LOCAL COURT REPORTS ARE A THING OF THE PAST

 

11. Jan. 2010. – 13:21:49

"Not only must Justice be done; it must also be seen to be done." This well known comment was made by Lord Chief Justice Hewart in the first half of the last century. And with high profile cases it seems that newspaper headlines, 24 hour TV news channels and of course web sites eg Sky and BBC ensure that we know all about multiple murderers sentenced to a whole life in prison, middle aged rapists incarcerated until their testosterone levels are so low they cannot raise a smile let alone anything else and of course the monsters prowling our streets whose diet consists of children made of sugar and spice and all things nice. But what about common or garden offending where it is estimated eg that one third of men in this country will have appeared on the Police National Computer by the age of thirty?

Fifty years ago crime reports from the local Magistrates` Court accounted for a relatively high percentage of the pages in local papers from Cumberland to Cornwall. Whether it was a five shilling fine for spitting in the street or a bind over for being drunk and disorderly a "minor" offender would know that his name and offence would be known to his local community within a maximum of seven days. In a period long before the prosperity and insularity of today "shame" in the eyes of one`s friends and neighbours was a punishment in itself unlike 2010 when, especially amongst the young, offending is sometimes considered a "badge of honour". Older folk, perhaps those over thirty with clean records, are not so sanguine about their misdemeanours being made public. Would that it were so.

A colleague who sits in an outer London borough commented recently that in over ten years on the bench she had seen reporters taking notes in her courtroom once only and that was a high profile first appearance of a man facing a murder charge. It is still possible to find local papers outside London reporting the every day goings on at the local Magistrates` Court with names, addresses, conviction details etc published in full in print and on line. This failure in general for offenders to be named and shamed in their own communities devalues the ideals expressed so succinctly by the late Lord Chief Justice and diminishes one of the three purposes of a criminal justice system ie deterrence because if the conviction is known only to the CJS and the offender there is nobody else in particular who will be deterred in a similar way to that of the effects of cigarette smoking.......all the advertisements and government and medical advice pales into insignificance if somebody close to you, a smoker, dies from the disease.

Perhaps young unemployed aspiring journalists might find it worthwhile to send in court reports "on spec" to the editor of their local newspaper if this local news source is currently being ignored.