Will this review of private prosecutions downplay the Horizon disaster?
There really should be a government department for Fixing the Barn Door After the Horse Has Bolted but will this review of private prosecutions downplay the Horizon disaster?
This has been a long time coming; the former Tory government was urged to strengthen safeguards around private prosecutions back in 2020.
The Horizon scandal revealed that Post Office Limited had failed to ensure that its private prosecutions of sub-postmasters were appropriate, and these led to wrongful convictions.
But apparently the principal offender in the private prosecution system is something called the single justice procedure, by which minor court proceedings are fast-tracked into a letter, rather than a court hearing.
If a person is accused of minor offences that cannot result in a prison sentence – the examples given are driving offences like speeding, driving without insurance or using a mobile phone while driving – and if the defendant does not respond to a letter after 21 days, a magistrate will make a decision without the defendant being involved.
And now I am confused, because the Horizon scandal was about people being accused of very serious offences, being dragged to court and, in some instances, jailed.
Justice Minister Heidi Alexander has said private prosecutions have resulted in wrongful convictions, and the single justice procedure is “not quite as extreme” – but both suggest that organisations are prosecuting people, although the public interest in those prosecutions has not been proved.
Do you think these diverse types of offences should be tackled together? I don’t.
It seems to me that lumping letter-based, non-custodial prosecutions together with those that triggered the Horizon scandal hugely diminishes the seriousness of the latter.
They might both be private prosecutions but they are not the same and should not be treated as such.
But then, isn’t that what happens when you fix a barn door that has been damaged due to the passage of a large farm animal…
Even if it goes back up, it is weakened – making it easier for the horse to break it down again.
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How do we know that the software was faulty?
It is possible that it was deliberately designed to produce such an outcome.
Are there any examples of errors, if that is what they are, going in the opposite direction i.e. sub-post offices with unexpected surpluses?
Great point.