The Ministry of Justice is looking to recruit 2,000 extra magistrates by March to help reduce the court backlog and allow victims to get swifter access to justice.
To coincide with International Volunteer Day (5 December), the department is calling for more volunteers to come forward, including civil servants.
To find out more, CSW spoke to Athos Ritsperis, a project delivery adviser with the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority – part of HM Treasury – who has been a magistrate since 2010.
Athos Ritsperis
Why did you decide to volunteer as a magistrate?
I started off my career in the military and as part of that I served on a court martial board, where I enjoyed the intellectual rigour and the challenge of making evidence-based decisions. So I always had that in the back of my mind. Then later on in my career I met somebody who was ex-military and serving as a magistrate, who told me about the role. I didn't realise that things such as magistrates existed; I thought it was just a professional judiciary. At the time it wasn't possible to serve as a magistrate if you were still in the services, so pretty much the first thing that I did when I retired from the military was to go online, find out a little bit more about the magistracy, and put my application in. I was delighted when I heard that I got in.
What were you doing at the time that you applied?
I took a six-month break between leaving the services and starting my next job, which was as a civil servant. I joined the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory and was pleasantly surprised to discover that a senior colleague was going through the process for selection as a magistrate at the same time. And actually, we were both accepted at the same time.
What are the hours like and how do you fit it in with your day job and other activities?
The minimum sitting requirement is 26 sittings a year. A sitting is half a day, but actually courts prefer you one to sit in single-day blocks, so it's 13 days a year effectively, roughly one day a month. There is some training – when you start off, two or three days, and then further training that happens periodically. But courts also do sit on Saturdays as well, so that's a good way of picking up your sittings if you’ve got a very busy day job. And many employees, including the civil service, will give you special paid leave in order to do that. Within my current department, the Treasury, 10 days of public duties are offered as standard, so that's the bulk of the 13 days covered.
Do you get any financial support to do the role?
You don't get any remuneration from being a magistrate. There's an allowance. But I have never claimed it from my time as a magistrate – and I know a few of my colleagues don't do that – because I see it as part of my civic duty. But if you are required to travel and stay overnight, then you can claim your accommodation. And although you are normally allocated to a local court, occasionally there are requirements for support all around the country. Some of my colleagues who are either retired or on reduced hours actively look for these opportunities because they like travelling. So there is scope to do that. But generally the principle is that justice should be local, so you would be allocated to a court that's near you, so that you can understand the challenges in the local community and reflect that when you're making your judgments.
What’s the best thing about being a magistrate?
It’s giving something back. I know that might sound trite but being in the military, I’ve moved around a fair bit, so I never really felt that I had a permanent base and was able to get established in the local community. Being a magistrate allows you to do that. The other thing is: I enjoy it. The fact that you are listening to two accounts – two possible versions of the truth – and then using an evidence-based structure to make a decision, and using your judgement to say which version is more credible. And the fact that you do it as a panel of three I think is really powerful because we all have blind spots. So when you're in open court, it's a bench of three, but the presiding justice leads proceedings and is the only one who speaks. But when you retire, everybody has an equal voice and you strive for consensus. If you can't reach consensus, then it's the absolute majority.
As a presiding justice, which is my role, the skill is knowing how long to let the conversation run so that everybody has sufficient opportunity to put across their point of view but it doesn't detract from the business of the court, because normally the courts are very busy. So these are all really useful, transferable skills, I think. It’s also one of those roles where no two days are the same, because of the variety of the cases that you see and also the people who you sit with. It's quite rare to sit with the same person more than once because in my justice area there are over 100 magistrates, so generally you're always sitting with new people. That's good because you're making new relationships and of course every magistrate has got a back story, every magistrate has a day job. And so it's really interesting to see the variety of people who are attracted to the magistracy.
Why are civil servants a good fit for the role?
I would say that everybody should consider becoming a magistrate. I don't think we're very good at publicising the role or the fact that there is a need. There's no professional qualifications required. You don't need to have a legal background at all. You just need to be over 18, plus you need to have no criminal record. What you’re being selected on is your ability to think logically and methodically. That's what's tested during the selection interview. You're not expected to know anything about the law. You're given some scenarios and you're asked, how would you make a decision based on those? What's your methodology? What's your approach? And so common sense I think is the most important requirement.
So absolutely any civil servant will fulfil that criteria, but it goes beyond the civil service. I think the majority of the members of the public would be suitable candidates for it. I think one advantage of being in the civil service is that it actively supports people who are engaged in public duty activities. You will get special paid leave in order to do that. And it should reflect positively in your annual appraisals because it demonstrates that you're contributing more widely to society than just in your current role.