A Big Shift

Some of you may have seen MP David Lammy on TV talking about criminal justice reforms. Bear with me for a moment, it can impact us bikers! Lammy has suggested a whole host of changes including:

• Magistrates’ courts sentencing powers will increase to 18 months, with provision to extend to 24 months if necessary to relieve pressure on the Crown Court.
• The right of defendants to elect for a jury trial will be removed, meaning that it will be for the court to determine where a case will be heard based on the severity of offences.
• The appeals process from magistrates’ courts will be reformed so that automatic appeals to the Crown Court in criminal cases are replaced with a permission stage, limited to points of law.
• A new Bench Division will be established in the Crown Court for triable-either-way cases with likely sentences of three years or less, heard by a judge alone.
• Jury trials will remain for indictable-only offences and cases with likely sentences over three years.
• The threshold for criminal damage to be tried summarily will be updated from £5,000 to £10,000, in line with inflation.

I have mixed feelings about these changes. If they come into force, as drafted, then getting caught doing something naughty on a bike could genuinely mean you end up in a court room without the right to a Jury to consider your actions. In my experience, there aren’t many biker judges and some just don’t ‘get’ bikes, or handling characteristics of a bike. This could mean a bloody bad day out if you get a Judge with an anti-biker mentality, or, it means you will have to spend thousands of pounds on getting expert reports to explain motorcycle handling characteristics, in support of a defence case.

However, speaking to a Judge I know, he made the good point of ‘if not these reforms, then what?’ With over 80,000 cases clogging up the Criminal Justice system, there is no other option, it appears. The government doesn’t have the extra cash to clear the backlog and the Lammy proposed changes plan to clear the backlog over a decade long period.

I am also seeing more and more defendants ‘gaming’ the system, by pleading not guilty, in the hope the trial isn’t listed for 2-3 years and by then, prosecution witnesses die, leave the country or simply cannot be bothered to help.

I think these proposed changes might get watered down when they come for debate in the House of Lords but for the time being, the entire system is an utter mess. I will update this once we know the exact impact to us two-wheelers.