Under the current Law in England and Wales as it stands, in one single year the Courts sent 1,202 people to jail for non-payment. The average sentence was 32 days at a cost of imprisonment of over £100 per day with some Magistrates imprisoning people for three months.
It has been reported in the Independent newspaper - ‘Courts jail civil debtors unlawfully’
that:-
“the bench jailed for nine days a young mother who owed £22 – she was freed two days later on the orders of a High Court judge… A 74 year old in a residential home was arrested by police at the council home and taken before magistrates who sent him to jail… Justices sent… a mother of four, to jail for 28 days. Her 21-year-old son, physically and mentally disabled, is dependent on her care…”
“The High Court has said that Magistrates' powers to jail are to enforce payment, not to punish, and that they should only be used as a last resort. “Despite this stream of recent authorities, Magistrates are continuing to make the same errors and continue in increasing numbers to punish the vulnerable,”
“One of the main reasons is that Council Tax… defaulters have fewer rights than criminals. There is no Legal Aid - meaning the poor and often those with learning disabilities have to represent themselves at hearings they do not understand; there is no requirement for pre-sentence reports so Magistrates are often unaware of the full impact of their penalty; there are no "public interest" considerations which in criminal cases allow for decisions not to prosecute, for example, the elderly; and there is no appeal - apart from judicial review.”
“Ian Wise, a barrister…who has taken hundreds of such cases to the High Court, said:
“The time has come . . . to put an end to this appalling catalogue of injustice.”… “Every day in the local paper you can read of criminal cases where people convicted of taking and driving away, assault, credit card fraud and criminal damage are being placed on probation – yet people with little or no income who try but fail to pay their local tax are going to prison.”
Please sign and share the E-petition to Change the Law @
https://submissions.epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/57160/signature/new
to Stop being put in Jail for not being able to afford to pay Council Tax.
it's the low income workers who are most likely to be unable to pay, you know, the ones usually doing long unsociable hours or working 2 jobs to make ends meet. When do you propose they do this gardening, at 4am after work? It also doesn't help that they have such stupid payment options, e.g. can only split it over 10 months not 12, and can't choose the payment date so it comes out after payday...
