Weekly Blog - 18 December 2023 - Access to the Law
Access to the law
This week, Arise’s weekly blog takes a look at access to the law for ordinary people in developed countries and democracies. There are of course dozens of countries around the world with very little democracy, appalling human rights and with little or no access to the law and justice for ordinary people. One of Arise’s three main campaigns is to support the Christian-led Reform Movements of ordinary people in those countries who are peacefully striving for that to change. However, even in peaceful, democratic, developed countries, that we often think of as having just and fair laws, access to justice is increasingly out of reach of many ordinary people.
To look at the UK as a typical example, solicitors cost anywhere between £186 – £512 per hour.[1] The average length from offence to the completion of a trial in the crown court (which deals with most serious criminal offences) is over a year.[2] Every letter from your lawyer can cost £100 or more. On top of this, legal aid to enable those less well-off to access legal support has been dramatically cut in recent years. So too has funding for both the police force and the prison service. As a result an increasing number of crimes are not even being investigated by the police any more, when they are conviction rates are low, the legal process is extremely long and expensive, and the prisons overcrowded, resulting in often very lenient sentences for anything but the most serious crimes.
Increasingly, ordinary people expect the police not to have the capacity to investigate their cases. One friend of Arise called Nicholas in the South East of England found the police were powerless to act or intervene when he and his family were being terrorised by violent neighbours. Others find they simply can’t afford to access the law. A friend of Arise from the midlands who was going through a painful divorce, and another from the Cambridge area who was wrongfully dismissed by their employer, found the legal fees to fight their cases overwhelming, leaving them with few options. Even when a case does go all the way through to conviction, the sentence is often not appropriate. In a case known to Arise in Manchester, Tim badly beat his wife one evening, something that had happened on multiple previous occasions. After some time he was successfully convicted. He was sentenced to less than 100 hours community service. This involved going along one hour a week on a Sunday and painting over graffiti with a number of other men also serving community sentences. He found each week after he had done 20 minutes he was just sent home anyway. Tim has since become a Christian, repented and is now living a changed life, but by his own admission after all the huge amount of work and cost by the police, social workers, local authorities and lawyers to secure his conviction, the sentence was largely meaningless, neither a deterrent, nor helping him to reform.
What does the Bible say?
The Arise Manifesto, Arise’s big picture, researched and Biblical vision for a better world, looks in detail at how the law should be administered. The Bible is incredibly clear that national authorities have been given authority by God to govern well and administer justice and the law. In one early example, Moses reminds the Israelites that under God’s authority he “took the leading men of your tribes, wise and respected men, and appointed them to have authority over you – as commanders of thousands, of hundreds, of fifties and of tens and as tribal officials. And I charged your judges at that time, ‘Hear the disputes between your people and judge fairly’” (Deut 1: 15 – 16). States should administer the law justly. As Jeremiah the prophet says “Hear the word of the LORD to you, king of Judah, you who sits on David’s throne – you, your officials and your people who come through these gates. This is what the LORD says: Do what is just and right. Rescue from the hand of the oppressor the one who has been robbed. Do no wrong or violence to the foreigner, the fatherless or the widow, and do not shed innocent blood in this place” (Jer 22: 2 – 3). Administering the law justly means that all, whether rich or poor, citizens or foreigners, should be treated equally, as the book of Leviticus puts it, “Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favouritism to the great, but judge your neighbour fairly” (Lev 19: 15). Therefore the law applies equally to all, even to the rulers themselves. In modern parlance we would term this the ‘rule of law’. Thus, the UN Secretary-General’s 2009 Guidance Note on Democracy, a key document for the international community, says “the rule of law is a principle of governance in which all persons, institutions and entities, public and private, including the State itself, are accountable to laws that are publicly promulgated, equally enforced and independently adjudicated”.[3] This is twenty-first century language which echoes ancient Biblical principles (Arise Manifesto, pg 79 – 85).
Sadly, it seems as if the situation in the UK and many other developed democracies is increasingly drifting away from this Biblical standard. As we have seen, the resource constraints on the police mean that cases are increasingly unlikely to be prioritised for investigation, unless they are extremely serious. Very lenient laws for anti-social behaviour, exploitation by companies and various other crimes mean the police are often powerless to act even if they do have capacity to investigate. Even when both of these things do happen, the cost for ordinary people is often prohibitive. Furthermore, the time it takes a trial to complete is long and the sentence if often inappropriately lenient, acting as neither deterrent or to reform the perpetrator. That the wealthiest in society can afford far more access to justice and legal protection than the majority means that there is no true equality before the law. This is surely one of the most basic and fundamental inequalities and lack of freedom and justice there can be. So too is the delay in a conviction, as is often said, “justice delayed is justice denied.” The perception and experience that even if there is a conviction the sentence will often be largely meaningless, again fundamentally undermines justice and equality before the law. Increasingly it feels as if the current system serves neither the victim, not the perpetrator, nor wider society, only some legal professionals who are getting rich from it. All of this is not only wrong and unjust in itself, it is also extremely dangerous for wider society. It creates a growing gulf between the rich who can afford access to law and the rest, and a growing level of cynicism and disengagement with the police and society, which often finds an outlet in dangerous support for extreme popularist right-wing politicians and parties.
So what can be done?
The Arise Manifesto has several proposals for steps that should be taken to bring society back into line with the Biblical principles of easy access for everyone to the law, to ensure justice is upheld, the innocent protected and all are equal before the law. Firstly, the legal system can be made fairer by ensuring in law that the contesting sides in a legal dispute should only be able to spend the same amount on legal fees. In practice, this limits spending to the amount the poorest side can afford. Secondly, ensuring a fast as well as a fair legal process, is another requirement for socially just governments. Thus, a short timetable and limited amount of time for trials should be set (allowing reasonable time to gather evidence, but otherwise as soon as possible after a suspect has been charged) to ensure justice is rapid and again to keep legal costs down. This should bring the average time for court cases down from over a year to just a few short weeks. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, one of the leading international standards on human rights and the law, sets this out well when it states that every person who is charged with an offence should be “tried without undue delay”.[4] Thirdly, the rights of the victims of crime, especially violent crime, are paramount. The authorities should not be hamstrung and unable to act by laws that are too restrictive and lenient in the face of crime. These should be revised so that the police and the crown prosecution service are free and willing to prosecute and imprison, unflinchingly where necessary, in order to protect innocent citizens.
Having said that, fourthly the focus of modern prison systems should be on reforming and rehabilitating criminals. Every effort should be made to ensure prisoners return to society as reformed and constructive members, rather than stuck in a vicious spiral of crime. Extensive use of one-to-one psychological support, counselling, coaching, anger management and mentoring should be made available for prisoners, as one of the most effective ways of breaking this spiral. This should be both in prison and after their release, and indeed as an alternative to prison for minor nonviolent offences. It is also crucial to build a working culture within prisons, requiring prisoners to work, (and indeed paying them for it) giving them every support to get back into work once they leave prison. Education opportunities should also be provided. Once prisoners leave prison, there should be no discrimination against those with a criminal record, with the exception of safeguarding checks for those convicted of rape or abusing children or vulnerable people. Ex-convicts have paid their debt to society and should be allowed to build a new life. Sentences should be firm enough to act as a deterrent and to see justice done for the victims, but the emphasis once convicted must be on reform not punishment, otherwise prisoners all too often are simply released to reoffend again. There must be real intentionality to break that cycle and allow former prisoners to return to constructive and positive roles in society (Arise Manifesto, pg 106 – 107).
A final crucial step must be to ensure the police and the legal system are sufficiently funded from public funds to enable them to work effectively. Another crucial area that the Arise Manifesto deals with at length is the critical importance of fair progressive taxation used to provide essential public services like health, education, social protection, and indeed policing and public legal services. Taxation and social spending have been indispensable core factors in reducing poverty and improving social justice, not least the rule of law and access to justice for all, in nation after nation all around the world (Arise Manifesto, pg 147 – 150, 168 – 172, 195 – 204).
Conclusion
Most developed democracies in our world today have had a relatively good and improving record on access to the law and equality before the law over the past century or so. Even today, their citizens obviously enjoy far greater rights, freedoms and access to the law than the many tens of millions around the world living in autocratic states. It is in this context that the recent trends of the last couple of decades of a decline in public spending undermining the capacity of police forces and public legal systems, inappropriate laws, and the cost and delay of going to the law, has meant that increasingly ordinary citizens cannot afford access to the law and increasingly no longer trust and believe in the ability of the police and the government to protect them. The rule of law, an effective and accountable police force and equality for all before the law are precious and fragile things. They were hard fought for in the first place, once lost we will all desperately miss them, and it will be another huge struggle to regain them. Christians, churches, governments and all in society should do all they can to ensure the police and the public legal system are fully funded, to ensure the costs of going to law are affordable to all, that legal processes are swift not drawn out, that sentences are appropriate to the crime, and that prison systems are focused on reforming prisoners. Few social struggles could be more serious.
Find out more
Find out more about how God is at work in the world, and the role we all have to play in that work, in the Arise Manifesto. This report is Arise’s big picture, researched, Biblical, holistic and practical vision for a better world. It looks at what the Bible says, and what we can learn from the best data and the world’s leading experts on the five major areas of evangelism, discipleship, social justice, development and the environment. It then draws these lessons together into a practical road map for the changes we need to see in our world, which the Arise movement campaigns to achieve.
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[1] Solicitors’ guideline hourly rates, gov.uk, (1 Oct 2021), https://www.gov.uk/guidance/solicitors-guideline-hourly-rates
[2] Criminal court statistics quarterly: July to September 2023, gov.uk, (14 Dec 2023), https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/criminal-court-statistics-quarterly-july-to-september-2023/criminal-court-statistics-quarterly-april-to-june-2023#:~:text=At%20the%20end%20of%20September,in%20Q2%202020%20(422%2C156)
[3] Guidance Note of the Secretary-General on Democracy, UNDEF, (2009), p. 7, https://www.un.org/democracyfund/sites/www.un.org.democracyfund/files/un_sg_guidance_note_on_democracy.pdf
[4] International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, UN, (1966), Article 14, www.ohchr.org/Documents/ProfessionalInterest/ccpr.pdf