More than a MILLION thieves and thugs dodge court thanks to on-the-spot fine

  • Fixed penalty fines ‘have no impact’, say magistrates
  • 259,475 thieves guilty of stealing items worth up to £200 from shops walk away with just £80 ticket

By
James Slack

Last updated at 10:44 PM on 23rd December 2011

By the end of June this year, 1,153,433 had benefited from the system which is designed to spare police the trouble of taking less serious offenders through the courts

By the end of June this year, 1,153,433 had benefited from the system which is designed to spare police the trouble of taking less serious offenders to court

More than a million offenders have escaped being dragged to court under the controversial on-the-spot fine regime.

Instead of facing a possible jail term, shoplifters, thugs and vandals paid £80 and were sent on their way without a formal record.

The Daily Mail has carried out the first full audit of the so-called Fixed Penalty Notice system, which was introduced by Labour in 2004.

It reveals that, by the end of June this year, 1,153,433 had benefited from the system which is designed to spare police the trouble of taking less serious offenders through the courts.

The figure is understood to have passed 1.2million in recent weeks.

The beneficiaries of the ‘soft’ regime include 288,141 who could have been taken to court for being drunk and disorderly – a crime which is now rarely brought before magistrates.

Critics say it spares offenders the sobering experience of a night in the cells. Instead, they wake up with a receipt for an £80 fine in their pocket.

The fines were also given to 392,994 louts guilty of causing harassment, alarm or distress and 86,318 who admitted criminal damage – such as smashing windows or attacking other property.

Most controversially, the audit reveals 259,475 thieves guilty of stealing items worth up to £200 from shops walked away with only an £80 ticket.

Magistrates and shopkeepers have called for the scrapping of the fixed penalties for shoplifting – as many as half of which go unpaid within the 21-day limit.

The Magistrates Association said the out-of-court penalties ‘have no impact’ and do nothing to prevent reoffending.

They said many shop thieves are being handed one fine after another without paying them while, at the same time, the reasons for their offending are not being addressed.

Shopkeepers said that, in the immediate aftermath of the fines being introduced six years ago, shoplifting rocketed by 65 per cent. 

The fines were also given to 392,994 louts guilty of causing harassment, alarm or distress and 86,318 who admitted criminal damage - such as smashing windows or attacking other property. (Posed by model)

The fines were also given to 392,994 louts guilty of causing harassment, alarm or distress and 86,318 who admitted criminal damage – such as smashing windows or attacking other property. (Posed by model)

The value of the goods thieves were caught with leapt from £125million to £205million.

Whitehall statisticians say Labour’s target culture was responsible for the huge number of tickets which have been issued.

Ministers judged police on the basis of the Offenders Brought to Justice target, which gave equal weight to each and every crime.

Officers receive the same amount of credit for trapping a speeding motorist as they do for capturing and convicting a rapist or murderer.

It also did not matter how the crime was ‘solved’. Handing out a fixed penalty notice or caution was rated the same as gathering mountains of evidence and securing a contested conviction in the courts.

The target has now been scrapped, which is leading to falls in the number of fixed penalty notices – though they are still being dished out at the rate of almost 7,000 every week, or one every four minutes.

Those given the fines, which are only stored locally by police and do not count as a criminal conviction, in the past year included 28,661 who admitted harassment, 35,736 drunks, 5,539 vandals and 36,911 thieves.

The £80 tickets were also given to 14,945 caught in possession of cannabis.

The Offenders Brought to Justice target was also blamed for encouraging police to give out cautions rather than take criminals to court.

According to government officials, there were 236,000 cautions issued last year.

For drug offences, 40 per cent of all people punished received a caution.

This fell to 30 per cent of those convicted of violence, 12 per cent of burglars and  2 per cent of robbers.

The Ministry of Justice said: ‘Out-of-court disposals fell in every offence group and by 10.3 per cent overall (in the year to June 2011).

‘This continues the decline since 2007 which coincided with the replacement in April 2008 of a target to increase offences brought to justice, with one placing more emphasis on bringing serious crime to justice.’

Officials added the number of cautions given out fell by almost 10 per cent last year, though in part this was due to fewer crimes being committed.

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You can refuse most fixed penalties by using refusal for cause correctly within 72 hours of receiving the offer of a contract. They use your tacit compliance to lock you into a contract. Refuse for cause, without dishonour, without recourse and depending on what it is maybe add without prejudice.

It’s better to fine people on the spot for petty crime then to take to court and waste alot of taxpayers money,overall the system saves us money and saves police time and it works,I think labour got it right with this.

Once you realize that all of these rules, regulations, orders, directives and statutes are simply devices by which to part you from your cash – and that a quick ‘Penalty’ charge is an efficient way to do it, you may then begin to figure out their rationale. You will be further surprised to learn that Police ‘Forces’ are privately owned Companies that are Registered on Dun Bradstreet and trade for ‘Profit’. You don’t have to partake in their little game unless you want to. To learn more about how this deceit and trickery is enacted I suggest you take a look at ‘Yourstrawman.com’ This could turn out to be the best Xmas present you’ve ever had.

The DM has been trawling for ANYTHING to discredit Labour, this is their latest, well if the Fixed Penalty System is such a failure then the Conservatives will rush to change it wont they?…..Dream on !

What was it that Blair the war criminal said? Oh yes,”Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime.”
Is there anything that Labour got right?

Only half of the fixed penalties remain unpaid? I’m amazed, given the number of unpaid fines not pursued by the authorities for people actually sentenced in court, that any of these fixed penalties are paid. I can only assume that the people paying the fixed penalties are normal law abiding members of the public contravening, for example, parking regulations. How many criminals simply give false names and addresses? Silly question, as no attempt is made to follow up the unpaid fixed penalties, the authorities would have no idea.

Few have mentioned the last line of the article – fewer offences being committed.
Fixed penalties are part of an overall starategy to attack criminal behaviour which is working.
People don’t “benefit form them” they get a fine. As for Drunks not waking up in a cell – of course they do. A person who is Drunk and disorderly will be arrested and given the ticket when they sober up.
The shoplifting offences – tickets are only given on one occasion and when the goods are recovered.
Cautions are used for minor offences and to divert offenders from criminality.

Without more jails and the political will to see criminal trash behind bars we are all doomed!

That of course must mean, that the prison population has come down, and that less people are being taken to court, suprise surprise, the prison population has gone up, and more people are being taken to court, so where exactly are they getting their 1.2 million more criminals, oh of course, the legal industry just keep tightening laws to create more criminals, eventyally their will be only two types of people in the uk, those in the legal industry, and criminals.

I would dearly love to hear of a petty thief getting a fixed penalty for swiping a politician’s years worth of paper receipts for money spent BEFORE they have managed to fill in their expenses claim form.

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