Behind bars | Turning over a new leaf

New Year is always a time of hope. Hope that this year, one will stick to that diet, finally crack that exercise plan, even get to the end of the celebrity’s favourite detox programme ?even although it involves drinking 23 glasses of lemon juice a day with regular coffee enemas.

Health food shops are full of optimists investing, unwisely, in enormous tubs of protein shakes and bags of weirdly desiccated super food berries and nuts. Gyms of course are bulging with the unwary, lured in by the promise of perfect health and rippling abs, signing on the dotted line and about to have the most expensive swim of their lives, or clogging up the heart attack inducing machinery so that the old lags can’t get on them. Nobody is drinking alcohol of course – January is the one month where robing room chat is not exclusively about the horrors of life at the Bar: the number of days passed since one set foot in a bar provides a cheery contrast to the usual low level whining that goes on. Bragging about abstinence swells to a climax around mid January, after which silence descends. Round about then too gyms become quiet and solitary places again, and people rediscover the established fact that cream buns can be super foods too.

Declogging arteries

I expect it does us all a bit of good nonetheless. Making resolutions every year, even if they crash and burn, at least reminds us that there are better ways to be, and a bit of a clear out, a spot of detoxification does perk up the system. Perhaps the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) should try to turn over a new leaf in 2013 and make a resolution or two. How about declogging the arteries of prisons by doing something – anything – about the thousands of people sentenced to the late and very unlamented indeterminate sentences? They are still there, although the sentencing regime which sent them into limbo has been repealed by Legal Aid and Sentencing of Offenders Act 2012 (LASPO).

The dangerous provisions of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 caused a great deal of trouble for the CJS and the Court of Appeal, and their removal from the scene has to be at the very least a recognition that they were not fit for purpose. Quite apart from the increase in the prison population they caused, poor resourcing and system overload meant that thousands of prisoners classified as dangerous could not access the courses required to establish they were safe to release. The result is that thousands of prisoners are still inside, post-tariff: a somewhat surreal situation when the sentencing regime itself has been found either redundant to present day requirements or an unmitigated disaster, depending on one’s point of view.

Flickering screens

Another useful New Year resolution would be a rethink on virtual hearings. Preliminary hearings, including pleas and case management hearings are increasingly now conducted via video link: everyone is in court bar the defendant, who looms over the proceedings from his position on the wall, squinting down at his little screen where he can see some of what is going on. The advantages are economic. Appearing via video saves all the transport, guarding and security costs of bringing a defendant from prison to court – and the inexplicable, interminable time it takes for security to get him up from the cells when the case is called on.

It is a tolerable system when the technology works, when the hearing is either short or non-contentious, and when the defendant is happy with seeing his lawyer as a flickering creature on a screen, after a private 15-minute video slot beforehand to discuss the hearing.
It is not tolerable when the system glitches, when no one is available to let you into the damn video box, when someone else over runs and cuts your time, and particularly galling when you don’t know it’s video and you run around looking for the punter in the cells in the usual way. Where it becomes more than just another irritation in an already fractious profession is when you actually need a proper conference with the client, particularly if you have not met him before, he or she is vulnerable, or young, or in emotional or mental distress. You cannot establish rapport with a telly or assess someone’s mental state or levels of understanding on a screen, and of course signing documents or showing exhibits is out of the question.
The MoJ perhaps assumes we all had proper conferences with our custodial client weeks before and his presence at court is unnecessary – but that level of service died under the public funding axe some years ago. A handy resolution might be – don’t save money at the expense of the defence. I wonder how long that one would last?