Penalty Notices for Disorder research - background.
Briefing sheet for community, voluntary and advice organisations.
Dear Sir or Madam,
I wonder if your organisation might be able to help publicise a research
survey that I am doing. Your clients or residents or members may well ask
questions about PNDs that is not an area that your organisation advises on,
but they may be willing to give their views about the PND process to an
independent researcher.
The survey is here: http://www.liverpool.ac.uk/law-and-social-
justice/news/2011/PND.htm
And can be easily found if people just look up the Liverpool Law School
website at Liverpool University. It is just www.liverpool.ac.uk/law
As you know the police now give out a huge number of fixed penalties (Penalty
Notices for Disorder) aimed at relatively minor offences. (I'm talking about
non-driving or parking offences here). 170,000 were given out in 2009, mostly
for Causing Harassment, alarm or distress; Drunk and disorderly; Theft and
Criminal Damage (which are particularly controversial); also offences like
Wasting police time; Sale of alcohol to a person under 18, and Consumption of
alcohol in a designated public place. 9,000 were given out in Lancashire (down
from a peak of 13,000 in 2007); 7,800 in Greater Manchester; 13,000 in
Merseyside; 2,400 in Cheshire and 1,300 in Cumbria. The penalty is a £80 or a
£50 fine.
You can find the statistics for your area in chapter two, table 2.2, here:
http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http://www.justice.gov.uk/publicat
ions/criminalannual.htm
I'm trying to get people's experience, the views of recipients, to find out
whether the police have acted legally and fairly and whether recipients think
that police officers or CSOs have acted legally or fairly.
My interest has arisen due to anecdotal complaints to me by members of the
public, and by solicitors about how their clients have been treated. While
being given a penalty does not count as a conviction I’ve had a dozen
complaints of heavy handed response from the police when officers were rude
and unprofessional and gave people penalties when on the facts stated to me
they were not merited. These facts may or may not be true, of course, but if
they were true the officers have acted at best unprofessionally, and at worst
illegally, or they could have taken other action like given an informal
warning instead.
Sometimes this was an officer or Community Support Officer (CSO) giving
penalties to people they would simply have given a warning to in the past
requiring no formal police action at all; sometimes giving a penalty
justifiably to one person but also to others in the group who were not doing
anything wrong. I use the word ‘wrong’ here deliberately – the recipients were
not doing anything blameworthy, and not anything criminal. In the most serious
cases, giving penalty notices when there is insufficient proof of any offence
committed. The anecdotal evidence received by me from complaints by various
subjects of penalty notices suggests that the police are giving out penalties
in situations when objectively the conduct complained of could not be proved.
Therefore the person ends up paying an £80 fine, when if the case went to the
magistrates court it would be thrown out. However recipients hardly ever
challenge them - only 3%, 2% are cancelled, only 1% are contested in court -
and we can all guess why, but that is one of the things that I am interested
in.
There is very little research about the use of PNDs, I know of only one
researcher at Sheffield University and one Professor at Bristol who are
analysing the legal issues around them.
As only 1% of PNDs are contested at court there is no way of knowing for
certain whether the penalty notices are validly given. I hope to gain a sense
of whether the police are habitually giving out penalties when there is
insufficient evidence to do so. I'll be assisted in analysing the survey by
people with expert knowledge in criminal evidence and criminal procedure,
including a solicitor, magistrate and legal advisor. By considering cases from
a range of localities and police force areas I believe it will be possible to
see whether any misuse is a problem endemic across police forces, whether it
is confined to particular forces, and whether it is a deliberate misuse of
powers granted by Parliament or caused by apparent inadvertence or poor
training on the part of officers.
As I say our method is simple - to ask people who have been given a PND to
tell us whether a penalty had been fairly given, what happened and whether
they thought that there should have been a different response by the police.
We will evaluate all responses and make recommendations for safeguards and
improvements, if necessary, and submit these to the Home Office, police forces
and police authorities.
The project is not to be critical of the police in any particular localities,
particular police force or in general. The complaints I have heard about may
be a negative impression that is not reflected in the study. The aim of this
survey is to see if there is a problem and make suggestions to improve
policing if needed. If there is no evidence of a major problem then my report
will say so. Either way the work should be of benefit to the police and the
public. There are also plenty of arguments in favour of 'on-the-spot' fines
which I think can be a great tool for the police to deal with situations
quickly and calm them down.
I realise this briefing is quite detailed but I think it may be useful if you
have some of the background to answer questions.
Yours sincerely,
Kiron Reid.
Mr. Kiron Reid
Lecturer in Law, Director of Careers & Employability, School of Law, Chatham
Street, University of Liverpool, Liverpool
L69 7ZS
00 44 (0)151 794 2801
kjcr@liverpool.ac.uk