'Tis the season to be jolly

Away with doom and gloom! As the Christmas season approaches, and the goose, while not getting fat precisely in these recessive times, at least is still keeping body and soul together, let us celebrate all that is good. This column does have, I admit it, a tendency to be somewhat surly and unappreciative. No longer: bright-eyed and bushy-tailed we will greet the end of the year and the beginning of another with shining-eyed expectation. Because the news is good, even on the jobs front: 88,000 people are now employed in prisons! Thousands more posts have been created! This is more than ever before '“ a record in fact; 88,000 people are now [gainfully employed, employed, occupied] resident in prisons! 88,000 people are being [cared for] fed, watered, [educated] kept by the public sector, which is [expanding staying the same reducing] working harder than before with less wasteful expansion!

And there is even better news on the criminal justice front: coincidentally, statistics prove this month there will be 88,000 fewer crimes committed as the criminals who would commit those crimes are otherwise engaged. Our streets are safer by the power of 88 x 1,000 [x whatever else we can suggest here!] Even better news is that legal aid costs have been slashed '“ the costs to the public purse have been reduced massively by simple, clear and responsible accounting practices. Just don't pay the bills! It is amazing how long it took to discover how simple good fiscal housekeeping can be. Put the bill from the money-grabbing lawyer down the back of the sofa, with the parking tickets and old biscuit crumbs, and keep the money. What can they do about it anyway? Go on strike? Sorted!

More good news comes from the CPS with a splendid new initiative to improve the (preparation) conduct of cases in the magistrates' courts. The police will insist on interviewing suspects, on the basis that this often produces evidence either for or against their lines of inquiry. These interviews have to be transcribed so that everyone knows what was said. What a waste of time and money! The new system will be much easier, simpler, and cheaper: the CPS will prepare only a summary of interview. What could be fairer than that? It has worked traditionally for theatre and film reviews after all: a balanced précis of what a review really meant goes up in lights on the front of the theatre: of all the [tedious illwritten derivative and worthless] plays I have seen this year this one is the best [example of pointless rubbish].

For interviews, the defence will of course have the absolute right to alter and amend the summary. Of course they can! They can listen to them on the day of the trial, on a pocket tape recorder '“ didn't they have Walkmans back in the day? '“ and scribble out some necessary amendments there and then. And, if they don't do it, or don't have the Walkman/the time/the funding? Well, the trial will certainly be shorter thus saving much time and effort.

Good news for the courts

And there is more good news from the Crown Court. The number of ushers is being cut. This is a really good initiative: these people traditionally have earned far too much, fat cats one and all. Who needs £12 grand for a full week's work anyway? Without an usher for each court things will go much more smoothly. Barristers are hardly overworked, and surely they can go and fish their own witnesses out of the canteen? While they are away doing this, the judge and remaining barrister can get on with the case without them. Judges can call their own lists, find their own exhibits, keep their own records '“ and members of the public, press, family members, defendants and witnesses can easily get all the information they need about a case from the tannoy system, always notably comprehensible.

Another excellent local initiative, which we hope will be taken up more widely, has been used recently in a Crown Court. They followed the magistrates' court model by not having any transcript of the interviews in a multi-handed case '“ and greatly improved it by having no summaries either. This saved both costs and time for an overburdened CPS. The defence barristers were only too delighted to get up at dawn to get to court by eight to listen to the tapes themselves before a contested trial.

And we hear that more good news may be on the way: a significant reduction in defence barristers. Voluntary redundancy, without of course redundancy payments, would solve the budget crisis at a stroke. Like a red deer cull, the demoralised exhausted old ones would go first, leaving the sprightly young bucks and hinds to be shot next year.

Happy Christmas one and all!