ABSTRACT
The previous chapter has laid out alterations occurring to summary justice in the lower criminal courts that have largely evolved through managerial processes of reform, but have also coalesced around running modern public services that are responsive to the diverse make-up and demands of contemporary society. The purpose of this chapter is to bring to the fore operations within the lower-tier magistrates’ courts, and the powers and procedures at work within them. This chapter gives an overview of the magistrates’ courts, the high volume and broad range of criminal cases they process, the breadth of decision-making powers magistrates hold, the sentencing options at their disposal and the role they are tasked with in appropriately sentencing offenders. It emphasises the historic function of the magistrates’ courts as summary justice courts and the need to take an interest in justice administration within this context (McBarnet, 1981b). It draws upon observation material extracted from time spent within London magistrates’ courts and provides textual detail on the working environment and atmosphere within the court setting. It is useful to make reference back to the earlier point that the English justice system is unique in its use of volunteer lay magistrates in dispensing criminal court justice. The magistrates’ courts are located at the lower tier of the criminal court hierarchical structure and are typically assessed to deal with 95 per cent of all criminal court work. This is because most prosecuted crime is categorised as being less serious in nature and falling within the lower court jurisdiction. The magistrates’ courts are also courts of ‘first appearance’, meaning that all cases, even the most serious ones destined for hearing in the higher Crown Courts, begin proceedings in these courts before ‘committal’ upwards. Magistrates perform a wide range of legal decision-making roles, including granting the police warrants to search private homes, awarding utility companies rights of access, making bail and remand decisions, sentencing convicted defendants through an assortment of penalties, from monetary fines at the lower end of the scale to up to between six and 12 months in prison custody,1 or two years if passing judgement in the youth courts (Davies et al., 2015). Due to the high volume of work passing through the lower courts, Sanders et al. (2010) refer to them as ‘the workhorse of the system’ (ibid.: 500). They add to that by drawing on McBarnet’s (1981a, 1981b) argument in her study of summary
justice in the magistrates’ courts. McBarnet writes that, with the jurisdiction of these courts dealing with minor, less serious criminal matters that they are typically constructed as processing ‘trivial’ matters. With this, she argues that less public attention is attracted to them and that ‘two tiers of justice’ have been created. Sanders et al. (2010) pick up on the notion of triviality to state that the legal decisions and powers of punishment held within the remit of the magistrates’ courts are of ‘far-reaching importance’. In this regard Sanders et al. (2010) argue that:
the signals given off by magistrates’ courts are that they deal with trivial matters in which the issues are straightforward, defendants willingly accept their guilt and the consequences for defendants of conviction are slight. In truth, however magistrates are responsible for decisions of far-reaching importance.
