairman, said the high discharge rate was not because of leniency: "Maybe they weren't very serious cases. Maybe they were first-time offenders."
Rural magistrates can be equally merciful. On Friday Michael Reynolds, 36, from Lydford, near Tavistock, Devon, escaped a custodial sentence even though he was stopped while driving when he was three times over the drink-driving limit and had been banned for three years in 1998 for drink-driving.
West Devon magistrates put him on probation, ordering him to pay a £200 fine, attend an alcohol offenders' programme and do community service. A further ban was also imposed.
In 1997 not one of west Devon's 56 drink-drivers was jailed. Out of 104 offenders, just one was put into custody - the second lowest proportion in England and Wales.
The picture in Greenwich, south London, is very different. There, magistrates sentenced more than 35% of defendants to immediate custody - a figure attributed to the district's poverty and high crime levels and the tendency of police just to caution for many minor crimes.
In Newcastle upon Tyne, also an urban area, only 7.3% of offenders are jailed.
Variations in justice are causing growing worries about unfairness. Mary Cunneen, associate director of the civil rights group Liberty, said: "The sentence you get seems to be a lottery depending on where you commit your crime."
Drunk drivers would be advised to avoid west Derbyshire, where 19.9% of offenders were jailed - the second highest level in the country.
Dennis Gammage, head of Derbyshire magistrates' committee, said the drink-driving cases had probably been exceptionally serious and strict guidelines would have been followed.
Gammage is also chairman of High Peak magistrates, who cover the Peak District national park and are among the harshest in Britain when dealing with the car crime which plagues the area. Sentences of up to six months are usually imposed. "We take a very strong attitude to these people as we are so vulnerable," said Gammage.
The Magistrates' Association, which issues sentencing guidelines, is trying to reduce discrepancies. "Can there be any good reason why some courts send 12% of disqualified drivers who break their bans to prison while others sent 80%?" Harry Mawdsley, its chairman, asked. "Chairmen have been requested to take appropriate action to reduce sentencing inconsistency."
