Title: Civic Duty

While I normally try to keep my editorials more or less related to programming I am going to break with that this time. What I am going to write about is directly relevant to those that are self-employed or work under the umbrella of their own company. It is also relevant to small companies and employees of some large companies that have an ungenerous employment policy. Many members of ACCU fit into one of those categories.

Earlier this year I was called up for jury duty. This meant that I had to make myself available for a minimum period of ten working days. In my case these days spanned three working weeks. In effect that meant that I was unavailable to accept a week's work presenting C/C++ training any time during the first three weeks of June. Of course I could ask for my spell of duty to be postponed but any time would have the same negative impact on my capacity to earn my living. Before I go any further let me make it absolutely clear that I am fully in support of the jury system as it is organised in the UK, it is the consequences to individuals and their employers that I think need to be addressed.

For those that do not know the current compensation to the individual is a maximum of £50 per day including travel expenses, sustenance and loss of earnings. This goes up to £100 for days beyond the first ten. If the court anticipates that a case will take more than ten days the Judge may exempt jurors for whom this may be 'inconvenient'. I placed that in quotes because jury service is hardly ever convenient though it is one of those things that good citizens are expected to contribute to their community.

As you can be called for jury service at a Crown Court, travel can be substantial. At least one of my fellow jurors had to travel from Reading (to Oxford) each day. A day return ticket (you cannot get a week return because you do not know how long and exactly when you will be needed) travelling at peak times is not cheap and substantially eats into that £50 maximum.

If you are unemployed jury service may actually prove to your financial advantage. If you are among the very low paid (near the minimum rate) and do not do much overtime you probably will not be too much out of pocket but what about the rest? Take the owner of a small shop who is a client of mine. His business does not justify employing an assistant. If he were called for jury duty he would have to employ a temporary manager (someone who could work unsupervised not just an ordinary shop hand) with sufficient knowledge of the specialist stock or close the shop. Neither of those options is financially viable. Of course he closes the shop when he goes on holiday but that is timed off-season (like mid-January).

In general being called for jury duty if you are employed means either a financial penalty to you or to your employers if the elect to make up you salary. Some employers elect to deduct jury service from your annual holiday allowance (well from their perspective why shouldn't they - your not doing any productive work for them). For a small company losing a key employee (one with specialist skills) can be very detrimental. How do such companies cope with holidays? Well one way is for the whole company to close for a holiday period. Another solution is being able to recall critical employees from holiday.

Over the last few years patterns of employment have changed, increasingly people are self-employed or employees of small businesses. We need a system that can fairly distribute the load and ensure that doing your civic duty, or supporting and employee do such is not seriously detrimental to those people. Remember that almost anyone who is a registered voter is liable to jury service every two years. There are some exemptions but very few. In fact many people go through their entire lives without being summoned for jury duty.

Let me suggest a much fairer mechanism for compensation (note that this is purely financial and the inconvenience is something I believe we should contribute to our communities). I suggest that when someone is summoned for jury service they have an option of receiving a certificate of service that can be used by them as a tax credit. The unemployed and low paid can continue to claim for direct financial loss but all others can submit their certificate in part payment of their tax. The value of the certificate being related to their annual income and the number of days for which they were unable to earn. Your tax return will indicate what you average earnings are. I realise that some fine detail would need to be added but I am confident that such a system would be much fairer than the one we have. The burden of financing the jury system would be shifted to the community as a whole. Individuals, or their employers, could still seek deferment of duty when necessary.

At this stage, many of you will decide to do nothing because we have enough problems to tackle without dealing with ones that may never happen to us. However I hope enough will recognise the negative lottery that constitutes our current system.

As it happened one of the cases I was required to act as juror on was a rather unpleasant one concerning a father accused of raping his two daughters on a regular basis over a number of years. Even in my mature years it caused me loss of sleep. I am unhappy knowing that one of my fellow jurors was only twenty. I think certain types of case should have a minimum age for jurors of twenty-five.

Finally, none of the cases that I picked up concerned technical/scientific evidence however I am becoming increasingly uneasy about such evidence being assessed by a randomly selected jury. I suggest that where there is a substantial element of technical/scientific evidence we need a specialist technical jury that is solely responsible for assessing the quality of that evidence. Ordinary juries are supposed to determine facts, judges determine law but we are being unreasonable in expecting ordinary members of the public to assess specialist technical evidence.

If you feel changes need to be made, contact your MP or write to the Lord Chancellor.