Our vision
Keeping local justice
This paper shows why we should keep local justice areas and how removing them would impact the justice system.
Keeping local justice: Why we need to keep local justice areas.
This paper looks at the abolition of Local Justice Areas (LJA’s). LJA’s help to decide which cases Magistrates' Courts deal with. It discusses how the current LJA’s work, the arguments put forwards in favour of the change by the government and finally some issues with the reform.
Quick summary
- Local justice areas ensure that Magistrates’ Courts deal with cases in their local area. These are spread across England and Wales.
- The UK government plans to abolish these areas in the Judicial Review and Courts Bill. These plans should be opposed.
- We must make it easier and simpler for cases to be transferred to different local justice areas if it is requested by those involved in the case.
- We should also create a new funding program for local justice areas that are struggling to meet the case demand in their area.
Authors
Torrin Wilkins
Director and Founder
Torrin founded Centre in 2020. In the role has written numerous papers including one backed by the Gaps in Support APPG which contained 260 MPs. He has also written policies for political parties and appeared on a wide range of media including TV and radio. He has a Political Studies degree from Aberystwyth University.
Coverage
Protecting local justice
"Summarising his research for Centre Think Tank, Torrin Wilkins lays out how the government can protect local justice to ensure that crimes are handled in their local area".