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IT HAS BEENDYour browser does not support the element. a long day in courtroom number 5 at Stratford Magistrates’ Court by the time Charlie Mendajami enters the dock. The trio of magistrates have presided over eight cases, including those of a pale teenager who admitted to sharing indecent images (he gets a 24-month community order and 200 hours of unpaid work); a man who attacked a noisy neighbour’s door with a hammer (£650, or $820, fine; hammer confiscated); and a serial offender who stole a bike and punched a stranger (five weeks in prison).Mr Mendajami, who wears sunglasses and gesticulates behind the plexiglass, has pleaded not guilty to drunkenly hurling a glass bottle at a customer in a petrol station, before attempting to spray fuel and then “simulating a sex act with the nozzle”. The court will have to decide at a later hearing whether that is merely a publicorder offence or meets the bar for affray, which could carry a longer sentence. “As of today,” the prosecutor tells the magistrates, “and congratulations by the way, that can all still be done here.”He is referring to the fact that on November 18th magistrates’ courts in England and Wales—including this one in east London—were given more powers. Magistrates, lay judges who are volunteers with little formal training, will now be able to send people to prison on charges that carry a maximum tariff of a year, up from a previous maximum of six months. The government says this will free up space in crown courts and, counterintuitively, relieve . Court-watchers have some doubts.The plan has several moving parts. The worst backlogs in the judicial system by far are in crown courts, which deal with more serious offences and where 28% of cases wait over a year for a trial. The most crowded bits of the prison estate, in turn, are reception and remand prisons, which hold people awaiting trial or sentencing; the number of such inmates has increased by 84% to 16,500 in the past five years. Pushing more cases down to the magistrates should, ministers say, free up 2,000 days per year in crown courts.Getting through the backlog more quickly would cause an initial uptick in the prison population, according to the justice department’s modelling. In 2022 the government tried exactly the same reform of magistrates’ powers, only to backtrack after less than a year as prisons reached capacity. The government hopes that its decision to release some prisoners early means it has more breathing-space to cope with a similar surge this time. Over time, however, the prison population should fall as reception and remand prisons become less full. “It’s a bit like trying to do a 3 jigsaw,” says Tom Franklin of the Magistrates’ Association, a membership body.Some have concerns about the quality of justice in magistrates’ courts. They can be a “Wild West” in which proper processes are not followed, according to Transforming Justice, a think-tank. Giving magistrates more power could be trading speed for quality. Some barristers see magistrates as excessively punitive, as well as lacking legal training. “They go around like they are little emperors,” says one. Handed more serious cases—such as fraud, assault or weapons possession—they may be less minded to trust that offenders can be managed in the community.There is no robust evidence, though, that magistrates do sentence more harshly. Some lawyers think they have become more consistent as sentencing guidelines have been tightened in recent years. It is in any case possible that magistrates will find their extra prerogatives to be short-lived. David Gauke, a former justice secretary, will complete a sentencing review in the spring. He has previously argued for a presumption against the use of short sentences of under a year.If the government adopted that approach, magistrates’ role would be transformed. Punitively minded or not, they would be able to send far fewer people to prison. But that would have other consequences: few think the probation system is in any state to deal adequately with thousands more people in the community. Mending the dire state of will require a ten-year strategy, says Mr Franklin. For now, the government is still using sticking plasters.
