Sheriff calls for prosecutors to copy Walmart
● Law bigwigs ‘should do wee stretch in lower court every year’
One of Scotland’s most senior sheriffs has called for a “Walmart approach” to stop the country’s leading prosecutors getting out of touch with real life in the criminal courts.
Sheriff George Way, who sits in Dundee, said that the Lord Advocate, the chief public prosecutor for Scotland, and his deputy, the Solicitor-general, should spend a week a year as ordinary prosecutors in sheriff courts “like the management of Walmart”.
The family-owned Us-based multinational retail corporation runs more than 11,000 stores in 27 countries, operating under 55 different names, including Asda in the UK, and is the largest private employer in the world.
Sheriff Way said Walmart’s senior managers were required to spend one week out of every 52 on the shop floor.
He said the approach would pay dividends if extended to Scottish justice.
George Alexander Way of Plean, The Much Hon. Baron of Plean in the County of Stirlingshire, is one of the most respected sheriffs in Scotland. In 2015 he became the first Scottish sheriff to be appointed a member of the Royal Household in Scotland as Falkland Pursuivant Extraordinary at the Court of the Lord Lyon, and is an expert on judicial procedure.
He is a former convener for civil justice on the Council of the Law Society of Scotland and past president of the Society of Solicitors in the Supreme Courts of Scotland. The sheriff, presiding over a cited summary court, which deals with mainly petty crime and motoring offences, had just expressed a hope that a case might “resolve” if the prosecution and the defence could reach an agreement on what had happened.
He told Dundee Sheriff Court on Friday: “One day the mighty Lord Advocate himself might just come and decide to sit in Dundee for a day.
“Then we’ll get decisions taken there and then. He won’t have the excuse of saying, ‘I’ll have to see what the Crown Office says’.
“Actually I’ve always thought the law officers should be made to do a wee stretch every year. A bit like a sabbatical, they should have to come, one to Glasgow, and one to somewhere, and see the cycle unfold.
“The management of Walmart, the top people, have to do that. It’s part of their corporate strategy.
“They pick a store and each of their top people has to take the post of assistant manager in a store for a week to let them see what it’s like working on the coalface once a year.”
The Crown Office said it would “politely decline” to comment on the sheriff’s observations.