Why can't we offer hope along with justice?

The judicial system works brilliantly with the big crimes. It's all the little ones that are the problem

On one side of the divide, David Blunkett champions democracy. On the other, the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Woolf, demands justice. It is a long-drawn-out tussle now, this one over how the criminal justice system should be reformed, and it is frustrating that, amid all the teeming difficulties the system is labouring under, this single point of principle - rather than practicality - should have emerged as the most enduring.

Lord Woolf believes that a judge should preside over a court, listen to days and weeks of evidence, direct the jury as it makes its decision, then, taking all relevant issues into consideration, lay down the sentence. Only this way, he believes- and the rest of the judiciary seems to be with him - can justice be done and be seen to be done.

Mr Blunkett believes also that a judge should preside over a court, listen for days and weeks to the evidence brought, and direct the jury as it makes its decision. But at this point, at the end of the process, at the moment when the judge decisively honours his title, a ready reckoner should be whipped out, and a punishment set down according not to the contents of the case, but to the contents of Mr Blunkett's Criminal Justice Bill. Only this way, he believes - and the popular press is with him on this one - can democracy be done and be seen to be done.

In one respect, it's all just part of the present government's pattern, under which it insults all the professions it needs most to deliver its ends, by insisting always that it knows better. The teacher who knows the child cannot be relied upon to assess her early progress, the doctor cannot be trusted to understand his patients and run his surgery as he sees fit, and the judge who knows and understands the crime that has been committed cannot, well, he cannot be treated as a grown-up and left to pass a judgement on it. This control-by-rote, this clumsy interfering, we now are asked to call democracy.

There is plenty of democracy in a courtroom already, because it is not a judge, but 12 people plucked from the electoral roll who decide on guilt or innocence. This is not enough democracy for Mr Blunkett, though. Or is it too much? Mr Blunkett and other Home Secretaries before him have been keen to limit trial by jury, and very irritated to find that this form of direct democracy is actually rather beloved by these undemocratic old judges.

What a shame it is that more of us don't love democracy in the courtroom. It's well known that far too many people would go to any lengths to get out of doing jury service. Maybe they'd make the effort if they could pick a juicy murder trial of the type Mr Blunkett himself wants to put his fingerprints on. But - as most people who've done it will attest - jury trials are often elaborately conducted over the most petty or silly of crimes, with the evidence often amounting to little more than one person's word against the other.

I've only served on three juries. Twice we found the pettily accused defendant innocent. One we found the seriously accused defendant guilty. The anachronistic, soft, out-of-touch old judge sentenced the guy to 35 years, while his wife, clutching babies, collapsed wailing in the public gallery. And this drug trafficker hadn't even killed anyone. Not directly anyway.

One judgement, of course, doesn't mean that judges are stern and harsh, not nuttily merciful, in general. But the massively overstuffed prisons, with child and female populations as well as men's ever on the rise, suggests that the outrageous leniency we hear so much about has no basis in fact.

Ah, yes, say the ranks of people who genuinely appear to believe that 10, 15 or 20 years in prison is a walk in the park. Will this man actually serve his 35 years? I wouldn't imagine so. The early release of prisoners is a dreadful irritant to many people, who demand that 35 years should mean 35 years, or, more commonly, life should mean life.

But what really, is the point in keeping someone in prison long after their sentence has done its work and they are reformed, no longer a threat to the public, desperate to start a new life as, say, British soap's most popular ever baddie (Leslie Grantham, who played Dennis Watts in EastEnders, is one of our most celebrated released murderers).

Only when a criminal is actually imprisoned can he understand what he has lost. Remove the incentive for him to put this knowledge to positive use, for which he can be rewarded, and prisons become even greater hotbeds of dehumanisation and recidivism than they are already.

I differ from Lord Woolf, when he argues that Mr Blunkett's reforms should not be enacted because they would swell the prison population yet further. They would, and for the reasons he cites, such as the commensurate hike in other sentences that a uniform increase in the most serious would trigger. But there are far better reasons than lack of cell space for leaving sentencing in murder cases to judges, all of which Lord Woolf has voiced plainly and clearly.

One thing Lord Woolf cannot admit, though, even if he wanted to, is that one reason why Mr Blunkett is making his last stand on the wrong issue is that the judicial system generally works brilliantly with big crimes. It''s all the little ones that are the problem.

It's not the judiciary that is the problem here, though. The problem is context. A court of law is a wonderful thing, a perfect democracy in many ways, full of meticulous, almost painful fairness, groaning under the weight of all the rights it upholds, torpid with the unending effort to be scrupulous, decent, wise, and balanced. In a murder trial, or a trial which deals with a fairly serious crime, this all seems right and proper.

But when a hard-faced youth is standing there lying through his teeth about how he hadn't smashed the car window, he'd just found the car radio lying next to it, the gulf between his own moral code and the fuss and bother, time and cash lavished on ascertaining his guilt or innocence is immense.

It is further down - here, where petty crimes make ordinary lives a misery - that justice should not be the final and only goal. There are things that those who commit crime out of poverty, ignorance, weakness, mental illness, lack of opportunity, homelessness, joblessness or addiction, need far more than they need justice.

What would really help the criminal justice system - to ease the pressure on prisons, the time-lags in court, the money wasted on trying open-and-shut cases - is the ability to offer hope as well as justice. Opportunities in training institutions instead of prisons, drug and alcohol rehabilitation centres instead of months on remand for people who've clearly got problems whether guilty or not, medical attention instead of a cell filled with depression and despair.

What people need is an incentive to seek help rather than doing what they do at present, and opting for trial by jury to see what they can get away with. In the criminal justice white paper, there were plenty of mechanisms that could have helped to achieve this change of culture. Instead of striving to find the goodwill among judges to make it work, Mr Blunkett has alienated another group of professionals whom he desperately needs to be with him, rather than against him.

We need more justice, and more hope. What we're getting instead is ministers insinuating themselves into situations of which they know nothing, and calling it democracy.

d.orr@independent.co.uk