Safe Speed Forums

I dunno, I took Fishy's meaning to be that they had to prove that the offence had taken place, ie the vehicle had exceeded the speed limit.

Note that the law only requires the driver to be named in order to satisfy s172. There is no mention of admitting the alleged offence which has led to the s172 being issued.

If a name is forthcoming then s172 is complied with and the CPS will proceed with the original offence.

They still have to prove the alleged offence, unless of course the driver pleads guilty to it. This is why UK law (at the moment) allows s172. Demanding the name of the driver, with safeguards for those who genuinely are unable to, in order for a charge to be put is considered a proportionate approach to the situation.
Finding someone guilty of speeding, jumping a red light or whatever just because they fail to name a driver for a s172 would not be proportionate.



Even when drivers fail to turn up for a trial, the bench hear the whole of the prosecution case and must be satisfied that the case is proven before they will announce a guilty verdict.


I have to say that this is the first time I have heard it alleged that courts will find guilty of speeding SOLELY because a driver has failed to comply with s172. I would be very interested to know where you got the idea from.

I think we are all at crossed purposes here.

From the earlier posts, I think everyone has taken Fisherman to mean that a s172 conviction would only be successful if it could be proved that an offence of speeding had been committed; whereas in fact the offence of speeding only has to be alleged in order to permit a s172 conviction to be made.

In other words, your original post on the topic gives the impression that unless speeding were proved then s172 would fail also, which I don't believe is what you meant. I presume you actually meant that the offence of s172 "failing to furnish" had (of course) to be proved in court - in other words that a proper defence (eg due diligence) would defeat the charge.

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CSCP Latin for beginners...
Ticketo ergo sum : I scam therefore I am!

I'm not sure; I'm a bit confused now. Perhaps Fisherman could clarify?

All becomes clear.

I had taken some previous posts to mean that JPs would convict for speeding (with no evidence necessary to prove speeding) as soon as they had an admission under s172 of being the driver or there had been a conviction for fail to supply under s172.

My apologies for the misunderstanding on my part.

North Wales CPS/courts regularly do this. A magistrate has indicated to me that she hates dealing with S172 because its always the same, " nobody cannot know who was driving their vehicle "

Apparently the official guidance to mags is to convict in these cases.

I have personal experience.

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Richard Ceen
We live in a time where emotions and feelings count far more than the truth, and there is a vast ignorance of science (James Lovelock 2005)

If I have understood you correctly you are saying that North Wales courts convict for speeding with no information as to the identity of the driver AND with no evidence being offered to prove the speeding offence.

That would involve the CPS saying that they can't prove anything but please convict anyway. The court clerk saying nothing. The bench going along with it. The defence never objecting or appealing the verdict. The local paper not printing that a serious miscarriage of justice had taken place. I would love to see some proof.



No it isn't.
The official guideance is the same for all offences. Hear the evidence, find the facts, check to see if the facts you have found amount to proof of the offence as charged. If yes - then convict. If no - then find not guilty.



Of finding people guilty without any evidence?

fisherman

I'm sorry if I may have misread your original post - the guidance and procedure is to always convict on a S172 charge. No evidence of speeding is offered other than the copy of the original NIP/FPN deemed as served.

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Richard Ceen
We live in a time where emotions and feelings count far more than the truth, and there is a vast ignorance of science (James Lovelock 2005)

This statement is not true. I don't doubt that you believe it and don't accuse you of deliberately telling a lie but that doesn't alter the fact that it is not true.

You may be aware of some reports in the media about the requirement for courts to impose a £15 victim surcharge on defendants who are fined and can afford to pay it.
This has caused huge concern among JPs, with a number resigning rather than impose it.

IF there had been a directive to always convict on s172 there would have been even more fuss raised by JPs and some publicity would have been inevitable.

Interesting, is it not, that only a few magistrates have resigned over the £15 surcharge. So clearly this outragous Government diktat is OK for the rest of you JPs.

'We are concerned', Yes, but not enough to force the issue though ! And of course we know that the surcharges will be paid by the very minor motoring offenders, if they will bother going to court at all now. Best to just pay the £60 fixed penalty which this is all about. It's £60 and three points just for stopping by a double-white line.

On a TV programme I saw on car crime in Manchester, the police caught an evil little toe-rag. It was very, very clear from his demeanor that being caught held no fear whatsoever, and at the end of the programme it was clear why when they told us what had happened to the various criminals they had apprehended. Court imposed a fine of £40, and (I think) licence was suspended, but as he didn't have one anyway and never, ever, made any attempt to obtain one this was meaningless.

So his fine for stealing a car in conspiracy with another, uncaught criminal, was less than the charge for being 5 minutes over time at my local council car park. £20 less in fact.

The real criminals are laughing at us and the Law. So what does Fisherman make of all this, then? Do the public get and see justice done ?

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Good manners maketh a good motorist

I know this has been discussed in another thread but this is what you get if fines are based on ability to pay rather than the offence committed.

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

Yes, well i'm confident that Francis -v- United Kingdom will soon put paid to the gravy train. As for 'hearing all the evidence' with regards to S172 cases, I guess fisherman, you do not sit at the Witney 'sausage factory', where S172 cases are two-a-penny. Like many of our so called 'peers', many JPs' appear to forget their Judicial oath, it is becoming more clear daily, as to which side of the bed, the judiciary layeth. It is unfortunate, that those who have integrity, are leaving the bench in protest at meddling.

"I, ..........................................................., swear that I will well and truly serve our Sovereign Lady Queen Elizabeth the Second, in the office of Justice of the Peace and I will do right to all manner of people after the laws and usages of the Realm without fear or favour, affection or ill will".

Only a few have hit the papers. There are some more, although not huge numbers.
The government would like to see the end of public involvement in the law. They have tried to get rid of juries. They have closed magistrates courts at an unprecedented rate. They have appointed more district judges to magistrates courts. I think that the enormous diversity of people appointed to the bench is advantageous to the people who end up in the dock. If there are mass resignations all defndants in future would be tried and sentenced by a single individual who will come from a very narrow section of society.


A lot of us, myself included have not yet had to impose this surcharge. I still don't know if I will be able to bring myself to do it.



You have a real skill when it comes to jumping to conclusions.
In common with almost all of my colleagues I am trying to get this changed from within. I doubt we will succeed but our opposition may make them think twice about other similar moves.



I have said above what I am doing about it. What have you done?



Really?



We live in a democracy in which the public elect the government. Government then makes laws.
An independent judiciary then implement the laws passsed by government.

Its very easy to find individual cases that seem to show a lack of justice. Especially so if you get your information from the media. The only people who know the full details are those who were there.


There are aspects of the law I am deeply unhappy with. I have raised all those points with my MP and with the candidates for the other parties.
I also give a lot of my time within the system implementing the law as fairly as I can. I even take time to post here to try to dispel some of the more fanciful myths.

I assume you do more than just post your views here. Perhaps if you shared with me what you are doing outside of this forum you might give me some ideas for better ways to try to get things changed.

Fines are based on the offence AND the defendants ability to pay.
Quite properly, courts are not allowed to impose fines that are impossible to pay.

Do you mean that some people have not been allowed to put forward a defence or that their defence was unsuccesful?



Its printed in the bench book we all use, its on the wall of the retiring room, we are reminded of it at every training session.



I take it that your defence was unsuccessful?

Actually it's a result of two things, 1) the inconsistency that fixed penalties for minor offences are not based on ability, and 2) the stupidity of imposing fines for serious crimes like car theft, because they will always either be too low for the crime or will be so high they are impossible to pay by someone too poor to buy a car.

Many had put forward credible defences yet only one throughout the three days i was in Court, was allowed which was based on lost post.




Reading and reminding are good, implimentation, is much better.



I speak as a witness to proceedings as opposed to being party to; over the past few months, I have heard/been witness to a number of quite, "interesting" decisions, a few of which, that cannot be published due to an order being placed on their privacy. Orders I might add, which are due to the amounts of monies potentially involved, (and I thought that Justice was blind). Please forgive me, for allowing my personal experience and emotion to get involved with this thread, I should not have allowed it so.

Regarding writing to my MP, I have done this many, many times, and to be fair, my concerns have always been passed on to the Government Minister concerned. One then gets the usual Civil Service 'bromide' letter. One does get a bit despondent after a while at writing letters that are essentially ignored, and No, they are not Mr Angry letters either.

I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that Government both central and local no longer has any link to democracy. Without public discussion we now seem to have converted government into an Army of Occupation with a very small elective element whereby the citizens are able to offer an opinion about them on an indirect basis every 5 years. If it is of any interest, my 86 year old father agrees with me, and he has seen a lot more than me regarding the life of this country both in war and peace.

I no longer feel that MPs or Civil Servants have the interests of the public uppermost in their minds. What is in the papers tomorrow seems to be the driver nowadays.

As regards the Law, the situation has not deteriorated quite so far, but it is on a slippery slope with fixed penalty notices rolling out for virtually all minor motoring offences, and the norm now for parking under the iniquitous CPE regime. The question I have put to my MP is 'Who is the Law serving ?"

If millions and millions of people are being fined by fixed penalty for very minor motoring offences (and I include the £1 billion parking scam here), is the Law serving the public or not ? If it is not the public, then who should it serve ?

Sorry this is not really about motoring, so I shall now shut up

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Good manners maketh a good motorist

Wow. That's two of us that think that stealing a car is a serious matter.

Your point about fixed penalties being just that (i.e. unrelated to ability to pay) and skewing the system is an interesting one. However, what is wrong is that unemployed miscreants are basically "let off" with a derisory punishment. Fisherman's point about not imposing "impossible to pay" fines is IMO not valid as the fine SHOULD be set to reflect the seriousness of the offence in the eyes of the community and "can't pay" claimants should be offered the option of a jail term instead. Then we will see if they can really pay (possibly out of their "black economy" income).

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

This is something which gives rise to heated conversations among JPs. Norway has a unit fines system which can result in huge penalties for speeding. Huge as in 10's of thousands of pounds.
The UK tried unit fines about 12 to 15 years ago and dropped the idea quickly. Thats because UK courts are bound to consider proportionality ie that the punishment should not be excessive with regard to the offence. The public felt that fines in the thousnads of pounds were not proportionate to a minor speeding offence, and for once the government listened.

In the end this is one for government and I can only suggest that you make your feelings known to your MP.




Theft of cars is a bit different from theft of (say) cash. Most car "theft" is charged as TWOC, because in most cases its not possible to show that theft (ie permanently depriving the owner of the benefits of ownership) was the intention.
The guideline for TWOC is a community penalty. But rapid return of the vehicle is a mitigating factor. So, if the car is recovered quickly with little or no damage a fine is probably appropriate. If its burnt out, then the evidence goes up in flames and the the criminal is never caught.

Add to that the fact that most TWOC is by under 18's who come under Youth Court rules which means that prevention of further offending must be the sentencers aim rather than punishment and you end up with small penalities.