The Court System of England and Wales
The most common type of law court in England and Wales is the magistrates' court. There are 700 magistrates' courts and about 30,000 magistrates.
More serious criminal cases then go to the Crown Court, which has 90 branches in different towns and cities. Civil cases (for example, divorce) are dealt with in County courts.
Appeals are heard by higher courts. For example, appeals from magistrates' courts are heard in the Crown Court. The highest court of appeal in England and Wales is the House of Lords. (Scotland has its own High Court in Edinburgh, which hears all appeals from Scottish courts.) Certain cases may be referred to the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg. In addition, individuals have made the British Government change its practices as a result of petitions to the European Court.of Human Rights.
The legal system also includes juvenile courts (which deal with offenders under seventeen) and coroners' courts (which investigate violent, sudden or unnatural deaths). There are administrative tribunals which make quick, cheap and fair decisions with much less formality. Tribunals deal with professional standards, disputes between individuals, and disputes between individuals and government departments (for example, over taxation).
Murder
The abolition of capital punishment in England in November 1965 was welcomed by most people with humane and progressive ideas. To them it seemed a departure from feudalism, from the cruel pre-Christian spirit of revenge: an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.
Many of these people think differently now. Three unarmed policemen have been killed in London by bandits who shot them down in cold blood. This crime has drawn attention to the fact that since the abolition of capital punishment crime - and especially murder - has been on increase throughout Britain. Today, therefore, public opinion in Britain has changed. People who before, also in Parliament, stated that capital punishment was not a deterrent to murder - because have always been murders in all countries with or without the law of execution - now feel that killing the assassin is the lesser of two evils. Capital punishment, they think, may not be the ideal answer, but it is better than nothing, especially when, as in England, a sentence of "lifelong" imprisonment (a life sentence, as it is called) only lasts eight or nine years.
All this is very controversial. And all the arguments for and against can be proved in practice. The problem remains - the problem of how to prevent murders. Some murders are committed by criminals evading arrest, by insane or mentally disturbed people, by cold-blooded sadists completely devoid of all human feelings. The important thing in the prevention of murder is to eliminate as far as possible the weapons and instruments, the guns and knives, with which these crimes are committed, and futhermore to stop the dangerous influence of violence in books, films, television and other mass media, from which so many criminals derive their "inspiration".
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