The Secret Barrister- Imprisonating the innocent: Remand and Bail

 Summary

In the third chapter of The Secret Barrister: Stories of the law and how it is broken, we travel along to the next stage of the criminal justice system after the magistrates' court hearing, Remand and Bail. This is when the magistrates consider locking the accused up in custody, remand, leading up to their trial as they believe the accused will break part of the bail contract which includes not contacting any witnesses, turning up to the court case and not going out after a certain time in the evening. As we said, the magistrates' decisions are not always the best and the accused and their representatives can appeal for bail at the crown court but these are also very quick cases which must take in lots of factors.

In this chapter, the Secret Barrister writes about someone who they met during their training who was accused of multiple accounts of rape and assault. This person did have a criminal history and so was put in custody but we learn in this chapter that this character was seen as not guilty at his crown court case. The writer uses the character and refers to him when they discuss how the remand and bail system is broken. I would, however, like to remind you that in this summary I am only summarising what the writer has included in this chapter in his book and I very much encourage you to read their book yourself as it is very interesting.

Firstly, the Secret Barrister writes about how when you are put in custody before your trial if you are found guilty and sentenced to imprisonment then the time you spent in custody will go towards your overall sentence time, so in theory, you would have already served part of your sentence. However, if you are found not guilty this is very much not the case, you are just expected to walk out of the court doors forgetting about everything including your time locked away and you are not even given an apology for being locked up when not guilty. Remember, as the Secret Barrister says which I agree with, everyone is innocent until proven guilty. Also, for those who are remanded and are innocent, they lose all of their freedom it will affect their family lives, they may not be able to see their children grow up, money could become tight, they may lose their job, bills will pile up and they may even have their property repossessed as they have not paid their bills and yet if they are not guilty they are just expected to walk out and forget about everything.

The writer then goes on about how judges used to let the accused pay to be put on bail rather than be locked up in custody and the judges would often make these prices unaffordable so only the very wealthy or elite could afford it. Although this is not as common in the present (if it is indeed still active to this day) it would have meant there was some discrimination in the justice system for those who live in poverty.

Going on, the writer also mentions MG5s which they say as a student the first thing they are taught is not to believe these systems. An MG5 is fundamentally just a balanced and fair case and interview summary. The writer goes on that although these systems are often accurate, there are cases where they are not accurate due to a variety of reasons including limited-time etc and this means the evidence police give in court may not be the same as the MG5. Obviously, the MG5 is used in the Remand appeal system to see if it is a good idea to put people on bail.

The final point I am going to point out is about the magistrates, which from reading the book we get the impression that the magistrates are the real enemies of the criminal justice system not wholly because of themselves but also because of the crown prosecution service. The secret barrister mentions that the magistrates often do not give proper reasons for remand like they are meant to and instead say things along the lines of "We think there is a strong case against you" or "We refuse bail because this is a serious offence" which the writer notes are not proper reasons as they do not say why the magistrates thought remand was the best thing for the defender. It is said in the book that this actually breaches human rights.

Above are just some key points that stood out to me but there is much more in the physical book and it goes in much more detail than I write in about these issue on this post. As mentioned above, I highly recommend you read the book yourself if you have not already done so to be sure you get a proper insight into the points mentioned.