Courts get tougher
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• by Liam O'Brien Sentences handed out by magistrates courts for driving offences are expected to become tougher if plans to reduce the role of lay magistrates go ahead.
The Auld Review—set up by the Home Secretary Jack Straw to look at ways of speeding administration of justice through UK courts—is considering cutting the role of lay magistrates and handing more control of the bench to professional lawyers. This follows a submission from the Justices' Clerks Society that supports the scaling back of voiuntary magistrates and the more extensive use of profes sional-trained benches.
The plan would see greater use of a single professionallytrained lawyer or paid magistrates on the bench, with a track record of higher sentencing, rather than a team of lay justices.
Transport lawyer Ian Rothera said: With paid magistrates there is a tendency for the penalties to be higher. Cynics might say that this is because they are more able to sort the wheat from the chaff presented as mitigation by the advocate."
Gary Hodgson of transport solicitors Ford & Warren says: "Stipendiary magistrates can go straight to the point and are able to identify the points in favour and the points that are not instantly. It is well known that defence lawyers prefer lay magistrates to professional ones.
And you are more likely to get a severe penalty with stipendiary magistrates."
Professional magistrates are prone to imposing penalties at the top end of the sentencing guidelines supplied by the Lord Chancellor's department. This could mean a trucker found guilty of operating with defective brakes facing a fine of 25,000 rather than the sub21,000 fine more likely to be imposed by a lay justice.