An eloquent protest against court charges

Nigel Allcoat was a magistrate for 15 years. He resigned from the bench last week after being suspended as a JP and told that he faced an inquiry by the Lord Chancellor’s Advisory Committee. His offence? Spending £40 of his own money to help pay an asylum seeker’s fine. His purpose in doing so, he said, was to stop the man from having to go to prison for defaulting on earlier court fines and charges he could not possibly pay. These included a mandatory £150 charge that the man would have faced, simply for being convicted of non-payment of his fine.

Mr Allcoat’s protest serves to illustrate the ‘Catch 22’ situation, as he described it, whereby asylum seekers are deemed to break the law if found to have money of their own, or to be earning money while awaiting a decision on their case. Instead they must rely on top-up cards worth £35 a week to buy necessities, far less than the amount available to those on jobseekers’ allowance.

This case also highlights the injustices being caused by arbitrary and high charges now being levied on anyone convicted of an offence in our courts. Mr Allcoat joins a growing number of magistrates who have resigned from their positions in protest at these charges, which range from a minimum £150 charge in the magistrates’ courts where the person pleads guilty, up to £1,200 in the Crown court when someone is convicted after a full trial.

The charges, introduced in April, are not means tested.  The Magistrates’ Association has warned that they affect poorer people disproportionately and will force the innocent to plead guilty simply to avoid crippling debt or prison for not paying. The charges are now under scrutiny by the Commons Justice Select Committee, which is currently considering evidence and will report next year.

It comes as a surprise to many that we still jail people in this country for fine default, in view of the overwhelming evidence that even short spells in prison plunge people into further debt, often leading to homelessness and unemployment. While the annual figures for new receptions of fine defaulters into prison have dropped since the mid-1990s, that trend may reverse in view of the likely increase in the kind of case Mr Allcoat has helped to publicise.