The Shame Game: Why sorry is not the hardest word.

Why do the Royal Family still dress like this?  Is it because formal military dress is smarter than civilian clothing?  Is it because the Queen is the head of the armed forces?  Or is it just because they always have?  The fact is this clothing is extremely symbolic.  The Queen no longer wears uniform, though she once did.  The President of the United States is also the Commander in Chief of US forces but, with the toe-curling exception of George W. Bush, they would not dream of dressing up in a uniform.

Of course Trooping the Colour is a military event and the official celebration of the Queen’s Birthday which is the closest Britain gets to a National Day.  On the face of it therefore there is a good reason for the Royal Family to get kitted up in military finery.  However when the Queen stopped wearing uniform the rest of the family could have followed suit but they did not.

The reason for this can only be tradition.  But what is the tradition being maintained?  It is many decades since we as a nation have had a collective experience of military life.  Despite this the monarch and her family continue to emphasise the significance of Britain’s military legacy in a way that is removed from the living experience of the vast majority of the British people.

The word legacy is significant because the glory of Britain’s contemporary military engagements is very difficult to delineate.  Instead the instinctive reaction of monarch, politicians and the media is to hark back to the World Wars.  The reason for this is obvious: we were the good guys.

Despite this the Royal Family do not wear the uniforms of the Trenches or the D-Day Landings.  Instead like the parading troops they are decked out in splendid ceremonial epaulettes, gold frogging and bearskins all of which derive directly from the 19^th century.  Were we the good guys then?

2015 marks 200 years since Waterloo.  Far removed from any living memory we have still celebrated a battle that removed the yoke of tyranny from Europe.  What we do not celebrate quite so noisily is that our imperial ambition and reach was immensely enabled by Bonaparte’s downfall.

It is a modish predilection to judge our ancestors by the mores and sensibilities of our time and assumption of our modern superiority and enlightenment blinds us to our own indifference to the significant social shortcomings of today.  That said with what honesty have we reflected on our history?  Have we reflected on it at all?

It is a world known cliché that the British are forever saying sorry.  Any native of this island knows full well that a British sorry can mean a hundred different things.  Only one of those meanings involves actually being sorry.  And how often are we actually sorry?  How often have we been sorry?  If love is an action not a word then so is contrition and how contrite have been our national actions?

Race is sometimes referred to as the great untreated cancer eating at the soul of America since the outcome of the Civil War papered over a schism the size of the Grand Canyon.  For the British class has always been our Achilles Heel and the source of our shame.  The Class System is just that, a system to ensure that all those within it know their place and, if at all possible, remain in their place.

The Class System is usually regarded as a peccadillo peculiar to the British and their conception of themselves as a people.  Foreigners cannot participate in or infiltrate the Class System ostensibly because, by virtue of their origin, they are classless.  However this conceals a truth about the British Class System which is that it does not regard foreigners as being outside it but beneath it.  Cecil Rhodes, who else, coined the aphorism: "To be born English is to win first prize in the lottery of life." What few born in Britain today will admit is that even now this is an instinctive belief.

The senior infantry regiment of the British Army is the Grenadier Guards which has had awarded to it 74 Battle Honours, distinctions which appear on the regiment’s quasi-sacred colours.  The first is for Tangier (1680) and the last before World War One is South Africa (1899-1901).  Without digressing into an involved history lesson it will be abundantly obvious that very many if not all of the intervening engagements were not motivated by a desire to free the oppressed and downtrodden.

It is a remarkable aspect of the British Empire that its passing prompted so little fuss at home.  As country after country proclaimed independence Britain largely just let them go.  Absence of fuss has always been a hallmark of ‘Britishness’: it is with good reason that Kipling’s If has for decades been a classroom staple.  But while we have gone on with our fancy dress rituals and afternoon tea huge swathes of the world have been torn apart as a legacy of our actions.

Few things are more unattractive and unconvincing than agonised self-flagellation but that is not the same thing as a good hard look in the mirror and a naming of the historic warts and carbuncles that disfigure the national body politic.  Articulating individual shame is a difficult and chastening experience but until it is done it will continue to fuel addictions and other toxic behaviours.  Candour about national shame is a vastly more complicated and nuanced business, as the Germans know too well, but until it takes place we are condemned to repeat the mistakes of the past with a mindset incapable of growth and maturity.

Would our heedless foray into Afghanistan have occurred if every school child learnt in intimate details the shambles of the First Anglo-Afghan War rather than our heroic stand against Hitler? Equally would the endlessly deferred Iraq Inquiry Report even have been necessary if we had expunged from the national instinct a desire to interfere in countries far beyond our borders?

Being British does not absolve us of recognising historic wrongdoings.  And saying I am sorry is not the same thing as saying I am ashamed; still less being ashamed.  Other countries have truth and reconciliation we have absent minded business as  usual.

Orange Is The New Black: Why prison never goes out of fashion.

As we have known for decades if it’s not happening on TV it is not happening at all and so it is that Orange Is The New Black (OITNB) has thrust the incarceration of women into the spotlight in a manner that no miscarriage of justice could ever hope to achieve.

When something you care about has been granted the oxygen of publicity it is churlish to complain and instead you seize your chance.  The fact is that prison confers negligible benefits on us as a society and in the case of women prisoners almost none at all.

I have written previously that a prison is one place that all children should see before they turn 18.  Not as a ghoulish day out as sometimes occurs in the US when wayward adolescents are shown death row tiers to put the frighteners on them but in order that everybody see for themselves what we do with wrongdoers.  In the same way that we can’t imagine what happens to all our rubbish until we visit the dump for the first time it is hard to conceive what prison is actually like until we see it with our own eyes.

Here are some things that prison is not like: the Ritz; a holiday camp; home.  Here are some things prison is like: spending almost all day and all night locked in your childhood bedroom usually with a mentally ill stranger; sleeping next to your toilet; eating the worst food you have ever eaten – for every meal; being the most bored you have ever been – all the time.

Michael Howard is credited with coining the meaningless slogan ‘prison works’ as long ago as 1993.  It is meaningless because, while it is true that detaining dangerous and recidivist criminals prevents them from killing and stealing, it is certainly not true if you believe that penal policy should meaningfully address the causes of offending.

Prison in the vast majority of cases is a dumping ground and as with rubbish when it is buried in the ground the process just makes people toxic.  Unless and until prisons are properly resourced so that they rehabilitate offenders will not be recycled they will just be caged at a cost to us higher than the fees at Eton.

Prison is particularly pointless and harmful for women, most of whom serve very short sentences that prevent any kind of rehabilitative or educational programmes being devised for them.  In many cases women are separated from their children, even newborn infants, storing up inevitable problems for the younger generation.  Very few women commit the kind of dangerous offences that mean they pose a genuine threat to life and limb and being such a tiny minority in the prison population policy invariably overlooks that their needs are different to those of men.

If OITNB has piqued your interest can I strongly recommend that you consider joining the Howard League for Penal Reform which has endeavoured for years to hold successive governments to account and to inform and instruct for improvement in penal policy.  They are particularly alive to the problems of incarcerating vulnerable women women.

Knowledge is the antidote to populism and nonsense.  A Conservative M.P. recently complained that it was not fair that women prisoners do not need to wear uniforms uniforms. Lest that sentiment strikes a chord with you ask yourself if it is fair on you when prisoners leave prison and return to crime.  For myself I don’t care what prisoners wear as long as prison is a useful and instructive experience.  Prison has been the fashion for far too long; it’s time for a change.

Seeing the sea: The places all children should see & be seen

Hillary Clinton is credited with bringing to mass attention the proverbial concept that it takes a village to raise a child.  Some people obtusely object to the notion on the basis that ascribing to it necessarily involves an abdication of parental responsibility to child rearing.  In fact a sensible analysis simply leads to the conclusion that we all in one way or another owe a responsibility to all children to ensure that they enter adulthood ready and informed to fulfil their potential.

Compulsory education has for decades amounted to a societal manifestation of that proverb.  But of course education extends far beyond reading, writing and arithmetic even if, dismayingly, far too many leave children leave full time education unequipped with even these the most basic tools for living a life fully lived.

It is by no means a novel comment or criticism to observe that much of what is taught in schools is of tangential utility in the day to day lives of most adults.  A classic refrain is the complaint that schools don’t teach completion of self-assessment tax returns and certainly recollection of a dread moment when I contemplated undertaking this task is enough to lead me to add my voice to that particular chorus.

PSHE (Personal Social Health & Economic Education) is the mechanism by which schools are expected, formally, to ensure that pupils leave schools with basic life skills that extend beyond the 12 Times Table and a passing knowledge of the plot of Romeo & Juliet.

The PSHE Association website sets out the statutory position thus:

The Government’s PSHE education review concluded in March 2013, stating that the subject would remain non-statutory and that no new programmes of study would be published. The DfE has however stated as part of its National Curriculum guidance that ‘All schools should make provision for personal, social, health and economic education (PSHE), drawing on good practice’. This position was reinforced by the Government’s latest draft of the national curriculum framework, published on July 8th 2013.

By far the component of PSHE that draws the most comment and provokes the most controversy is the way in which it informs schools’ approach to sex education.  Many people decry the quality and content of sex education as taught in some schools and there is no doubt that the topic arouses strong passions.  Some parents feel that sex education should be entirely the province of the family and others feel that schools shy away from properly considering with children what consent means in the context of sexual relationships and the concomitant responsibility of boys and men to ensure that it has been given.

I feel however that a very worthwhile conversation should be had about what schools and society generally should be teaching outside the classroom.  Since the centenary of the start of WWI last year and running until 2019 the Government has made funds available for every secondary school in the country to send one teacher and two pupils on a trip to one of the WWI battlefields.

In some respects this is a laudable initiative but in others it is frustrating and tokenistic.  The assertion has been made that the two pupils in question will in some osmotic way convey the benefits of their experience to their classmates.  Obviously financial considerations have precluded the sending of all children to the places where many of their great-grandfathers made the ultimate sacrifice.  As it is the contract for the project has cost £5.3 million.  However griping about this scheme carries with it the implicit suggestion of disrespect to the Glorious Dead.  In truth though it is not hard to see why the government was enthusiastic about an exercise that conferred political capital at little political cost.

It would have taken a brave politician to suggest that rather than arrange an outing to the sites of what was supposed to be the war to end all wars that children might more usefully meet the living survivors of current conflicts.  Rather than seeing the brutal effects of war on screen children could see it in the flesh at Headley Court, the rehabilitation centre for wounded service personnel in Surrey.  War maims and it kills and children growing up with the intention of volunteering to serve their country should see for themselves the reality of that fact.

I have a list of places that I believe all children should visit or see before the age of 18 because they are places which will help children understand what adult life (and death is about).  I have previously written about why visiting a court ensures that justice is seen to be done and enables even those who have not performed jury service a chance to understand what the administration of justice means in real terms.  The vast majority of these places can be found near where most children are and consequently the expense of arranging the visits would be more than made up for in the value conferred by the experience.

 

In alphabetical order my suggested list of unmissable places for all children would include:

-       A church

 

-       A cinema

 

-       A council chamber

-       A court

 

-       A GUM clinic

-       A hospice

-       A mosque

 

-       A museum

-       A prison

-       A synagogue

-       A temple

-       A theatre

-       The sea

 

This is my own arbitrary selection of places and, in one case, a thing that should enable every child to understand the ‘village’ in which he or she is growing up and will one day be an adult member of.  I have included the sea because the thought that any child in this island nation could reach adulthood without having seen the sea is in a small way too shocking to contemplate and yet there must be many who do not.  The sea is our most accessible connection to the sublime and a reminder that all societies and the places within them are the construct of men and no education is complete without a realisation that life is not all man made.

Operation Crumbling Edifice - Why legal aid cuts imperil us all

London is in the midst of a huge emergency services training exercise defiantly codenamed Strong Tower complete with firemen wearing those terrifyingly outlandish Nuclear, Biological and Chemical suits.  With a modern twist the training even has its own hashtag #999exercise.  Apparently the training has been in the offing for months, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-33315691, and its occurrence in the immediate aftermath of the terrible massacre in Tunisia is completely coincidental.

There are obviously three purposes to such training exercises.  First it is essential that the emergency services and soldiers are ready for a city based attack and it is necessary that they be trained in a city for such a purpose.  Secondly such a public show of preparedness is intended to act as reassurance to us that the authorities are ready and properly equipped and lastly it is a deterrent to any ‘lone wolves’ and groups inclined to launch an attack.

The fact this training does not occur in the middle of the night when negligible disruption would be caused is the clearest possible indication that the latter two purposes are firmly in the government and planners’ minds.  To some extent this is a massive public relations exercise.

As a member of the public it is very hard to know whether one should be reassured or alarmed by such a show of strength.  We are by now all familiar with the terrorism threat levels on display at the entrance of most public buildings:

• LOW means an attack is unlikely.
• MODERATE means an attack is possible, but not likely
• SUBSTANTIAL means an attack is a strong possibility
• SEVERE means an attack is highly likely
• CRITICAL means an attack is expected imminently 

By way of reminder the current threat level is Severe.  Since 2006, when the threat level was made public for the first time, the level has never been anything lower than Substantial.  Pause for a moment and reflect whether your anxiety or fear relating to the imminence of a terrorist attack has fluctuated in any way with the changes to the threat level since then.  What is the purpose of this grading and what is the purpose of making it public?  Ostensibly it is to encourage public vigilance but without the revelation of any of the intelligence or material upon which the security services base their assessment of the threat level.  In other words we are being told that a terrorist attack is potentially imminent but without being told why.

Engendering unfocussed and diffuse anxiety on the part of the populace is at best pointless and irresponsible.  At worst it produces a rationale for the government to trample yet more intrusively on our private lives.  We must be careful to subject any government led incursion into our civil liberties to the most careful scrutiny and testing.

That being said, as the great political philosopher Ronald Reagan observed, a government's first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives.  There can be no doubt that discharging this duty is an extremely onerous undertaking  that has become vastly more complicated since the turn of the millennium.  Equally it would be extreme folly to assert that the government should be obliged to make public all information and intelligence that falls into its hands.  Up to a point we have to trust that the government is fulfilling its first duty to us without demanding a right to call for evidence that it is doing so.

Where however evidence is not only called for but is central to the proper scrutiny of the conduct of the state in its protection of us is in criminal proceedings.  The people charged with ensuring that evidence comes to light and is properly considered are lawyers.  In the first instance it is the role of prosecutors to receive evidence from the police and other investigators in order to make charging decisions.  It is the equally important role of defence lawyers to call for evidence that rebuts the basis for charging decisions and to test such evidence as the prosecution relies upon in criminal proceedings.

If there are no lawyers or, just as dangerous a situation, such lawyers as there are can’t properly perform these essential tasks then evidence goes ungathered, unpresented and untested with miscarriages of justice the result.  We are in the midst of nothing less than a full blown legal aid crisis and the imminent action of many legal aid lawyers is about to precipitate a massive stress testing of the criminal justice system.  This exercise is no less important that Operation Strong Tower except in this case it would more aptly be named Operation Crumbling Edifice.

The next few weeks will be worth watching extremely closely because what legal aid lawyers are saying by their actions is that the criminal justice system is on the point of collapse.  Suppose for a moment that today’s training exercise was a real attack with suspects apprehended.  How is the government protecting us in circumstances where the criminal justice system is malfunctioning so badly that no safe convictions could be obtained?

The worst kind of police officer is that which believes that arrest of a suspect is the end of their responsibility in a case.  In reality everybody involved in the criminal justice process bears a responsibility for ensuring justice is done and the resolution of that process is a jury’s verdict not arrest in a street.  What legal aid lawyers up and down the country are saying is that they can no longer fulfil their roles in advancing the criminal justice process and the reason is that the government is failing us all in its first responsibility to us and that is our protection.

Sing the Unsung Song & Search for the Hero Inside

We all know what a hero looks like and if we’re in any doubt Bonnie Tyler is on hand to remind us that he’s gotta be strong, he’s gotta be fast and he’s gotta be fresh from the fight.  But without intending any disrespect to Bonnie it is probably about time that the concept of heroism be revisited.  This is because heroism as a martial concept should be over and heroism as an exclusively masculine quality is also now redundant.

Interestingly the song also name checks both Hercules and Superman who, it hardly needs pointing out, are not real people. Neither of course is Achilles (pictured above as a monument to the Duke of Wellington's defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo 200 years ago).  Achilles as a template for heroism does have one major virtue and that is his fallibility.  If heroism is to have any currency as a modern concept it must admit of fallibility.

Lauren Laverne recently wrote persuasively in The Pool that heroes need not be men, or even people, citing as some of her own heroes Miss Piggy and Mr Toad.  I certainly don’t cavil with her central premise that we should not feel constrained in selecting who our heroes are and the virtues they embody simply by reference to their gender or existence.  I do however feel that a compelling argument can be made that there is a genuine benefit in identifying real life living heroes.

If you’re ever lost for small talk or are phobic to it an often intriguing insight into any person’s personality can be gleaned by asking them who their heroes are.  We are used, preposterously, to games players being cited as role models but are these really the heroes we need or deserve?  The public eye and the public’s voice as expressed by the media fails miserably with the concept of modern heroism.  Celebrity is the currency of our age but as a model to young people or a template for how life should be lived its emptiness is profound.  The media, when it does articulate heroism, does so almost solely by reference to military conflict and this, I believe, is problematic.

There is no question that jumping onto a grenade to save your comrades’ lives is a heroic act according to any definition of heroism.  But when one reflects that the Afghanistan conflict cost 453 UK military lives is there not a benefit in considering what the cost of martial heroism is?  If heroism remains confined to situations in which its definition entails exposure to serious risk to life or limb then what chance does heroism have of informing every day lives?

Edith Cavell shot at Dawn by the German army for treason on 12^th October 1915 for helping injured soldiers escape Belgium, renowned for her assertion that ‘Patriotism is not enough’, and Maximilian Kolbe a Catholic priest killed at Auschwitz on 14^th August 1941 when he volunteered himself for death in place of another camp inmate are good examples of civilians who manifested heroism by way of the ultimate self-sacrifice.  Again however these actions occurred in the midst of wartime and their actions are of a nature that though we believe we might be capable of we in reality, thankfully, are extremely unlikely ever to find out.

What we need is a definition of heroism for 21^st century peacetime: a cadre of people to whom we can look up to not just because they were sacrificed for politically motivated conflicts with nebulous outcomes.  A helpful exercise if you don’t have a personal Valhalla at your fingertips is to take a moment to reflect on people you know in the public eye who you regard as heroic.  They are of course, like Achilles, permitted their flaws: these are, after all, real people and the notion that heroism should be synonymous with perfection should be banished.  Just consider for a moment what we now know about Churchill and his private life and whether he would have withstood one day’s scrutiny by the modern media.

Consider also what heroism means to you.  For me its selfless action motivated by love for others without expectation of reward.  In short if what you’re doing is well remunerated it is unlikely to be heroic.  By this token any one of the Ebola nurses and doctors should be a paradigm example of a modern hero and yet how many of them can you name? What medals have been struck for them or parades through central London arranged?

Once you have populated your own personal Olympus a good starting point would be to tell that person why they are a hero to you.  Then do what you can to publicise their achievements.  It is long past time that a popular narrative of heroism achieved greater prominence.

I would suggest as somebody who deserves much greater prominence for his endeavours than he typically receives is Clive Stafford Smith who fought tirelessly for condemned mean on death row in the United States and latterly has been fighting for the rights of those still shockingly detained in Guantanamo Bay.  If you share my admiration for this man and his work you may want to donate your money or your time to his laudable charity Reprieve.

 

Film’s desperate flogging of the superhero dead horse encapsulates the young and not so young’s yearning for escapism from a difficult and complicated world but the truth is there are heroes all around us and once they are given their rightful prominence you can set about the most important task of all and search for the hero inside yourself.

Wellsprings of Wellbeing - Watery wellness when all around is maelstrom

                                                           

One thing of which I was proud as chairman of the Young Barristers' Committee in 2014 was providing a platform at the Young Bar Conference to a session on Wellbeing at the Bar.  A survey was conducted in October quizzing barristers about the their working lives and levels of stress.  Over 2,500 members of the profession responded providing the Bar Council with a broad and clear and detailed view of what is going on in barristers' lives.  There will be a session at this year's Bar Conference and a seminar on managing stress is being conducted by the YBC later this summer.

At the Bar Council meeting held this morning Robin Allen Q.C. provided a snapshot of the results of that survey and sadly but not surprisingly some of the responses illuminated the real despair some of our colleagues feel.  I am extremely pleased that the Bar Council is taking seriously the peril of stress and anxiety within the profession.  Other major institutions and companies have long been alive to the virtue of Mindfulness within the workplace and the importance of making available really effective and accessible pastoral care to employees and its about time the Bar Council followed suit.

Robin spoke of a concept the name of which I had not heard before but which which will be immediately recognisable and that is Cognitive Renewal.  Every barrister knows that this is no nine to five job and that anxieties about cases can easily pervade every waking, and when things are really bad, sleeping moment.  Furthermore no clerk in history ever suggested to a barrister that perhaps the time was ripe for them to take a holiday and yet it is only through a proper detachment from court, chambers and the papers that a beleaguered whirring brain can be properly nourished, calmed and restored.

That being said in our day to day lives there are so many things that we can do that provide even an essential moment's release from Bar fatigue.  You may have all manner of activities and mechanisms in your own life which fulfil this purpose and, for the avoidance of doubt, I am obviously not talking about alcohol.

For me that escape is swimming.  Not ploughing relentlessly up and down in some chlorinated roped off pool and certainly not neoprene wrapped triathleting but just being in water outdoors under the sun, the sky, the rain and the clouds; in and of nature.  I prefer to do this in the Serpentine (above at sunset) where membership of the Serpentine Swimming Club is £20 per year or the princely sum of 5 pence per day.  It is open to all, the facilities are almost non-existent, there is a unisex windowless changing room about the size of a beach hut, the showers are cold, the water is (obviously) unheated and untreated and yet it is paradise to all who swim in it.  And they know it too.

Even in Winter...

Hampstead Heath's three swimming ponds have forever been the North Londoner's favoured alternative to the Serpentine and South London has long enjoyed England's largest freshwater pool at Tooting Bec Lido.

However for those of us for whom aquatic angst annihilation provides an essential release London is on the brink of leading a world beating swimming revolution.  Within days the King's Cross Pond Club will be fully open to the public and I was fortunate enough to sample its delights at its grand opening on Friday evening.  Harassed commuters swarming on and off their sardine cans at St. Pancras and King's Cross now have on their doorstep an idyllic hillock based oasis cleaned naturally by reedbeds.  It has been evocatively described by Jenny Landreth in her Guardian review, a review because not only is it a swimming pond it is also a work of art! 

Most excitingly of all though is the prospect of being able to saunter out of the Embankment gates of the Temple in swimming trunks and have within yards the Thames' first swimming pool.  An inspired trio of young men are looking to construct, just meters upstream of Thomas Heatherwick's Garden Bridge, a floating lido of filtered, heated Thames water.  On 22nd May a Kickstarter campaign to raise £125,000 towards the Thames Baths closes and you can help them over the finish line here.

Whatever your escape is make time for it, never give it up and lifelong wellbeing will be your reward. And very cold feet.

The Wages of Sin - Making Criminals Pay?

It is difficult indeed to elicit much outrage or public sympathy at the news that one of Mr Grayling’s last acts in office was to introduce a ‘menu’ of court charges for convicted defendants.  On the face of it most would think it perfectly reasonable that those convicted of criminal offences should pay a contribution towards the costs of administering the criminal justice system.  However this is a classic example of where political PR and grim reality come into direct conflict.

Most criminals are poor people.  Poor people don’t have much money and criminal poor people are disinclined to hand over such money as they have.  Compelling criminal poor people to hand over money costs money and if the ultimate sanction of imprisonment is deployed it costs an enormous amount of money, almost always vastly more than the sum that is owing.  The effect of all of this is that any sensible person hesitates before imposing financial obligations upon defendants, even more so when they are imprisoned the result of which, of course, is that they are unable to earn any money to discharge their financial obligations.

In 2007 the then Government introduced the Victim Surcharge a statutory levy applied at sentence in all cases on a sliding scale:

£15 Conditional Discharge

£20-£120 Fine

£60 Community Sentence

£80 6 months or less custody or Suspended Sentence less than 6 months

£100 6 months to 2 years custody or Suspended Sentence between 6 months and 1 year

£120 More than 2 years custody 

Many judges in my experience affect ignorance of which sum applies because the whole thing smacks of issuing a parking ticket and in a serious case can seem a farcical and demeaning exercise.  However the absurdity of the Victim Surcharge, never more prominent than when applied in relation to ‘victimless’ offences, pales into insignificance when set against the Criminal Courts Charge: ( https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/336085/fact-sheet-criminal-courts-charge.pdf )

This obligatory charge must be imposed by all courts when a case ends adversely to a defendant, from the magistrates’ court to the Court of Appeal.  Interestingly it does not seem to apply to unsuccessful appeals to the Supreme Court, possibly a tacit acknowledgement by those responsible of the utter indignity of the highest court in the land charging the defendant a Ton or a Monkey for having the temerity to bother them.

I have seen some embarrassing and shaming scenes in court but few more excruciating than a Lay Bench at Harlow magistrates’ court ordering a trio of likely lads in the dock to jump and down to hear if they had any coins on them to bump up the sum they would pay on the spot towards the fine imposed on them.  Of course this kind of thing is popular with some but populism does not mean something is right.

Increasingly judge’s sentencing remarks are released in full following sentence in the most serious of cases.  Devastating homicide cases resulting in whole life sentences for the defendant and ruined lives for the bereaved will now conclude with the judge ordering the defendant to pay £1,200 towards the expense of trying him.

In a tiny concession to realism there is of course a get out for impecunious criminals as the Criminal Courts Charge states:

‘If after 2 years you have: made best efforts to keep up with the payment terms of any other financial impositions and the criminal courts charge and; you have not been convicted of any other criminal offences during that period you may apply to the magistrates’ court for consideration to write off the criminal courts charge.’

Accordingly it will not be long before a whole life tariff murderer gets a day out of prison to waste the time of the magistrates and public money for the hearing in order to state the obvious, which is that being banged up was something of an obstacle to finding the readies to discharge the Order.  It is little exaggeration to imagine a future where there will be meters on police cars and cell tariffs at Booking In.

Sentencing is a solemn affair and rightly so.  It is perhaps the point at which the dignity of justice must most vigorously be preserved.  Turning judges into traffic wardens demeans victims, the defendant, judges and justice itself.  These charges are wrong in principle and will be costly in practice.