Building community confidence

As we are all aware, the press and other parts of the media routinely carry reports of cases that they consider to be newsworthy. But coverage in its entirety is not as extensive as I believe it should be. Moreover, not so routinely - indeed rarely - is the judicial structure on which those reported cases are based explained to the public.

Perhaps there is a tacit assumption that people know how it all works. Or that they do not need to know. Or that they have no wish to know. If there is that assumption, then I believe that it is a mistaken one; and one that has consequences. …, since a large proportion of the population seldom, if ever, comes into contact with the justice system, experience has shown me that there is widespread and regrettable ignorance – a word I use in its purest sense of a lack of knowledge – about it.

I draw a distinction between us as individual members of the public – walking in the street or as customers in a shop – and us, together, making up a community.

…My certainty of that distinction is reinforced in numerous ways, but particularly through the pleasure I have of being one of those who gives a formal welcome to new British citizens who have chosen to make their homes in Hertfordshire. Hearing their stories – where on the globe they have come from; the contribution they are making to their new country – and the value they attach to being full and active members of the Hertfordshire population underlines for me the notion not simply of the public, but of the community.

Let me clarify now what I mean by confidence. …I use it here alongside the word trust because in this context the two are linked.

… By confidence and, therefore trust, I mean in this context that people should be confident that cases - whether they are involved with them or not - are dealt with justly and efficiently....

...(T)he judicial oath or affirmation... expresses in just a few words the fundamentals of the responsibilities which the office of magistrate entails.... I cannot recall how often I have been asked what being a magistrate involves, or how often in reply that I have quoted from it the phrase. ‘I will do right to all manner of people’.

...I am no expert in constitutional law. I am simply an amateur, who is taken with the notion that it is possible to trace the process for dealing with someone facing the most basic of allegations, such as common assault, right back to Aristotle two and a half thousand years ago.. Even if Aristotle did not conceive the notion, he was certainly one of the earliest proponents of the principle of the rule of law.

I guess that the nearest we get to a statutory description of principles underpinning the rule of law is the Human Rights Act 1998... . It is Article 6... that resonates with me each time I sit. ...Each feature contributes to the culture of open justice - and to promoting confidence in what we do. Having said that, I think I must accept that Aristotle and Article six ... may not be uppermost in the mind of the person facing the common assault allegation as he appears before the bench!

But ... the fact that his entitlement to be dealt with fairly, according to law, applied impartially, has such an ancient provenance and is practised and expressed so clearly today is further evidence of grounds for confidence in the system – doing right to all manner of people.

... An independent judiciary – that people can watch in action for themselves – is a hallmark of our democracy.

Subject to restrictions on access to youth and family courts that I have mentioned, anyone over the age of 14 can pop along to their local court and see happening in real life the things I have described: from the relatively mundane sentencing for a speeding offence, to the drama of a trial as a court searches for the truth through the adversarial process.

All cases are important, but few people have the time or the inclination to sit in the public gallery for hours on end on the off chance of catching the truly dramatic. Instead, they rely, as they have done for years, on their local paper to do the waiting and watching, reading the fruits of that from the comfort of their armchairs. But things have changed.

As I mentioned when I began, there is rather less fruit about. By that I mean that fewer papers send reporters to court these days.

…I do not suggest that that practice is extinct, far from it. …But there is little argument that the practice has declined. I think our communities are the poorer for it.

However, there are some encouraging signs that the consequences of this change are recognised. Recent reports, such as the Casey Review: Engaging Communities in Criminal Justice and Redefining Justice, by Victims’ Champion Sara Payne, and a short report from the Office of Criminal Justice Reform recognise the importance of better information for the public about the system and its outcomes.

…Copies of all court results and lists of future hearings are now available free of charge to the media. Local authorities publish details of cases they are involved with, such as fly-tipping. The Hertfordshire police website now carries the results of some Crown Court cases.

…I hope… that this new attention will put right a myth, so loved of newspaper headline writers, to make it clear that offenders who receive sentences in the community do not walk free from court.

Their liberty is curtailed and they are held to account for their wrong-doing. ...It is essential that people feel that justice is being done and not that they are being done by justice.

I hope I have conveyed something of what we do as magistrates; something of how we do it; and as a result, something about our contribution to our justice system so that you, like me, recognise that that elusive notion – community confidence – is not simply about the outcome of individual cases. It is also about the entire system which enables those outcomes to be decided fairly and openly; and that when it is understood as a whole it is something in which the community has very good reason to have pride – and confidence.