Sign my Avaaz petition if you believe fare evasion should not be a criminal offence

[rliu]

Not always, magistrates' courts will usually bend over backwards to accommodate an unrepresented defendant, especially one who isn't still drunk and abusive.

It's easy for the typical person who isn't aware of how the law works to go off on unrelated tangents and not offer the relevant arguments. The best analogy I have is it's like writing an academic essay without quoting references and addressing the topic.
If the need to argue coherently in front of the magistrates isn't daunting enough for most people, there's also the carrot that early guilty pleas attract up to a third off the fine imposed.This again attracts most accused into just taking the 'easy hit' and pleading guilty.
However I agree any criminal prosecution should be treated seriously and considered worth defending, if not for the reputational implications then for the impact a criminal record for 5 years can have on someone's employment prospects.

 

[shouldbeinbed]

It's easy for the typical person who isn't aware of how the law works to go off on unrelated tangents and not offer the relevant arguments.
.

what about typical people that do know how the law and the court system works and have taken issue or picked up on something you have put?

 

[StuartG]

Sometimes the jobsworths are impossible to deal with. [I bought a ticket from York: £90 single, then the return Apex train was cancelled so my return ticket was magically transferred to the next available train even though it was only valid on the cancelled train, oh the irony... eventually got my money back from Customer Services but it took over a year].

Bitter, me? ... 4 or more years later? No, not at all....

Dreadful. There is never any use arguing with jobworths. It just makes a bad situation worse. You did the right thing by paying and appealing to management. They didn't do well but the point is - and it is a very strong point against the proposition of the OP - you eventually got your money back. You were not prosecuted, you have no criminal record.

In other words jobworths, lost purses etc etc are no justification for the decriminalisation of fare dodging - something you were clearly not doing.

 

[shouldbeinbed]

like ^ lots.

the purse issue is a red herring. The course of action the lady took was one option not the only option.

 

[Dan B]

Dreadful. There is never any use arguing with jobworths. It just makes a bad situation worse. You did the right thing by paying and appealing to management. They didn't do well but the point is - and it is a very strong point against the proposition of the OP - you eventually got your money back.

It really isn't a very strong point. That works if you're sufficiently well-off to be able to splash out £90 unexpectedly, but there are families on low incomes who have to budget that kind of expenditure. And it really doesn't sound like the inspector in @Archie_tect's story would have been swayed by stories of financial hardship

My own experience of penalty fares is being refused exit at Liverpool St one day because I'd fumbled my oyster swipe before getting on the train at Tottenham Hale and was too sleep-deprived to notice it didn't beep. I'm sure that at least one of the posters on this thread will be desperate now to tell me that wasn't what happened at all and I was intentionally trying to defraud the railway company of £3.60, and I can only say "you're absolutely right, it's a fair cop, you should know after all because you weren't there and I was'

 

[StuartG]

It really isn't a very strong point. That works if you're sufficiently well-off to be able to splash out £90 unexpectedly, but there are families on low incomes who have to budget that kind of expenditure. And it really doesn't sound like the inspector in @Archie_tect's story would have been swayed by stories of financial hardship

If you can't pay then you give your name and address. The issue here is a problem with an errant member of staff. Whether they are swayed or not doesn't matter in the long run. He/she CANNOT PROSECUTE YOU. It has to be passed up the line. And there are many steps where someone will say "don't be silly" and throw it out. Even if it got to Magistrates Court (and I note the OP has not risen to the challenge of how often non fare dodgers have got that far) the beak (who will have probably mislaid a ticket sometime in their life) will laugh them out of court.

Penalty fares is another red herring. The OP is not on about that but the decriminalisation of fare dodging. That is of bad people who will have proven to have refused to pay and/or have no intent of paying being sent to court. Do we really want to send this message to them?

 

[Dan B]

If you can't pay then you give your name and address

In the case being described it sounds more like if he couldn't have paid he'd have been put off the train at Grantham.

 

[StuartG]

In the case being described it sounds more like if he couldn't have paid he'd have been put off the train at Grantham.

If so the either or both someone there would have sorted the problem or the railway company would have probably subsequently made offered some compensation. After all they want repeat customers who pay (as opposed to the one's who don't and are therefore a cost). But that is speculation either way. So lets put that aside.

People screw up. We have to live with that. I doubt that guard is still customer facing if sufficient people wrote in to rightly complain there was both no/wrong announcement and station departure board was wrong/out of order (which was it?). Many times I've been at stations when chaos reigns and train departures are all over the place. A quick word usually confirms they are happy to waive the "designated train" restriction. If not you wait.

But this has precisely nothing to do with the decriminalisation of fare dodging. So why are you pressing (forgive me for saying) non-point?

 

[Dan B]

But this has precisely nothing to do with the decriminalisation of fare dodging. So why are you pressing (forgive me for saying) non-point?

Mostly, I think, because I fear that the criminal justice system is far more likely to say "don't be silly" and throw out the case in circumstances where the defendant is white, middle class, reasonably well off and able to articulate themselves in court than otherwise. Reg pretty much nailed it upthread when he used the dread words "attitude test".

 

[rliu]

(and I note the OP has not risen to the challenge of how often non fare dodgers have got that far) the beak (who will have probably mislaid a ticket sometime in their life) will laugh them out of court.

Stuart - I really don't think anyone in the world has that stat just like no one has a stat for wrongful convictions for any crime. Who do you believe when someone complains they were wrongfully convicted? Likewise in court the magistrates are likely to trust the statement of a railway revenue inspector over the statement of an accused, the inspector has his/her notebook which are seen to be more reliable than the recollections of the accused, and is also seen to have no personal stake in the conviction. This presumption is not always reliable in my opinion because a few years back some train companies were paying their revenue inspectors commission for penalty fares http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukn...tors-getting-commission-on-penalty-fares.html
I'm led to think I wouldn't be surprised if there were also targets or bonuses for numbers sent for prosecution

Also importantly, no one has taken the effort to actually read the notes out there for the case of Corbyn, http://swarb.co.uk/corbyn-v-saunders-1978/
The quote there makes it clear to prove intent to avoid the fare the train company only needs to prove non payment of fare before travelling . So if the company doesn't prosecute you for having an invalid ticket because you said you will pay at your destination, they're doing you a favour and can easily prosecute successfully.

This means a court of appeal judgment it has binding effect on all lower courts, so if the prosecutor raises it the magistrate can sympathise with you all they like but you will 99% of the time be convicted.

This judgment also precedes the era where a central database of criminal records were kept, so Lord Woolf wouldn't have foreseen the impact his ruling would have 30 years later, whn a conviction for fare evasion stays with someone for 5 years.

 

[spen666]

The legal and social elite liked to use french and Latin to differentiate themselves and exhibit their expensive education throughout English history, so I'm not the one that needs a history lesson.

Now the real mask slips

 

[rliu]

I know comprehension isn't exactly your strong point... but that isn't what the Court determined in Corbyn v Saunders, and even the excerpt you refer to doesn't say that (it's a quote about intent). Corbyn v Saunders is actually a case revolving around someone who did buy ticket - but who deliberately bought a ticket for only part of the journey and who clearly had no intent to pay for the full journey (hence the discussion around intent in the Court of Appeal decision).

Well I know the Latin terminology will just draw more ire from spens666, but I suggest you look up the concepts of stare decisis and ratio decidendi. And I suggest you stay away from any more ad hominem.

 

[Cubist]

Well I know the Latin terminology will just draw more ire from spens666, but I suggest you look up the concepts of stare decisis and ratio decidendi. And I suggest you stay away from any more ad hominem.

 

[rliu]

But hey I made the petition so I will be prepared to explain as much as possible. The decisions of higher courts are binding on lower ones, and the pecking order of the criminal courts goes from top to bottom in the order of Supreme Court (House of Lords prior to 2009) - Court of Appeal - Crown Court - Magistrates Court.
Criminal acts consist of the actus reus (guilty act) and mens rea (guilty mind), both elements must be present. Some people may presume then that a statement of 'I didn't intend to do it' will be sufficient to get them off a prosecution, but of course the courts are much wiser than that and have countered that in most crimes by offering a very broad intepretation of what intent to commit a crime is.
A decision from a judge (there are usually several when an appeal has gone to Court of Appeal or Supreme Court) is usually lengthy and discusses in detail their interpretation of a piece of statute drawing on previous, similar cases; the writings of legal academics; and also hypothetically analogous scenarios. The comments which are not directly related to the case discussed is termed obiter dictum, and the comments which are the core of the judgment is termed ratio decidendi. So User, if you are under the presumption that Corbyn is only binding on scenarios which are a carbon copy of the facts in that case, that is not the case. Lord Woolf was offering a general interpretation of what intent means in s5 of the Regulation of the Railways Act, and so intent to avoid payment means passing up an opportunity to pay the correct fare before the start of the journey.
As Lord Woolf did not offer any mitigating circumstances in that judgment, such as the ticket machines weren't working or the queues were too long or the train timetables got disrupted, the Regulation of the Railways Act is weighted hugely in favour of the prosecutor. I speculate the reason for that is one of public policy (the judgment is from the days of the state owned British Rail), secondly the judges annoyance and dislike of the appellant (he was caught short-faring several times), and thirdly as I said, criminal records were not logged on a national database in the 70s so aside from the financial hit of the fine, a fare evasion conviction didn't have a big impact on someone's life.
I have tried to be concise but often you can't in legal discussions, this is why it takes a 3 year undegraduate course, 2 years professional training and many years of sitting in court to become a decent barrister, and why they can charge £500-1000 an hour.
As I have discussed, because of the cost of appealing a conviction for a train fare, hardly anyone has appealed a fare evasion case up to a high level court again to get the judges to offer more clarification or further rulings on fare evasion. So this is why my petition calls on Parliament to legislate again to not give people criminal records in a scenario where the tools for them to defend themselves are prohibitively expensive. As I have said, by all means fine people for not having a ticket, but don't give them the stigma of a criminal record.
As for that City manager who had to pay Southeastern 43k, makes me think about how you can count the number of financiers prosecuted in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis on one hand, whereas TfL prosecuted over 20,000 people successfully for fare dodging on buses in 2008 (https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/fare_evasion_on_london_buses). It makes me think have we got our priorities right as a society.

 

[shouldbeinbed]

One does have to wonder whether the OP has perhaps been caught fare-dodging and this thread is simply the OP refusing to accept responsibility for their own actions... It reads like a fairly poor attempt at post hoc rationalisation and guilt assuagement.

that is exactly what I've thought all along but am trying to avoid too many heated discussions with the zealous nowadays on the internet.
They also seem to have read interpretations of how the judicial system works at the 'lower levels' they are rather disparaging of judicial skill and management of but don't seem to have experienced much of how the people sitting on the bench are there with the experience, overriding objective and god like powers in that room to ensure that the mechanisms of justice are attended to impartially and fairly whatever level or none of legal representation the sides employ.