Criminal Justice System: Autism

Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede Excerpts

Thursday 22nd January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend on securing this important debate. I will not be talking about the case of Faruk Ali, although I have read the material available on the internet. I propose to talk in more general terms about dealing with autistic people in the criminal justice system. It is indeed a large and difficult subject, and I shall talk about the courts system in particular, of which I have some experience.

In preparing for this debate, I have seen that a lot of guiding material is available published by the House of Lords Library regarding dealing with people with autism. There was a recent article in the Magistrates’ Association magazine about dealing with autistic people in a court setting. If one googles the issue, as I did, there are a lot of comment pieces about the appropriateness of different procedures within the criminal justice system as a whole.

A very important context for today’s debate is the rollout of Liaison and Diversion by the Government to those with mental capacity issues. My understanding is that the objective is that this will be fully rolled out within England and Wales by next year. Liaison and Diversion is where a mental health practitioner is available to the court, so that a hearing may be adjourned for an initial assessment to be done on the spot as to the mental capacity of either victims or the defendant. This has been at the instigation of leadership from my noble friend Lord Bradley and I understand that it has led to a measurable drop in such cases being brought to court in the pilot schemes operating to date.

I want to talk about my own experience as a London magistrate, where I have dealt with defendants who are autistic. I will not go into the details of the case I have in mind; suffice to say that I believe that the court system coped well with the challenges of the trial, in the sense that all the individual elements of dealing with this difficult situation were met. Nevertheless, by the end of the process the autistic defendant was bemused —he did not understand what had happened—and his family felt that they had not been treated fairly.

So what were the elements in place? First, the young man was charged with a sexual assault, so special measures were in place to protect the victim from the attention of the young man or his family. Secondly, an appropriate adult sat with the young man at all times when the case was being conducted. An intermediary was not believed to be required because the young man claimed he had no memory of the incident of which he was accused. We had an expert witness who gave lengthy evidence, having interviewed the young man, and was cross-examined. That was really the burden of the defence case. As the presiding magistrate, I could see that witness support was giving very active support to the family of the young man who was accused. We took regular breaks, as asked for by the defence lawyer; that would be good practice in such cases in any event. Legal aid was available but would not be for this level of charge for most defendants. Incidentally, that was one of the sources of delay.

We convicted the defendant of the sexual assault. As I said, he looked bemused as if he did not understand what had happened. The family made it very plain that they were unhappy with the result. We had no doubt that we had properly convicted the young man. After the trial, I discussed with my colleagues and the court staff what could have been done better. All the individual requirements had been complied with, after all, so what was the problem? It was the delay in the whole process. It had taken a year from the initial incident to when the trial took place. All the people completing their individual elements as part of the process no doubt believed that they had done their job but it added up to a long delay.

It was made plain to the court by the expert witness that delay disproportionately affects people with autism, because they are very likely to have worse memories than other people. This problem was not overcome and was, I believe, the source of the discontent of the young man’s family. We were never going to make them happy with the result but we could at least have made them feel that their son had had a fair trial. I am afraid that I do not think they believed that. My point to the Minister is very simple: all these elements are good and complex but they have to be done quickly, otherwise their benefit gets dissipated and people do not feel that they have had a fair trial.

I will close on one separate, short point regarding Liaison and Diversion. It is on the need to scrutinise whether these diverted cases are properly being diverted. As the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, will know, there are various pilot schemes in the country and various methods among police forces of recording the way that police forces divert cases. From a courts perspective, it is very important to have a realistic record of those diversions when they come to sentence people who have committed subsequent offences. We have this issue in the youth court, where we do not know which diversions have been done properly. It is potentially the case that we will also have this issue in the adult court if there is not proper recordkeeping of diversions for people with mental capacity issues.