Summary Offences in United Kingdom

Definition of Summary Offences

Offences of a more minor nature which are usually tried in the magistrates’ court.

History

Summary trials

Justices of the peace may under many statutes convict in a summary manner (without the intervention of a jury) for offences of minor importance. The procedure for punishing summary offences is before two justices, or a stipendiary magistrate. This proceeding must not be confused with the preliminary inquiry already mentioned before justices for an indictable offence, nor with the procedure before justices in relation to civil matters, such as the recovery of small sums of money. The proceeding begins either by the issue of a warrant for the arrest of the person charged, in which case a sworn information must be filed, or by a summons directing the person charged to appear on a certain day to answer the complaint made by the prosecutor.

Procedure for summary offences

The justices hear the case in open court; the person charged can make his defence either in person or by his solicitor or counsel, he can cross-examine the witnesses for the prosecution, call his own witnesses, and address the justices in his defence. The justices, after hearing the case, either acquit or convict him, and in case of conviction award the sentence. If the sentence is a fine, and the fine is not paid, the person convicted is liable to be imprisoned for the term fixed by the justices, not exceeding a scale fixed by an act of 1879, the maximum of which is one month. The imprisonment may be with or without hard labour.

Of late years this summary jurisdiction of the justices has received very large extensions, and many offences which were 461 formerly prosecuted as serious offences by an indictment before the court of assize or quarter sessions have, where the offence was a trivial one, been made punishable, on summary proceedings before justices, by a small fine or a short term of imprisonment.

The extension of the jurisdiction of the justices is open to the observation that it deprives a person charged of the protection of a jury, and also that it throws upon him, if convicted, and upon the prosecution if there is no conviction, the cost of the proceedings. The former objection is much mitigated by the enactment made in 1879, that a person if liable on conviction to be sentenced to imprisonment for more than three months, or to a fine exceeding £100, can claim to be tried by a jury. But the objection as to the costs remains, and the payment of costs is often a very serious addition to the trivial fine; and it is anomalous that a person convicted of a trifling offence should bear the cost of the prosecution, while if he is convicted before a superior tribunal of the most serious offence he does not pay the costs.

Source: Encyclopedia Britannica (1911)