This is why granting legal aid saves money
Yesterday I represented a man accused of criminal damage. I collected the papers from the prosecutor but when I went through them I thought I must have been missing something. He was accused of causing just £40 worth of damage to a piece of plastic on a car, he had no previous convictions and had spent 10-days in prison thus far. Given that on conviction he was likely to receive a fine in the region of £100 plus costs and £40 compensation for the repair I was pretty surprised that he had been remanded for so long. When I spoke to him it emerged that he was technically homeless, which in the minds of many magistrates seems to equate with untrustworthy and thus inclined to skip bail. It also turned out that he hadn't received any legal advice prior to speaking with me, nor had he seen the papers in his case and was thus mostly unaware of the accusation against him. Yesterday's hearing was the third listing as the Prison Service failed to produced him for the last h...