The Secret Barrister- My Closing Speech

 Summary

In Chapter 12 which is the final chapter of The Secret Barrister Stories of the law and how it is broken the writer both gives us a case study to highlight all the issues in our criminal justice system and also again summarises some of the main points in the book as well as a few other points not yet mentioned in this amazing book. 

The book starts off with a story of a young man who was a doctor and who went to a bar for his Birthday with his partner, we hear that whilst he is at the bar there was a fight that broke out which he escaped from but when he escaped he was arrested as he was thought to be the person who started the fight. We learn that this family have a low income and so they do not qualify for legal aid but cannot afford a good solicitor and so went to a bad solicitor who did not do any preparation work. We learn that the evidence, in this case, was very poor and the man was wrongly convicted. He appealed his case and eventually was free but lost everything including his partner and had no compensation. The Secret Barrister makes it clear that unlike the other cases he mentions in their book this was a fake case to show us that this person could be any of us and our family members.

After this case study, the writer then starts concluding their book and the first point I will mention is about probation. We learn that the probation services are almost as broken as the criminal justice system itself as it again is low in money, has increased workloads, reduced staff and inexperienced staff working as probation officers. Because these probation officers work with people who are released on license from prison, not only they have been told not to do anything about breaches of license but this could put the general public in some danger.

We then learn that in this book The Secret Barrister was unable to talk about all the issues of the criminal justice system and only spoke to us about a fraction of the problems which is very scary as there is obviously lots we have still not learned. We learn that it is particularly bad in the youth courts which are not very good for the under eighteens of our society. This really concerns me and I hope the Secret Barrister will write about all of these issues in future books as well as it has been valuable learning about the issues stated in their first book and I would love to read about other issues of our criminal justice system.

The Secret Barrister talks a little bit about the criminal bar and how there are very few young barristers at the bar's and they are mostly old barristers which is not good for the years to come. We learn that the reason for the reduced young professionals is because of the very poor pay, I think the writer mentioned it was only £12,000 a year, which I think is disgraceful. Before reading this book, I liked the idea of being a Barrister but after learning about the poor pay I have had second thoughts about joining the legal profession and if I was to be a Barrister I would wait till later in life when I would have good money. Leading on from this point, we are also running out of judges for the same reason because of the poor pay which I again think is terrible and cements the picture in the readers head that our criminal justice system needs fixing.

The writer then mentions that when it comes to the NHS, schools and other such services it is often reported in the newspapers and media about all the issues and the budget cuts from the government and how it affects these organisations. However, the media do not report the criminal justice system in this way and it all goes unknown by the public and because of this, we will never have a true insight into our criminal justice system unless we attend court ourselves. 

Finally, we also learn that all the information about the law and the criminal justice system on the internet is all out of date by many years and does not get updated. This again is very bad and again isolates the general public from the criminal justice system which in my opinion is very bad. It is like the government do not want us to know anything about our criminal justice system and then put us in a bad position when we are caught up in it. I feel as what is meant to be a democracy that we should be aware of everything in our country but I strongly believe that not only our criminal justice system is broke and fucked but also our country as a whole.

Before I go, the Secret Barrister mentioned a point I particularly like and believe in called the send them all back bill which was proposed by an MP. This bill said that anyone from other countries who committed a crime in the united kingdom would be sent back to their own countries. Sadly, the name of the bill was not allowed and I do not think they have allowed this bill to come in action which is a terrible shame.

Anyway, that is the end of my summary of this chapter and so as always what I have written above is only a summary of the key points that have stood out to me and so I have not written about the issues in as much detail as The Secret Barrister and have not included all the points mentioned so please read this book yourself as I am sure you will love it. Please also either donate to this blog via Paypal or buy me a book using one of the buttons at the side of this blog so I am able to continue blogging and so I can try and get more teenagers reading to try and prevent this hobby from dying.