UK: 28 day remands
01 November 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.