Enforcement Notice

[colin todd]

No, Suppers, he has just described the english FRS and the lawyers who work for them, who scattergun charges in the hope that some will stick and they can negotiate down to a few that might have some substance.

[Indiana]

I've been told that the defence like to barter down the offences as it shows they have done something constructive for their client.

I'm trying to change the way that we prosecute by prosecuting for one, possibly two offences and putting all the evidence together under that one offence (prmiarily Article . I was told by our solicitors that haggling....plea bargaining etc. is all part and parcel of the litigious legal sytem we use. Using one offence limits any bargaining powers.

Lots of resistance against it, particlularly from our solicitors.

Oh well, where's that Gatling gun

[Dinnertime Dave]

I'm trying to change the way that we prosecute by prosecuting for one, possibly two offences and putting all the evidence together under that one offence (prmiarily Article . I was told by our solicitors that haggling....plea bargaining etc. is all part and parcel of the litigious legal sytem we use. Using one offence limits any bargaining powers.

Lots of resistance against it, particlularly from our solicitors.

Oh well, where's that Gatling gun

The problem with your suggestion is 1 or 2 offences, plead guilty, first offence - the fine is already down from ?5000 per offence to ?1500 X 2 ?3000 plus costs. Prosecute 10 offences, barter down to 8, 8x1500 is ?12000 plus higher costs.

[Indiana]

I wholeheartedly would have agreed with you up until the 12th March of this year when s.85 of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 came into force for the RRO. This means that the fines are now unlimited and so the maximun ?5,000 per offence no longer applies.

[Dinnertime Dave]

My thoughts are that you are putting all your eggs in one basket. I would expect that the unlimited fines will be reserved for the more serious cases involving large multi nationals.

[Indiana]

Possibly, but if you have lots of evidence under one offence (the same evidence that would have been spread over numerous offences) then I would think that this actually makes your one offence stronger as you only need to prove one bit of evidence to prove the offence. I would presume that the judge or magistrates can then look at all of the evidence in that offence and decide on an appropriate fine accordingly. The more serious cases with large multi nationals would probably end up in Crown Court anyway where the Judge can impose an unlimited fine.

I have had a successful case in the past where the defendant pleaded guilty to five offences (all 32(1)(a) involving articles 8, 9, 13, 14). In handing out the fine, the Judge gave a fine for Articles 8 and 9 and didn't give anything for the other offences, even though he had been found guilty.

[kurnal]

It puzzles me why fire safety enforcers are so keen on securing the highest possible penalty rather than focussing on proving guilt and leaving the level of appropriate punishment to those whose job it is- the judiciary? I know you want to see people made an example of - but is that your job? Would you be better to concentrate your resources on taking  many more lower level cases greatly increasing public awareness of cases at a local level and showing that poor fire safety standards will have consequences? Success  is a guilty verdict and is not related to the size of the fine or prison sentence?

[Mike Buckley]

No Indiana, put the Gatling gun away, what you want is a Bunderbus.

I agree with kurnal the principal must be for the enforcers to be proving guilt and not looking at the penalties.

The scattergun approach did get some criticism in the prosecutions following Pennhallow where the enforcers were basically told by the judge to take away their initial 29 charges and reduce them to a reasonable number.

The problem with the bargaining approach is it could lead to the idea put forward by A. P. Hubert in his book 'Misleading Cases' where the arguement is made that anyone who is arrested by a policeman must have committed an offence because the policeman would not have arrested them if they hadn't!

The other aspect is that the bargaining can lead to sloppy work on the idea that it doesn't matter too much how the case is put because it won't get examined in court because the defendant will be bargained into pleading guilty to some of the charges.