£22m in unpaid fines owed to courts

There’s good news and bad news from Kent’s courts this week. Magistrates have caught up a little on the backlog of cases waiting to be heard, with nearly 4% fewer trials outstanding at the end of the financial year than the beginning.

That is certainly moving in the right direction, but it still leaves more than 7,300 cases awaiting determination.

This is delaying justice for the victims, and denying offenders the chance to put their misdeeds behind them and move on.

More shocking for most people will be the extraordinary extent of unpaid fines owed to the courts.

At £22 million, the figure had increased by nearly 16% on the previous year.

All courts seek to find alternatives to imprisonment if possible, but many will wonder exactly what penalty criminals do face if all they receive is a fine which they never pay.

Anyone who regularly attends our courts, as our reporters do (for all the right reasons), soon gains the impression that our justice system is creaking at the seams.

But it does look as though our local solicitors must bear some of the responsibility for that.

Far fewer offenders attending Maidstone Crown Court admit guilt at the first opportunity compared with other courts in the county.

But then a higher number change their plea on the first day of trial, by which time an enormous amount of time and money has already been wasted.

Perhaps their lawyers need to give them better advice?