Advantages Of Lay People In The Criminal Justice System

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Therefore are many advantages of using lay people in the criminal justice system. A key advantage is cost. Magistrates are unpaid, apart from their expenses. This means that the majority of criminal causes are tried without a judge, whose salary would be over £100,000 a year. Also by doing a trial in Magistrates Court instead of Crown Court is much cheaper, so a lot of money can be saved. Magistrates’ local knowledge is invaluable when it comes to understanding exactly where an offence took place. However in Crown Court it can take much more time trying to explain where exactly the location of the crime was and where. The approach of using local knowledge was seen in the case of Paul v DPP (1989), where the defendant was convicted of kerb crawling and the Magistrates knew that this was causing a nuisance in the neighbourhood. Magistrates can also take into account local problems that can be helped by sensitive sentencing e.g. appropriate sentencing to support initiatives to help drug users into rehabilitation.…show more content…
The public believe and have great confidence in the Magistrates system. Studies in 2000 and 2001 suggests that the public would neither understand or support any moves to lesson the role of key Magistrates, who are seen as an example of active citizenship within the criminal justice system. Comparatively, few Magistrates’ decisions, and many of appeals are against sentence rather than finding of guilt. Overall, we can see that the advantages have helped improve the criminal justice system and save money. These advantages help us to understand that lay Magistrates are better than professional judges as they are able to represent clear public values in order to give fair
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