Leading think tank Policy Exchange is calling on the Government to recruit 10,000 more magistrates and then assign them to work in police stations or other community venues.
According to Policy Exchange, the Government should allow the ‘beaks’ to sit during evening and weekend peak sessions to dispense on-the-spot justice in a bid to speed up the judicial system.
The call comes as HM Court and Tribunals Service faces a requirement to cut its budget by 47.8 per cent before 2016, which could mean the closure of a number of courts.
The think tank’s report says that at 230, there are now more magistrates’ courts in England and Wales than accident and emergency departments, which only number 180.
However, the report goes on to say that there is a still a “two-month delay” from the time an offender is charged to when he or she is sentenced, which leads to what it calls a weakening in the power of punishments and means that the system does little to change the behaviour of offenders.
Meanwhile, the rapid growth in police powers to hand out punishments in the form of cautions and on-the-spot fines means that they now account for 20 per cent of all criminal cases. Policy Exchange says that public concern over this development should be met by an expansion in the number of magistrates from 23,000 to 33,000.
The report suggests that the new generation of magistrates would also review offenders’ sentences on an ongoing basis and that they could spend a third of their time involved in voluntary community engagement work.
It argues that ensuring these new summary justice courts sit at peak times would encourage younger, more ethnically diverse and professional people to become magistrates. In addition, it says, a specialist group of 500 “problem solving” magistrates could be trained to deal with people with drugs and alcohol addiction.