28 day remands
01 January 1991
28 day remands
artdoc December=1991
The Government has laid draft Orders before Parliament to give
powers, under the Criminal Justice Act 1988, to all courts in
England and Wales to remand defendants in custody for up to 28
days at a time.
Traditionally, remands in custody from Magistrates Courts have
been restricted to eight days, providing the safeguard that the
authorities were required to physically produce a defendant in
court at weekly intervals. The position was first eroded in the
Criminal Justice Act 1982, which allowed that, so long as a
defendant was legally represented and positively waived his right
to a hearing they need not appear in court in person for up to
28 days.
The new Orders will now allow magistrates to impose full 28 day
remands in custody on defendants, against their will and
regardless of whether they are legally represented, so long as
they are over 17 years of age.
The move follows an experiment with 28 day remands in Croydon,
Highbury, Nottingham and Manchester, which the Home Office claims
showed that the system did not result in any significant increase
in the average time spent in custody. However, this view is
disputed by the Chairman of the Prison Reform Trust. In a letter
of 24 October 1991 in The Independent, he states that, when the
system of 28 days remands was first proposed in 1989, `concern
was expressed that this might lead to an even larger prison
remand population. The experiment that has now taken place
confirms that this risk is serious. In the courts concerned,
average periods of remand did frequently increase.'
The Government's motives in seeking to introduce 28 day remands
nationally are administrative and financial, in that it would
save the expense of prison and/or police officers having to
transport remand prisoners back and forth to court every week.
But the move also comes at a time of growing crisis over the
remand prison population, with large numbers being hold in
totally unsatisfactory conditions in police cells because of a
lack of prison places. This has led to recent public protests by
Chief Constables.
Weekly remand appearances, even when they do not involve any
substantial hearing of the case, are also vital at a time of
rising concern over deaths in custody, in that they provide an
opportunity for a public check on a defendant's physical and
mental state. This is particularly important for those remanded
in custody for psychiatric reports (often without even being
convicted of a criminal offence), who because of the complete
inadequacy of the Prison Medical Service are frequently left for
weeks without seeing a doctor, in a state of increasing anxiety
and risk of self-harm.
Remands in Custody for up to 28 Days: The Experiments, Home
office Research and Planning Unit Paper No. 62, by Paul F.
Henderson and Patricia M. Morgan, Copies available from the Home
Office on 071-273-4600. Home Office Press release, 12.7.91.