Law Weblog

Some fixed-penalty notices are a farce (Lord Justice Leveson)

Monday 24 December 2007 at 2:07 pm | In News | Post Comment

Lord Justice Leveson, the senior presiding judge in England and Wales, in the lecture at the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, said that the use of fixed-penalty notices in some cases had become a farce.

In one case an offender had accumulated fines to a total of £960 for “no fewer than eight notices for theft, presumably shoplifting, and one for drunk and disorderly”. They were “all unpaid, with no real prospect of ever being able to pay a single one of them”.

In another case, an offender gave the name of a distinguished war hero and the address of the square in which the hero’s statue stood. The judge said: “Without satisfactory confirmation of identity, again a PND [penalty notice for disorder] becomes a farce.”

The rise of summary justice at the expense of formal hearings in the courts led to 51 per cent of offences being dealt with last year by a caution, on-the-spot fine or cannabis warning. This was the first time in modern criminal history that more than half of offences were dealt with by out-of-court punishments.

Whole lecture here

Times article here