---

Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

I can understand deeply why the magistrates are saying that. It is trivialising the whole thing to be talking lightly in this way about the threshold and to be talking about community sentences and suspended prison sentences. It shocks me deeply and I hope that it shocks other people. To be sentenced to prison is a major event in most people’s lives. If that sentence is suspended, it is perhaps a great relief, but its meaning remains ““sentenced to prison””. For Parliament to be asked to do away with probably one of the most valuable tools at present available to magistrates seems really foolish to me. The Government are making an enormous mistake, which will affect the public locally. When they see it happening, it will enormously trivialise the difference between the two sentences. I really hope that the Government will think again about this.