frontline behind bars
Jeannie Mackie suggests
some New Year’s resolutions
for the Ministry of Justice
Turning over
a new leaf
N
ew Year is always a time of hope.
Hope that this year, one will stick
to that diet, finally crack that
exercise plan, even get to the end of the
celebrity’s favourite detox programme
even although it involves drinking 23
glasses of lemon juice a day with regular
coffee enemas.
Health food shops are full of optimists
investing, unwisely, in enormous tubs
of protein shakes and bags of weirdly
desiccated super food berries and nuts.
Gyms of course are bulging with the
unwary, lured in by the promise of perfect
health and rippling abs, signing on the
dotted line and about to have the most
expensive swim of their lives, or clogging
up the heart attack inducing machinery so
that the old lags can’t get on them. Nobody
is drinking alcohol of course – January is the
one month where robing room chat is not
exclusively about the horrors of life at the
Bar: the number of days passed since one
set foot in a bar provides a cheery contrast
to the usual low level whining that goes
on. Bragging about abstinence swells to
a climax around mid January, after which
silence descends. Round about then too
gyms become quiet and solitary places
again, and people rediscover the established
fact that cream buns can be super foods too.
Declogging arteries
I expect it does us all a bit of good
nonetheless. Making resolutions every year,
even if they crash and burn, at least reminds
us that there are better ways to be, and a bit
of a clear out, a spot of detoxification does
perk up the system. Perhaps the Ministry
of Justice (MoJ) should try to turn over a
new leaf in 2013 and make a resolution or
two. How about declogging the arteries of
prisons by doing something – anything –
about the thousands of people sentenced to
the late and very unlamented indeterminate
sentences? They are still there, although the
www.solicitorsjournal.com
p07_SJ_Jan 15th.indd 7
sentencing regime which sent them into
limbo has been repealed by Legal Aid and
Sentencing of Offenders Act 2012 (LASPO).
The dangerous provisions of the
Criminal Justice Act 2003 caused a great
deal of trouble for the CJS and the Court of
Appeal, and their removal from the scene
has to be at the very least a recognition
that they were not fit for purpose. Quite
apart from the increase in the prison
population they caused, poor resourcing
and system overload meant that thousands
“How about doing
something about the
thousands of people
sentenced to the late
and very unlamented
indeterminate
sentences?”
of prisoners classified as dangerous could
not access the courses required to establish
they were safe to release. The result is that
thousands of prisoners are still inside,
post-tariff: a somewhat surreal situation
when the sentencing regime itself has been
found either redundant to present day
requirements or an unmitigated disaster,
depending on one’s point of view.
Flickering screens
Another useful New Year resolution
would be a rethink on virtual hearings.
Preliminary hearings, including pleas and
case management hearings are increasingly
now conducted via video link: everyone
is in court bar the defendant, who looms
over the proceedings from his position on
the wall, squinting down at his little screen
where he can see some of what is going on.
The advantages are economic. Appearing
via video saves all the transport, guarding
and security costs of bringing a defendant
from prison to court – and the inexplicable,
interminable time it takes for security to
get him up from the cells when the case is
called on.
It is a tolerable system when the
technology works, when the hearing
is either short or non-contentious, and
when the defendant is happy with seeing
his lawyer as a flickering creature on a
screen, after a private 15-minute video slot
beforehand to discuss the hearing.
It is not tolerable when the system
glitches, when no one is available to let you
into the damn video box, when someone
else over runs and cuts your time, and
particularly galling when you don’t know
it’s video and you run around looking for
the punter in the cells in the usual way.
Where it becomes more than just another
irritation in an already fractious profession
is when you actually need a proper
conference with the client, particularly if
you have not met him before, he or she
is vulnerable, or young, or in emotional
or mental distress. You cannot establish
rapport with a telly or assess someone’s
mental state or levels of understanding on
a screen, and of course signing documents
or showing exhibits is out of the question.
The MoJ perhaps assumes we all had
proper conferences with our custodial
client weeks before and his presence at
court is unnecessary – but that level of
service died under the public funding axe
some years ago. A handy resolution might
be – don’t save money at the expense of
the defence. I wonder how long that one
would last?
Jeannie Mackie is a
barrister at Doughty
Street Chambers
(www.doughtystreet.co.uk)
15 January 2013 SJ 157/2 7
1/11/2013 2:39:55 PM