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You are here: BAILII >> Databases >> England and Wales High Court (Administrative Court) Decisions >> JW, R (on the application of) v Stoke On Trent Justices [1998] EWHC Admin 1076 (18 November 1998)
URL: http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/1998/1076.html
Cite as: [1998] EWHC Admin 1076
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STOKE ON TRENT JUSTICES ex parte JW, R v. [1998] EWHC Admin 1076 (18th November, 1998)
1. MR I WISE (Instructed by HMB Law (formerly known as Clyde, Chappell & Botham) Stoke on Trent) appeared on behalf of all the Applicants.
5. Committal to prison is available to a magistrates’ court as a sanction of final resort after an offender has failed to pay a monetary penalty, and all other means of enforcing the order have been tried unsuccessfully or are considered to be unsuitable. Over the last 20 years Parliament has been sending a series of clear messages to the courts about the steps they must take before directing that someone must lose his or her liberty, particularly if under the age of 21. Unhappily, because we do not have an easily accessible Criminal Procedure Code in this country, these provisions are not very easy to find, and a large number of mistakes have been made in applying the procedures. People were being locked up when they should not have been, and some enterprising prison establishments, particularly Feltham Young Offenders Institution, in Greater London, and Risley Prison, outside Manchester, have been examining justices’ warrants very carefully on receiving fine defaulters into their already crowded establishments. If they see any apparent deficiencies in the warrant, they arrange that the prisoner should contact solicitors, and in particular a firm of solicitors in the Midlands who specialises in judicial review cases involving fine defaulters. As a result, the defaulter is often released on bail by a high court judge, usually one or two days following his or her admission to custody. The question then arises whether the justices can defend the action they took, and if they cannot, what should be done to dispose of the case.
6. Before considering the points we have to decide, it is first necessary to say something about the procedures which were being ignored. As a result of a barrage of High Court decisions in the 1980s and the early 1990s fewer mistakes were now being made about the earlier parts of the enforcement procedures. In the cases with which we are concerned, these earlier procedures would involve the issuing of a distress warrant, to no effect, and a means inquiry, at which the defaulter was legally represented, which would culminate in a finding that he or she was guilty of culpable neglect (Magistrates’ Courts Act 1980 (“the 1980 Act”) s 82 (4)(b)(i)). It is at this stage that things started to go wrong.
7. Parliament has prescribed that a court which has conducted a means inquiry may not on the occasion of the inquiry or at any time thereafter issue a warrant of commitment for a default in paying a sum adjudged to be paid by the convicting court unless it has considered or tried all other methods of enforcing payment of the sum, and it appears to the court that they are inappropriate or unsuccessful (1980 Act, s 82 (4)(b)(ii)).
8. Five such methods are listed in section 82 (4A). In the type of case with which we are concerned, a distress warrant has been tried and failed (subs (4A)(a)), and High Court or county court enforcement ( ibid (b)) is obviously inappropriate, since the defaulter has no assets. This leaves the court bound to consider the appropriateness of a fines supervision order ( ibid (c)), an attachment of earnings order (if there are any earnings to attach) ( ibid (d)) and, for a defaulter under the age of 21, an attendance centre order ( ibid (e)).
9. The complicated provisions which follow are made even more difficult for justices to absorb because they are scattered across the 1980 Act and the Criminal Justice Act 1982 (“the 1982 Act”). One has only to look at sections 214 to 220 of the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995 (which is not cluttered up with amendment sections, sub-sub-sections or sub-sub-sub-sections) to see how much more fortunate the courts of Scotland are in this regard.
10. Fine supervision orders are obviously appropriate for the type of feckless young defaulter with which most of the present cases are concerned. They are particularly appropriate in cases where a disaster like an eviction or a dismissal at work may mean that fine defaulters against whom a suspended committal order has been made have to leave their homes either compulsorily or in search of work. In those circumstances they may know nothing about the “notice to show cause” which is sent to their old address, and is either sent back to the court or left there unopened (for “deemed service” in these circumstances, see the 1980 Act, s 82(5A) and (5F)). In these circumstances the justices may direct that a fine defaulter may be committed immediately to prison without knowing anything about the intervening change of circumstances, which a supervising officer may know all about.
11. The power to make a fines supervision order is created by Section 88(1) of the 1980 Act. Section 88(4) makes clear Parliament’s wish that if practicable this means of enforcement should be used in relation to defaulters under the age of 21. It expressly provides that a court shall not commit such a defaulter to detention [in a Young Offenders’ Institution] “unless he has been placed under supervision in respect of the sum or the court is satisfied that it is undesirable or impracticable to place him under supervision.”
12. If a court is satisfied that it is undesirable or impracticable to place a defaulter under the age of 21 under supervision, and it decides to commit him or her to detention without a fines supervision order having been made, Parliament prescribes that it “shall state the grounds on which it is so satisfied in the warrant of commitment” (s 88(5)).
13. Justices are helped to understand the purpose of this type of order by Rule 56(2) of the Magistrates’ Courts Rules 1981, which makes it clear that it is the duty of a person who is for the time being appointed to supervise the payment of a fine under Section 88 of the 1980 Act “to advise and befriend the offender with a view to inducing him to pay the sum adjudged to be paid and thereby avoid committal to custody and to give any information required by a magistrates’ court about the offender’s conduct and means”.
14. Part I of the 1982 Act is entitled “Treatment of Young Offenders”. Despite Section 1(1), which prescribes that with one exception which is not relevant in the present context, no court shall commit a person under 21 years of age to prison for any reason, the St Helens’ justices committed the 20-year old Marlene Jones to Liverpool Prison for fine default and a stipendiary magistrate at Greenwich committed the 20-year old Stanley Wright to Belmarsh Prison for fine default. Section 9 provides that fine defaulters between the ages of 18 and 21 may be committed to detention in a young offenders’ institution, subject to Section 1(5), and the prison authorities turned a Nelsonian blind eye to the wording of the warrants and received them in Risley and Feltham respectively.
15. Later amendments to the 1982 Act did not include a clear cross-reference back from Section 9 to the new Section 1(5A), which has the effect of requiring a court which commits a young fine defaulter to detention to
16. Finally, Section 17 of the 1982 Act makes clear provision for the making of attendance centre orders for fine defaulters under the age of 21. Provided that such a centre is available, orders of between 12 and 36 hours may be made (s 17(4)-(5)), and the number of hours may be reduced pro tanto if the whole or part of the unpaid fine is paid (s 17(13)).
17. The task of courts is made difficult enough by the labyrinth of statutory provisions they are required to take into account. It is not made any easier by the standard pro forma warrant of commitment which has been provided to them, which leaves them with very little space for explaining, for instance, why no other method of dealing with a young fine defaulter (other than detention) is appropriate, or why the court considered it undesirable or impracticable to make a fines supervision order in relation to such a defaulter.
18. It has been estimated that on average 22,500 fine defaulters were committed to prison service establishments each year between 1992 and 1995 (see “Fine Default - Time for Change”, a report issued in 1996 by the National Association of Probation Officers). As a result of the intervention by solicitors which we have described, several hundred applications for leave to apply for judicial review or habeas corpus in these cases were lodged with the Crown Office between 1995 and 1997. In October 1995 three test cases were listed before a Divisional Court which ruled that judicial review was the appropriate remedy. See R v Oldham Justices ex p Cawley [1997] QB 1. At the end of his judgment, Simon Brown LJ said at p 22 C:
19. A little earlier, when explaining his reasons why he considered that judicial review was the appropriate remedy, he said at p 13 D-F:
20. The flood of applications continued, and a high court judge would generally grant bail and leave to apply for judicial review on reading the applicant’s account of the matter and studying the relevant warrant. We have been told by counsel instructed by the Treasury Solicitor that examination of many of these cases revealed that judges had been granting leave to apply for judicial review on a factual basis that was materially inaccurate in a number of respects, and that many of the assertions made by applicants were without foundation. In the 30 cases in which the Treasury Solicitor was instructed to act on behalf of the respondent justices he instructed counsel to examine each case, once the justices’ affidavit had been filed, in order to note any procedural flaws and to consider whether the justices’ decision could be defended on the merits, in spite of deficiencies on the face of the warrants.
21. In about 20 of these cases, in which the justices were unable to recall their decision-making processes, the view was taken that in the light of the deficiencies on the warrants the applications for judicial review could not be successfully resisted. In these cases the Treasury Solicitor was instructed by the justices to agree that their order should be quashed, provided that any underlying inaccuracy asserted by the relevant applicant was corrected. The solicitors who acted for the applicants were therefore invited in each case to sign a Consent Order and a supporting Schedule, with a view to having the committal order quashed and to having the history of the case before the justices accurately restated. This process took a great deal of time, and we hope that in future the delays that have been permitted to take place in some of these cases, for whatever reason, can be avoided. The possibility of recommittal to custody is, after all, not finally removed until a court has made an order which finally puts an end to that possibility, and it is quite wrong to leave such a matter in limbo for too long.
22. In the first week of the Michaelmas Term we were invited to make consent orders in four of these cases. We were concerned whether we had jurisdiction to make the orders sought, in so far that they purported to substitute a shorter period of custody for that ordered by the justices, and since the Treasury Solicitor was instructed in three of these cases we invited him to instruct counsel to explain to us why it was thought we had jurisdiction to make the orders in this form. We set time aside a week later to enable us to hear counsel for both the applicants and the respondents in these three cases, and at the same time two further such orders were placed before us, so that we would be able to make consent orders in all six cases provided that we were satisfied that we had jurisdiction to make the orders sought. The facts of all six cases are set out in an Appendix to this judgment, and their titles are set out in the attached Schedule. We have been told that there are a further 50 cases in the Crown Office awaiting disposal. These will be listed for hearing if consent orders are not lodged in the near future.
23. A salutary result of all this judicial activity has been that the number of fine defaulters committed to custody has, we are told, been reduced to an annual total of about 8,500. On 30th September 1998, indeed, there were only 133 adults and 16 young offenders in prison service establishments for fine default, according to recent figures.
24. The practical problem we have to resolve arises from the fact that if this court simply quashes the orders, the fines will remain unenforced and the successful applicant will therefore be at risk of further enforcement procedures. In each of these cases the applicant had spent a short time in custody before being released on bail, and the justices instructed the Treasury Solicitor, in the matters in which he was instructed, to agree a form of order which would result in the case not having to be remitted to them to resume the enforcement procedures, a course which might conceivably result in the applicant eventually being committed to custody again. Each consent order therefore contained a provision substituting the term of custody in fact served for the term of custody ordered to be served. A standard form of words was used to explain why the order was being made in this form:
25. The parties relied on Section 43(3) of the Supreme Court Act 1981 as the source of this court’s jurisdiction to make an order in this form. Section 43 provides, so far as is relevant:
26. At the hearing on 16th October both Mr Keith and Mr Wise urged on us that not only was it sensible, on pragmatic grounds, for us to make the orders in the form suggested by the parties but that on the proper construction of Section 43(3) of the 1981 Act we had power to do so. They did not suggest that commitment for fine default was a sentence for an offence within the meaning of Section 43(1) but that that sub-section applied because it was an order of a magistrates’ court “which is made on, but does not form part of, the conviction of an offender” within the meaning of Section 43(3). Section 43 of the 1981 Act is the lineal successor to Section 16 of the Administration of Justice Act 1960 (“the 1960 Act”) and since there were unusual features of the language of that section we adjourned the hearing for the sole purpose of enabling the parties to conduct further research into the origins of that action and the mischief it was enacted to prevent and reporting the results of that research to us in writing. This has now been done, and we have been furnished with a helpful note by Mr Keith which tells us of the history of the matter. Mr Wise, for his part, told us that in the absence of “Notes on Clauses” he was not in a position to add anything to the submissions he made on 16th October. We have now received a copy of the Notes on Clauses, which confirm what we had already understood to be the purpose of Clause 16 of the 1960 Bill from the information Mr Keith had previously sent us.
27. The two matters which concerned us at the hearing were the concept of amending the conviction by substituting a different sentence, which is contained in Section 43(1), and the meaning of the expression “made on the conviction” which appear in Section 43(3). The language of Section 43 of the 1981 Act is identical to the language of Section 16 of the 1960 Act, so far as is material for our purposes.
28. As to the first point, certiorari, as is well known, operated to bring a disputed order of an inferior court to be examined. If the order was found to be bad on its face, the only remedy on a motion for certiorari alone was to quash it. The position is vividly described by Lord Cairns LC in Overseers of the Poor of Walsall v London and North Western Railway Company [1878] 4 AC 30 at pp 39-40:
29. Until the Summary Jurisdiction Act 1848 came into force, magistrates’ courts were required to make a full record of any conviction. This record included the terms of the information, a verbatim note of the evidence, and a justification of the conviction as legally correct. The 1848 Act greatly simplified things. By Section 17 of that Act the standard orders of conviction were to be as set out in the Schedule to the Act, which contained forms for a sentence of distress, a sentence of fine, and a sentence of imprisonment, and by these forms, the conviction and the sentence together comprised a single and unseverable order. This Schedule was subsequently substituted by later legislative provision, including rules made under the summary Jurisdiction Act 1879 and the Magistrates’ Courts Act 1952. (For the modern form of conviction see Form 38 in Stone’s Justices’ Manual 1998, Vol 3, p 7597). Denning LJ explained what happened when giving judgment in R v Northumberland Compensation Appeal Tribunal ex p Shaw [1952] 1 KB 338 at pp 348-349:
30. Under the arrangements introduced in 1848, if any part of the order (such as the sentence which was imposed) was bad, the whole order was bad. Sentence could not be severed from conviction and the entirety of the order had to be quashed for excess of jurisdiction. See R v Willesden Justices ex p Utley [1948] 1 KB 397, per Lord Goddard CJ at p 398:
33. It is interesting to note that at the committee stage of the 1960 Bill Lord Goddard, who had recently retired from office, caused the language of the proposed Bill to be amended. He said:
34. The High Court does not quash the sentence. It quashes the conviction and there has arisen, therefore, the point which I have often pressed: that this subsection should be amended so that the court, instead of quashing the conviction, should have power to vary the sentence..."
35. An early example of the use of the new power in Section 16(1) of the 1960 Act is to be seen in R v Uxbridge Justices ex p Clark [1968] 1 All ER 992 in which this court substituted a valid sentence for one which the justices had had no power to pass.
36. The reason why what is now Section 43(1) of the 1981 Act was drafted in this way is now completely clear. What remains to be determined is whether the language of Section 43(3) is apt to cover a sentence of commitment in default of paying a fine ordered to be paid on a conviction.
37. Mr Keith argues, and we understand, Mr Wise to agree, that the language of the sub-section is wide enough for this purpose, although research in Hansard shows that the amendment which introduced Clause 16(3) into the 1960 Bill was moved to cater specifically for cases where a disqualification order was made. They both argued that the words “any order” go much wider than this single example, and that the words “made on conviction” mean any order made as a result of, or as a consequence of, a conviction.
38. Now that counsel has drawn our attention to Hansard, and we have also seen the Notes on Clauses, it is obvious to us that the inclusion of Clause 16(3) into the Bill by amendment was to fill a possible lacuna which had been opened up in relation to disqualification for driving offences. The reason why disqualification orders were being treated differently in the decade prior to 1960 is clear from the short judgment of Lord Parker CJ in R v Arundel Justices ex p Jackson [1959] 2 All ER 407. Section 6(2) of the Road Traffic Act 1930 made special provision that a person who was disqualified might “appeal against the order in the same manner as against a conviction”, and in R v Droxford Justices ex p Hale (1953) 117 JP Jo 177 Lord Goddard CJ said that the language of the sub-section showed that a disqualification order was something separate from a conviction:
39. Mr Keith bases his argument for a wide meaning of the words “any order made on conviction” on the interpretation given to them in Section 36(2) of the Criminal Justice Act 1948 and Section 21 of the Criminal Appeal Act 1907.
40. Hilbery J, concurring, reverted to the history of the record in the magistrates’ court to which we have referred earlier in this judgment. After accepting that the order in question had been made on the occasion of a conviction he went on to add at p 561:
41. Section 21 of the Criminal Appeal Act 1907 contained similar language to that contained in Section 36 of the Criminal Justice Act 1948, and Lord Parker CJ simply applied the earlier decision by way of confirming his view of the law after saying at p 137:
42. This line of authority confirms the view we provisionally held at the end of the oral hearing, namely that Parliament was not contemplating by the use of the words “made on conviction” an order for committal following a subsequent finding of wilful refusal or culpable neglect to pay the whole or part of a financial order made on conviction. The distinction is reflected in the comparison between Form 51 (Warrant of commitment on occasion of conviction) and Form 52 (warrant of compensation on occasion subsequent to conviction): see Stone’s Justices’ Manual, op cit at pp 7605-6. In our judgment Section 43(3) of the 1981 Act was apt to cover the type of order discussed in ex p Beaumont , and not a subsequent order made for a new intervening cause, namely the wilful refusal or culpable neglect to pay a financial order made on a conviction. It would be quite wrong to construe the expression used in ex p Beaumont “in consequence of a conviction” as if it was a term used in the statute and to hold that any order which would not have been made but for a conviction was an order made on conviction even though it was made subsequent in time and for a different substantive reason than that for which an original financial penalty was ordered.
43. We reach this decision with regret, but we fear that any other interpretation of the language of the statute would usurp the function of the legislature. The judges of the King’s Bench created the prerogative writs which are now perpetuated in statutory form by way of orders in Section 29(1) of the Supreme Court Act 1981, and Parliament enlarged their powers for a clearly identifiable reason in Section 16 of the Administration of Justice Act 1960. The mischief which that section was enacted to remedy is clear - first, the wide meaning given to a conviction in the context of the remedy of certiorari and secondly, the existence of ancillary orders made under modern statutes on a conviction and in consequence of it but not forming part of it. It would in our judgment be wrong for the judges to expand their powers by imaginative interpretation of a section introduced for a clearly different purpose. We would add, following the successful lead set by Lord Goddard CJ in Green 40 years ago, that it is desirable that the unsatisfactory position we have uncovered is remedied by the legislature at the earliest practicable moment.
44. If we maintained our provisional view that we had no power to substitute a lesser sentence than that in fact imposed, the parties requested us to make orders quashing the sentences as sought without substituting a lesser term. We willingly do so, and we have set out our order in each case in the attached Schedule. We would add that although the effect of our decision may be that technically part of the fine will remain unenforced, we hope that in the light of the long delay since the original committal order was made, the enforcing authorities will exercise their discretion not to take any further steps to enforce payment and will inform the applicants’ solicitors of that fact, in order to put their clients’ minds at rest. It would, of course, be open for the matter to be put back before a bench of justices in each case to make the substituted order without requiring the attendance of the defendant.
45. If and when further consent orders are filed in the outstanding cases, they should make it clear that they have been approved by each of the justices who adjudicated (if still alive and available) and the reasons why the justices accept that their original order should be quashed.
46. Marlene Jones was born in November 1974. She gave birth to a son when she was about 17. In November 1994 she was fined £100 and ordered to pay £40 for attempting to cash a stolen Social Security Giro. She was ordered to pay the total sum of £140 at the rate of £4 per week. She was dependant on income support, and lived with her son until the end of June 1995 in accommodation provided by the local authority. She suffers from curvature of the spine and is a registered disabled person. She also suffers from recurring panic attacks. Her disability causes her severe mobility and other problems. As a result she was prone to depression and became addicted to heroin.
47. She made no payments at all under the original order. She was therefore summoned to attend court for a means inquiry on 1st February 1995. When she did not appear, a distress warrant was issued. It was returned unexecuted on 8th March. In the meantime she had appeared before the court on other matters on 28th February, when she agreed to pay £5 per fortnight against the order, which was amended accordingly.
48. Again, she made no payments, and she did not appear, when summoned, on 18th May. An arrest warrant was therefore issued, and she was brought before the court under this warrant on 3rd June, when she was represented by a solicitor. A means inquiry was held, and the justices found that her non-payment was due to culpable neglect. She now offered to pay at the rate of £2.50 per fortnight, and the justices made an order committing her to prison for seven days, but suspended its effect so long as she paid at the rate of £2.50 per fortnight. Once again, she made no payments at all.
49. At the end of June she was evicted from her home due to arrears of rent amounting to £150. Her son went to live with her parents, and she slept rough for the next three months until the beginning of October when she moved into a women’s Salvation Army hostel. During this period she was trying to get a placement in a drug rehabilitation unit which had a long waiting list. In an affidavit sworn after she was committed to prison on 6th October, she referred to having to cope with the phenomenal pressures of her homelessness, her separation from her son, the pain, discomfort and restriction of her disability, and her heroin addiction.
50. In September 1995 the clerk of the court posted to her at her former address a notice to the effect that a hearing would be held on 27th September to determine whether a warrant of commitment should be issued. This notice was returned, marked “Gone Away”. Despite this fact good service was deemed to be effected (1980 Act, s 82(5F)). Needless to say, she did not attend, and the warrant was duly issued. It was executed on 6th October when she was taken to Risley prison. She was released on bail pursuant to an order of Harrison J on 7th October.
52. Quenishi Saleem was born on 5th March 1976. He lived with his brother in Northolt. His command of English is poor.
53. On 15th September 1994 he was convicted of travelling without a bus ticket. He was fined £50, and ordered to pay £55 costs and £1.70 compensation. He was ordered to pay the entire sum of £106.70 within 14 days. He did not pay anything, despite a notice of reminder issued on 14th October 1994. On 22nd November 1994 a distress warrant was issued, but this was returned unexecuted five months later.
54. On 4th July 1995 he attended court for a means inquiry. The justices found him guilty of culpable neglect. He offered to pay at the rate of £10 per week, but the justices decided to make an order committing him to prison for seven days, suspending the order so long as he paid at the rate of £5 per week with effect from 7th July. He made two such payments, but then stopped paying.
55. In an affidavit sworn after he was committed to a young offender institution, Mr Saleem has explained that he was earning £70 per week in a job as a minicab control operator which entailed his working six 12-hour days, but he was sacked from this job in mid-July in a row with his employer in which he asked for a pay rise. He therefore had no money and no work, and he was told that as he had been sacked from his job he was not entitled to Income Support or any other benefits. He was constrained to borrow and live off his brother and his friends until 28th October when he obtained a new job earning £25 per day. During this period he was travelling around, living off his friends.
56. On 21st August 1995 a notice was sent to him at his brother’s address (where he was no longer living), requiring him to show cause why he should not be committed to prison. He never received this notice, and did not attend court on 30th October 1995 when a warrant was issued committing him to prison for seven days. The warrant was executed on 30th October, and he was taken to Feltham Young Offenders Institution. On 1st November he was released on bail pursuant to an order of Collins J.
58. JW was 20 years old in April 1994. She was a single parent with two young children. In December 1992 she was convicted of soliciting and fined £100. An instalment order was made requiring her to pay the fine at the rate of £4 per week from 4th January 1993. On 24th June 1993 she was convicted of failing to possess a television licence, for which she was ordered to pay £1,000 pursuant to the unit fines system which was then briefly in force, together with £30 costs. On this occasion an instalment order was made requiring her to pay £10 per week with effect from 12th July 1993. On 16th September 1993 she was again convicted of soliciting. She was ordered to pay a fine of £120 (calculated by the unit fines system), together with £50 costs, at the rate of £5 per week from 4th October 1993. The fine of £1,000 was imposed after she had failed to appear or to provide details of her means, and the unit value used to calculate the fine of £120 was assessed at £4 in the light of the information she then provided. In an affidavit sworn in 1995 Ms JW avers that she had told the justices that she had had no money whatsoever other than her earnings from prostitution since she had been discharged from care on her 19th birthday, and that the Department of Social Security had refused to make a special payment arrangement for estranged young people in her case.
59. She had made payments totalling £36 in all when she appeared in court on 8th February 1994. She had been arrested on a warrant not backed for bail. Before that warrant was issued the court had sent her three notices of the fine, four reminder letters and three summonses requiring her to attend court. There had also been three warrants backed for bail, a distress warrant and two warrants not backed for bail. The justices conducted a full means inquiry and found her guilty of culpable neglect. They reduced the £1,000 fine to £40, and consolidated all three orders. They then made an order committing her to a young offenders’ institution for 28 days for fine default, which they suspended for so long as she paid the outstanding consolidated balance of £304 at the rate of £3 per week with effect from 15th February 1994. She made one £3 payment the following week and then paid nothing more.
60. According to her affidavit, at some time during 1994 she was evicted from her council flat for rent arrears and went to live with her sister’s family in very crowded 3-bedroomed accommodation. She avers that she was on Income Support at the time the suspended committal order was made.
61. However that may be, a notice to show cause was sent to her last known address and when she failed to appear on 19th April 1994, the justices directed the warrant to be issued in respect of 27 days’ detention. For whatever reason, she maintains that she did not know about the notice.
62. The warrant was not executed until 31st May 1995 when she was suffering from withdrawal symptoms due to “crack” dependency. She was taken to Risley Prison where she stayed in the hospital wing for two days before being released on bail by order of this court (Balcombe LJ and Buxton J) on 2nd June 1995.
64. Sheila Lee was convicted on 25th April 1994 by the Manchester City Magistrates’ Court of using a television set without a licence and was ordered to pay £100 and £10 costs. On 4th May 1994 her son was fined £20 for an offence of theft and following a means inquiry the Manchester Youth Court ordered her to pay her son’s fine at the rate of £2.50 per week. No payments were made, and the Case Stated sets out all the efforts which were unsuccessfully made to enforce payment of these orders, culminating in suspended committal orders. On 30th August 1995 she again attended court, following the service of a notice to show cause, and the justices explained in the Case why they decided to issue a warrant for commitment to prison for 7 days. Her common law husband, who was in court, then offered to pay £120 in cash against the outstanding orders, which totalled £130, and offered to go home in a taxi to collect the remaining ten pounds, but due to the time of day the justices directed that the appellant should be taken into custody forthwith, although only £10 remained outstanding. Since the payment of the fine extinguished pro tanto the term of imprisonment ordered, the justices clearly ought to have considered the new situation and allowed time for the remaining ten pounds to be paid so that the liability could be extinguished completely.
65. On 11th January 1995 Mr Wright was convicted by the Tower Bridge Magistrates’ Court of affray and ordered to pay £200 in compensation and £200 costs. He made no payments at all, and on 22nd October 1996 he appeared before a stipendiary magistrate at the Greenwich Magistrates’ Court on a means inquiry. He told the magistrate that he was about to go to Ireland for a holiday for four months, or possibly longer, and that in the event of his being able to obtain work in Ireland he might very well not return to England. The magistrate avers that he did not receive a satisfactory answer when he inquired how Mr Wright was able to afford such a holiday and yet be unable to pay the outstanding orders. He found him guilty of culpable neglect, and in his affidavit he explains why he did not regard any of the alternative methods of enforcing the orders appropriate in view of Mr Wright’s imminent departure to Ireland. He made a seven day committal order which he did not suspend for the same reason.
66. Mr Wright was committed to Belmarsh Prison although he was only 20 years old. The reasons why no other method of dealing with him other than detention were set out in the warrant, but a line was drawn through the sentence in the pro forma warrant which related to the reason why the court was satisfied that it was undesirable or impracticable to make a fine supervision order. The magistrate appears to have failed to appreciate that Mr Wright was only 20 years old.
68. He was in fact taken to Feltham Young Offenders’ Institution, from which he was released on bail by order of Sedley J on 23rd October.
69. There are many differences between the version of events described by Mr Wright and that described by the magistrate, Mr Peter Spencer Wallis, in their respective affidavits. We have not been told the reasons why the magistrate has consented to his order being quashed, save for the formula that in view of the length of time he has spent in custody pursuant to his order and the time that has elapsed since then and in all the circumstances it is expedient that the period actually served by him (two days) be substituted for the period imposed.
70. In 1997 Sonia Davidson was a 24-year old single parent, living with her 10-month old daughter. She was dependant on income support. Her daughter was unwell and under investigation for sickle cell anaemia. In 1995 she incurred financial liabilities under court orders on four separate occasions, although nothing turns on the first, a fine of £75 for contempt of court which she paid in full on 18th October 1995, the day on which a warrant for her commitment was executed. The other three were:
71. No payment of any kind was made. An attachment of earnings order was made in August 1996 in relation to the first and third of these liabilities at the rate of £50 per month, but no payments were in fact made because her job as a residential social worker came to an end. She avers that she was heavily pregnant at the time.
72. The appeal costs order related to an occasion when she had failed to attend the Crown Court for her appeal against the compensation order. Her appeal was not finally withdrawn until November 1996, and steps were then taken to enforce this order. When she failed to attend court when summoned, a warrant backed for bail was issued and she appeared in court for the first time on 28th June 1997. The stipendiary magistrate at Greenwich found her guilty of culpable neglect and committed her to prison for 14 days. She was taken to Holloway Prison and released by order of Kay J on 1st July.
73. The warrant recited that the Court had considered or tried all other methods of enforcing payment of the sum and that it appeared to the court that they we inappropriate or unsuccessful.
74. The magistrate did not swear an affidavit in response to the affidavit sworn by the applicant, in which she described the hearing on 28th June 1997 in these terms:
75. The reason why we were asked to substitute a period of 4 days for the period of 14 days ordered by the magistrate was set out in these terms:
76. Since the Applicant was a single mother with a 10-month sick child and was not working it is not possible for us to know why the magistrate formed the opinion that other methods of enforcing payment (which might have included an Income Support order) were inappropriate or unsuccessful, and that immediate committal to prison was the only available option.
© 1998 Crown Copyright