Criminal Law And Lay People: The Criminal Court And Lay People

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The Criminal Court and Lay People
The Criminal court deals with different types of criminal jurisdictions and offences dealt with within the courts and also the appeals routes of each criminal structure. They also evaluate the efficiency of the current Criminal structure. The roles and powers Lay Magistrates have on the Criminal court while explaining the selection roles of Juries also giving evaluation of the use of Lay people within the Criminal justice system. There are three different types of offences which are dealt with in the Criminal Courts, summary offences which are the least serious offences and are normally dealt with in the Magistrate Courts. These are offences such as common assault and most driving offences. The 2ndtype of offence …show more content…

Also, indictable offences which are tried in the Crown for trail conviction and preliminary hearing in the Magistrate court. Lay Magistrates try 97% of all criminal cases and deal with hearings in 3% of the cases. To be on a Jury you must be at aged between 18-70, registered to vote and a resident for at least 5 yearsin the UK. There are disqualifications such as anyone currently on bail or those not eligible to vote. There are advantages and disadvantages of using lay people in the criminal justice system. The advantages would be they represent a cross section of society, cost a very cheap way of delivering justiceand some of the disadvantages would be prosecution bias and cases hardened believe the police too …show more content…

(2007) The English legal system. 5th edn. London: Hodder Education Accessed 10/11/15
The Supreme Court, Role of the Supreme Court, Available at: https://www.supremecourt.uk/about/role-of-the-supreme-court.html Accessed Online

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