A report by MPs encourages greater diversity among magistrate applicants
to decide whom the comic novelist P.G. Wodehouse most enjoyed mocking: cops or magistrates. Bertie Wooster, the buffoonish aristocrat whose japes he charted, seems forever to be pinching policemen’s helmets, then being rapped across the knuckles by a beak for the cheek of it. These volunteer do-gooders are interfering “asses” who revel in passing down unduly punitive sentences. They are, writes Wodehouse, “the lowest form of pond life.
Many of its recommendations are sensible. It suggests a national recruitment campaign to plug the shortfall and encourage greater diversity among applicants. The current pool broadly reflects the country’s gender and racial make-up, but is overwhelmingly elderly and middle-class. The average magistrate is 59. Only 4% are younger than 40. The committee wants a kitemark scheme to recognise employers who give their staff time off to volunteer in court.
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