The latest effort to ease pressure on Britain’s overcrowded prisons has been issued with magistrates told to stop jailing convicted criminals for several weeks and postpone sentencing.
A “listing direction” has been issued to the managers of magistrates’ courts in England and Wales with the order.
It suggests offenders likely to be jailed should have sentencing postponed until the left-wing Labour government’s early release scheme comes into effect on September 10, as Breitbart News reported.
The order to magistrates from Lord Justice Green, a senior judge who sits on the Court of Appeal and is also the deputy senior presiding judge, is reportedly likely to affect hundreds if not thousands of offenders.
The Times reports a Ministry of Justice spokesman said the guidelines did not apply to high-risk offenders who were already on remand, adding the problem of overcrowding has been inherited from the previous Conservative government of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak:
The changes coming into force in September will bring it under control.
Independent judges decide when to schedule court hearings and do so in the interests of justice, including to ensure the effective operation of the criminal justice system.
Magistrates’ courts handled more than 1.3 million cases last year.
Tom Franklin, chief executive of the Magistrates Association, told the Times: “Every delay in magistrates’ work adversely affects the timely delivery of justice and impacts victims, witnesses and defendants.”
He said Green’s direction was “the latest sticking plaster to try to get through until the big release of prisoners on September 10 but just highlights the crisis that the justice system is in.”
The bottleneck in the court system — exacerbated by the arrest of more than 1,000 people after street violence that began last month — has slowed sentencing and resulted in a situation where less serious offences are being overlooked because of capacity constraints.
The directions to magistrates came on the same day it was revealed criminals being set free in a bid to reduce prison overcrowding are reoffending and being returned to custody, according to an inspection report.