Chaos as unpaid fines mount up

FEARS are growing that next year the system for collecting fines - already close to collapse in some parts of the country - may break down completely.

The total value of unpaid fines in England and Wales has almost tripled since 1987 and stands at pounds 212m. This situation is likely to deteriorate further after 1 April 1996, the date on which the Home Office has authorised the police to hand over responsibility for penalty enforcement to magistrates' courts.

The Magistrates' Association, Justices Clerks Society and Central Council of Magistrates' Courts Committees are all outraged both by the size of the budget the police have agreed to transfer to them - pounds 8m per annum - and the short notice given for magistrates to effect what amounts to a major reorganisation of the justice process.

The chair of the Magistrates' Association, Rosemary Thomson, warned: "The sum of pounds 8m nationwide is wholly inappropriate when you consider that London alone requires pounds 8m to do what they themselves will probably admit is a pretty bad job."

After next April, all magistrates' courts will employ civilian enforcement officers to perform fine enforcement duties previously carried out by police warrants officers.

Laurie Cramp, honorary secretary of the Justices Clerks Society, said: "This sum [pounds 8m] is based on the low priority that the police now place on enforcement. In principle, we welcome the development, but it must be an orderly transfer. If it is not, it will bring chaos to the organisation of magistrates' courts."

Such chaos resulting from cuts already exists in areas which have high crime rates, such as the North-east. At the end of 1993 Northumbria Police Authority closed down Newcastle's centralised warrants department, which employed 16 officers. One employee, now retired, remembers a system already at breaking point back in the late 1980s: "Sometimes literally thousands of warrants for unpaid fines would arrive in the department at once. Some were 18 months old and some had on them the names and addresses of Newcastle's most hardened criminals - we didn't stand a chance of enforcing them."

After closing down the central office, local stations took over the task of enforcement. Jim Richardson was a civilian warrant officer at Newcastle for 14 years and became an inquiry clerk at his local police station in Felling. He wrote several times to senior police in nearby Gateshead, informing them of the worsening situation.

Talks took place last week between the Home Secretary, Mr Michael Howard, and Lord Chancellor Lord Mackay about the implications of the scheduled transfer of responsibility for fine enforcement.