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11 Crim. L.F. 1 (2000)

handle is hein.journals/crimlfm11 and id is 1 raw text is: B. FITZPATRICK, P. SEAGO, C. WALKER and D. WALL*

NEW COURTS MANAGEMENT AND THE
PROFESSIONALISATION OF SUMMARY JUSTICE
IN ENGLAND AND WALES
The changing environment of political administration in England and
Wales has generated a new ethos of management that has become widely
known as the new public management. This ethos is marked by: its
functional separation of administration from policy; an emphasis upon
the holy trinity of economy, efficiency and effectiveness; the desire to
satisfy consumer needs; the measurement and audit of performance;
the comparison of performance between different service-deliverers; inter-
agency working; and the involvement of the private sector.1 This ethos is
shaping the development of the courts in England and Wales as we enter
the twenty-first century.
This paper will explore the impacts of the agenda of new public
management upon criminal courts policy and will focus upon the magis-
trates' courts in England and Wales. Not only do these summary courts
handle over 95 per cent, the vast majority, of the criminal proceedings in
England and Wales,2 but they have also been the site of many of the most
dramatic changes in the criminal legal process in recent years. It shall be
argued in this article that new public management, or new court manage-
ment as it shall subsequently be labelled, seeks to effect a considerable
impact upon the structure of the courts. However, it shall also be suggested
that the overall impact of new court management has been considerably
tempered by the persistence of the old court ideologies, as embodied in
* B. Fitzpatrick, Centre for Criminal Justice, University of Leeds, B.A., 1991, Uni-
versity of Cambridge, P. Seago, Centre for Criminal Justice, University of Leeds, LL.M.,
1968, University of Nottingham, C. Walker, Centre for Criminal Justice, University of
Leeds, Ph.D., 1982, University of Manchester, and D. Wall, Centre for Criminal Justice,
University of Leeds, Ph.D., 1999, University of Leeds.
1 See for general accounts: D. Osborne and T. Gaebler, Reinventing Government
(1992); J. Stewart and K. Walsh, Change in the management of public services, 70 Public
Administration 499 (1992); S. Zifcaf, New Managerialism (1994); R.A.W. Rhodes, Under-
standing Governance: policy networks, governance, reflexivity and accountability (1997);
M. Smith, The Core Executive in Britain (1999).
2 Criminal Statistics for England and Wales 1997 123 (1998).
hi. Criminal Law Forum 11: 1-22, 2000.
© 2000 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

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