COURT SCENES

Hokitika Guardian, 12 January 1929, Page 7

COURT SCENES

BRITAIN’S MAGISTRACY. LONDON", Nov. 12. After live weeks’ experience ol K'nglisli provincial ami Scottish police courts, 1 am convinced tlmt crime is decreasing in tlm country. Always will there he crimes'inspired by passion or greed- -murders, burglaries, ami highway robberies, hut a crime wave does not make a tide ol trouble. Scientific criminals, the princes ol the underworld, continue to gde trouble, to Scotland Yard, and * the light between the, police and tin* .master criminals is not so much a contest of wits as a competition in imagination, which means intelligent anticipation of the progress ol science. I am not concerned with crimes ol passion, nor with iho big coups oi international gangs. .My interest is in the social life of ordinary people, and I find that nationally we are on the side of the angels. /WONDER FUG SOBRIETY. Leaving out Glasgow, Manchester, and Liverpool, our big towns show a wonderful record of sobriety. In the large cities of the Midlands and the North drunkards are rare, and in the smaller towns they virtually do not exist. In East Anglia I have several times attended police courts whore the magistrates had to deal with only the casual lapses of motorists, and the domestic troubles of the unhappily married.

The rural and urban police in England and Scotland are more concerned with road offences than with more serious breaches of the law. That is not the fault of the police, for the watching of motorists is a whole-time job. In the charge lists of the county police in many areas one reads dozens of cases against motorists, cyclists, and lorry drivers, and not a single charge affecting the well-being of the ordinary citizen. Our country jMilioc are really road scouts, and their town brethren arc car-watchers. The convictions are easy and the fines profitable, and every village policeman, like the highwayman of old, “works the road,”

In towns tike Northampton, Norich, Ipswich, Peterborough and Grantham there are no criminals, only motorists and unhappy- wives. York City gave me only one offence, Aberdeen the same, Dundee not much more. Newcastle was the only city, except Glasgow, to provide a dozen drunkards, and they comprised a week-end’s hag.

COURTS LIKE SUNDAY SCHOOLS. Com pa rod with . the metropolitan courts, the provincial police courts are Sunday schools correcting venial sins. Leicester, Derby, Nottingham, Northampton among them could not produce a dozen offenders. lEven Leeds, with its three courts a day, could not total in charges and summonses a score of cases, and what there were were trivial. Sheffield is an exception. This w the city of the provincial hooligan, the young out-of-work, the gangsters who break into shops and warehouses and keep the local police force busy night and day. I would say that Sheffield is cursed with the most dangerous and numerous gangs of young ruffians in the country. Glasgow is had, but the street gangs of the Scottish city arc more playboys than criminals. Summary justice is better administered in London than in the provinces. The lay magistrates of tho county towns mean well, but they will lecture. I grant that there is an advantage in thi) social intimacy of the provincial courts, where tho Dench and the dock share local associations, but a five-minutes speech to match a os fine seems a waste of time and eloquence. SUPERIOR. SCOTTISH COURTS. On the whole the Scottish courts are superior in method and manner to the southern courts. The Scottish police are very intelligent, the court procedure is very dignified, and the employment of a fiscal to expound the charge and conduct the case makes for smooth working. Also a Scottish prisoner has the. advantage, in Glasgow, of the services of an advocate free of charge. Ihe only fault T have to find with the Scottish police procedure is that it makes lor delay. The more serious eases are sent (o tii,. fjherill’ Court, and even there, if the accused pleads not guilty’, t.hcie is a further remand. A metropolitan magistrate gets through more cases in a morning than a Scottish bailie would hear in a week. The provincial courts are not so productive of humour or interest as are ■the metropolitan courts. London is not a city; it is a world with an underworld; and that is why the daily |K»liee courts supply such a wealth ol eases replete with Cockney humour and human interest. MORALS AND THE MACHINE. My task in the metropolitan courts is to report eases; my trouble in the provincial courts is to find them. The motorists, the cyclists, and the lorry' driver have taken aIT the romance out of the King’s highway. Summonses for lights that are not lit, identification plates that do not identify, ears parked outside a parking place, brakes that do not brake, licenses that have lapsed—these are the offences of I lie country courts. Our morals in the provinces are mechanised. T.f it were* not for motorists many provincial magistrates would he embarrassed with a surfeit of white gloves.