A letter sent by a woman with learning difficulties and depression to the court over an unpaid TV license painfully highlights fundamental flaws in the Single Justice Procedure (SJP), Tristan Kirk has said.
Taking to X (formerly Twitter), the Evening Standard’s courts correspondent posted a note submitted to the courts by a woman from County Durham, who was prosecuted and convicted last in the SJP.
In it, she writes: “I have a learning disability and I forget what I am sometime as I forget what I have to pay out sometime and with me having mental health I find it hard at time and I was just a mistake and I am really sorry for this and I have to try to call the TV licensing a couple of times but I could never get through to them.”
Her local MP, Richard Holden MP, has agreed to look into the matter urgently, but according to Kirk, it is one of many instances that shows the fundamentally flawed SJP system.
“If an organisation says it wants to avoid criminal prosecutions where possible, it shouldn’t use it”, he posted on X.
“SJP effectively excludes prosecutors at sentencing, when key information emerges for the first time. The system is fundamentally flawed.”
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