The managed judicial decision

The principal thrust of this study is that, over the last twenty five years or so, following decades of relative stability, the managerial and administrative structures which support the magistracy have been largely swept away; virtually every level of the summary justice process, including judicial decision makers, rendered accountable to central government and its executive arm; and the independence of the summary justice process compromised. The study explores the transformation of the courts of summary jurisdiction in England and Wales. Without pursuing courts of summary jurisdiction to their roots the study nevertheless reveals the relative stability of those courts over many decades, albeit, within an ambiguous constitutional framework and muddled notions surrounding the performance of judicial, legal and administrative functions. The emergence of principles associated with "new public management" in the public sector is subjected to analysis; and the study reveals how, by the imposition of a regime of cash limiting, a Scrutiny and three legislative measures in the Police and Magistrates’ Courts Act, 1994, the Crime and Disorder Act, 1998 and the Access to Justice Act, 1999, all containing strong resonance’s with the "new public management" agenda, governments secured the accountability of the summary justice process. The focus of the study, informed throughout by the opinions and observations of senior civil servants and leading practitioners in the criminal justice process, is a contextualised case study, which explores how Hampshire Magistrates’ Courts Committee interpreted the agenda of central government in its area. At the heart of the issues explored in the case study is the extent to which, as a result of the legislative and other activities of government over the last twenty years or so, magistrates’ courts committees have been compromised in the performance of their primary responsibility to provide a framework capable of supporting the summary justice process, and, thereby, placed at risk the fine checks and balances across the criminal justice process which seek to ensure the freedom of the individual under the law. The study concludes that a corrosive element has been inserted within the courts of summary jurisdiction which suggests that the individual can no longer look with confidence to that forum for the independent adjudication of justiciable issues.