Being the duty solicitor

Last Friday and today (Monday) I am/was the duty solicitor at Stratford Magistrates' Court.  The role of the duty solicitor is to advise and represent people who are appearing at court but who do not have a solicitor; there are a few more rules about who qualifies and who doesn't, but those aren't important right now.


I am currently the custody duty solicitor, which means that I am here to advise and represent anybody arrested by the police and charged over the weekend..  I heard on the news last night that the Metropolitan Police deal with approximately 2,000 offences per day.  Stratford covers the Newham area of east London where I believe I am right in saying that Newham has a higher than average crime rate, although it's not one of the highest crime areas in London.  So, with an average of 4,000 crimes committed over the weekend plus those committed on Friday night that couldn't make it to court on Saturday morning you might expect there to be quite a bit of work waiting for me on Monday morning.

There is no narey duty (who deals with defendant's not in custody) so I am available to cover those as well.  I currently have zero clients.  On Friday I had just one client.

Only two people have been brought to court from police stations, which means that just two people where charged and kept in custody by all of the police in the whole of Newham on Friday evening, Saturday and Sunday.

Just four people have been charged and bailed by the police to attend court today over the last week.

The court staff and other lawyers agree with my observation that the police/CPS seem averse to charging these days.  I can only assume that when the next set of crime figures come out we are going to see a huge drop in crime of all types.

Comments

  1. Anonymous22 August 2011 at 22:58

    Surely the City must qualify as the highest crime rate area in London.

    CPS failure to prosecute (to depress the crime rate) has two logical conclusions
    - a reduction in the CPS payroll
    - a reduction in the number of people enjoying Her Majesty's hospitality

    Coincidence in these times of constraint on the public purse?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous7 September 2011 at 07:02

    I suggest you get hold of the stats on out-of-court disposals. In my county, most 'detections' are cautions, penalty tickets and TICs. We're becoming a police state.

    Baldybeak

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Are items referred to in s.9’s as exhibits bound to be served?

  Background - CPS served a witness statement on me that exhibited two BWV clips that are potentially relevant to the Crown’s case and may have some relevance to the defence case insofar as they are likely to show the lighting and weather at the time events happened. Somebody has listed the clips as unused material rather than putting them in the exhibits folder that accompanies the served evidence. This raised an interesting (to me anyway) question about whether a party who exhibits an item in a statement is bound to serve it on their opponent. At court the judge took the view that the Crown were at liberty to classify items exhibited in s9s as unused material if they chose not to rely upon them in evidence. I took the view that if they are exhibited then they must be served along with the witness statement that exhibits the item and that the solution to a situation where the Crown say they are now unused is to edit the witness statement to remove the reference, by agreement with the
More gibberish >>

Driving without insurance

Image
Insurance is a contract that remains in force until it expires or is cancelled As you may, or may not, know I specialise in motoring law and most of my work involves defending people accused of drink driving . With the drink driving often come other road traffic offences such as driving while disqualified and driving without insurance. It’s driving without insurance I want to talk about today because I think far too many police officers, solicitors, barristers and judges miss a key legal point when looking at these cases. I’ve received prosecution papers today for somebody accused of driving while disqualified and driving without insurance. The no insurance element is claim that the suspect did not tell the insurer about the disqualification. In his statement, the police officers says, “ [I] contacted [the insurer] who called me back informing me they would not consider the insurance policy valid as there were no convictions disclosed.” Looks like an open an
More gibberish >>

National Identity Cards

Image
A mock up of a British National Identity Card Following the Second World War, Britain called for help from the people of the Commonwealth to come and fill thousands of job vacancies. Many answered the call and came to be known as the Windrush Generation after named the MV Empire Windrush, which docked in Tilbury on the 22 nd June 1948 bringing the first workers from Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago. The Home Office inevitably screwed up and caused a huge number of problems for members of the Windrush Generation. But their story is not the subject of this blog. Instead, I want to look at a side issue that has raised its weary head once again: ID cards. Alan Johnson and Charles Clarke, both former Home Secretaries, have begun a call for ID cards as the solution to the troubles of undocumented British citizens who have not had their status regularised. ID cards pop up every few years and I’ve no doubt that eventually we’ll have a compulsory piece of plastic foisted upon us that
More gibberish >>