CITIZENS in towns like Bolton must regularly despair about how the law  operates after police have spent costly man-hours getting criminals to court.
Once again, judges take a softly-softly approach to men who pose a threat to the public in one way or another. Top judge Simon Bourne-Arton let a persistent burglar walk free saying “I’m probably doing the wrong thing.” Yes, then why do it?
Instead of sentencing him to a 10-month prison sentence, he suspended it telling the man, who pleaded guilty to home burglary and had a previous history of drunken crime and flouting court orders, that he was giving him a “last chance.” Even though he had committed a burglary within a week of appearing in court in breach of another community order.
Also last week, Recorder Robert Adams allowed Matthew Jenart to walk free from court. The 28 year-old had been contacting schoolgirls as young as 10 on Facebook for “naughty fun.” As one parent said, the outcome was like “waving a red flag to paedophiles and saying ‘it’s all right: you’ll get away with it’.”
Perhaps it was telling that all this happened in the same week as Britain’s most senior female judge slammed the legal profession for failing to give top jobs to women. Baroness Hale of Richmond blamed “unconscious sexism” and said the profession is weighted in favour of well-known lawyers. She felt the law would benefit from diversity.
Of course there are some excellent judges and top legal people around, and we do only hear about the extreme cases. But I still wonder if she’s not right and if having more women in top roles might lead to more sensible and realistic decisions.
Women don’t have a monopoly on commonsense but they often have to deal more regularly with the basics of everyday life and can identify with individual cases, and especially individual victims.
Increasingly, our top judges appear to be removed from normal life and make decisions using an unrecognisable code of behaviour. Whatever it takes – including appointing a greater diversity of judges – we need to address this if the law is to stop being such an ass so often