MAGISTRATES` TRAINING AND DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

 02. Apr. 2010. – 16:43:45 

I`ve written here on a few occasions about "Domestic Violence" and the fact that there is no such offence in law....... yet. Another "specialist" court has recently been set up in East London; The Thames Specialist Domestic Violence Court at Thames Magistrates` Court in Bow Road subsequently to having met twelve government required criteria ranging from separate entrances for complainants to "magistrates who are trained to deal with domestic violence cases". Although I do not sit in that area I too am a "specially trained magistrate trained to deal with domestic violence cases". I and my colleagues do not have to be "specially trained" to deal with non domestic violence cases, nor any driving offences which fall within our jurisdiction, nor the hundreds of other offences with which we deal every time we sit. 

The nub of the specialist DV training is an attempt to provide us with historical, social and most disconcertingly spurious statistical evidence to take with us into a DV court. My opinion, although I believe it is not shared by the majority of my colleagues, is that violence in a domestic context be judged on the evidence presented in court as is every case in a British court of law.

As a matter of record it has been reported that since the court opened in October 2009 there have been 115 domestic violence trials, resulting in 21 prison sentences and 14 restraining orders for perpetrators. If we assume that each of those 35 disposals represents the result of 35 trials we are left in the dark about the verdicts and corresponding disposals if any of the remaining 80 trials.