D1: Critically analyse the role of lay personnel within the court system of England and Wales. i critically analyse the role of lay peronnel so the magistates and the jury within the court system so i talk about all the advantages of the jury and magistrates in the court system and the disadvantage...
D1: Critically analyse the role of lay personnel
within the court system of England and Wales
For the distinction I’m going to analyse the advantages and the
disadvantages of lay personal in the court system, so the jury and
the magistrates as they are the only lay personnel within the court
system.
Magistrates
Firstly, the advantages of the Magistrates within the court system is
that because the Magistrates are volunteers they don’t get paid
which means that it is vey cost efective because if a case was held
in the crown court then it will need to be heard by a judge and
because judges earn a vast amount of money each case will cost a
lot so having volunteers/lay personal means that you don’t need to
pay for a judge to come and probably give the same verdict as a
magistrate probably would.
Furthermore, another advantage is that because they are volunteers
they have local knowledge what I mean by this is that when the
magistrates are hearing a case they can relate to the problem more
as they probably witnessed it themselves or have been part of it
before also in the Crown Court there is loads of time taken in the
court just explaining where a crime took place and where witness
were located but because magistrates are local people they will
already have that knowledge of the streets and will then save more
time in the court and they also know of things like nuisances that
happen on the roads like speeding or kerb-crawling so when an
ofence like that comes in they already know that it is a nuisance
and that it is a problem and that something needs to be done about
it.
Another advantage of the magistrates is that it means there are less
judges needed which means less stress on the court system, as if
there were no magistrates within the court system then judges will
have to take over and then there will be loads of judges needed to
fill in for the magistrates and because judges reuuire high
uualifications, a lot of experience, and a lot of knowledge about the
law and the court system, there will just not be enough candidates
out there for the role of the judge as it is so hard to become one and
so long to train to become one which is why its more easier to have
a lay personal come in and do the job on the less serious and less
complex cases that don’t need to be handled by an expensive judge.
By having the Magistrates be voluntary and that there are no
uualifications or any complex knowledge of the law needed that
means diferent people from diferent backgrounds, genders,
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