Six-month jail terms are being slashed to six weeks and 28-day sentences are being waived by prison governors desperate to ease record levels of overcrowding, The Times has learnt.

Judges and magistrates are infuriated that sentences passed in courts are being unilaterally cut by governors using early release schemes and prison regulations. The growing concern on the bench is that the actions of prison governors will undermine public faith in the criminal justice system.

The Times was present at Inner London Crown Court last week when a judge jailed a woman for six months but said she was likely to be free in six weeks. Sentencing the Nigerian for false passport offences, Judge Lindsay Burn said: “The practical effect under sentencing policy, as applied by prison governors, is that she could expect to be released after serving six weeks.”

There is evidence of governors freeing short-term prisoners before they have served any time at all. Essex magistrates say they were told by a governor at their AGM last month that he turned away offenders sentenced to 28 days. One magistrate quoted the governor as saying: “Serco will telephone me and say they have a short-term prisoner in the van … and I will just tell them not to even bring them to prison, let them go.”

Another magistrate claimed that quirks in the penal system can lead to an offender sentenced on a Friday to 42 days being freed immediately.

Writing on a legal blog, the magistrate warned: “Don’t give anyone 42 days on a Friday.” The writer said the sentence was automatically cut in half to 21 days, then 18 days were subtracted for early release, leaving a sentence of three days. Because prisons do not release inmates at weekends the offender was set free immediately with a resettlement grant.

Prison governors, who have called for the abolition of all sentences of less than one year, are struggling to manage a prison population that hit a record high of 84,711 on Friday.

They have discretion to release people early on licence or with electronic tags if they have served a minimum of seven days, but governors can also draw on prison regulations about temporary release. These rules allow inmates to be released to undertake courses, engage in work or “assist in maintaining family ties or transition from prison life to freedom”.

Legal sources said they believe that these regulations were being exploited to release short-term prisoners without them serving any time. Representatives of the judiciary and the magistracy have raised the situation with ministers amid fears that early releases are undermining public confidence in the courts and criminal justice.

“There is concern among judges that at the time of sentence the judge is in no position to know exactly how long the individual is likely to serve in custody,” Judge David Swift, chairman of the Council of her Majesty’s Circuit Judges’ criminal committee, said. “The judiciary has been expressing this concern for some considerable time.”

John Thornhill, chairman of the Magistrates’ Association, said that his members were very frustrated at the attitude and behaviour of prison governors. “There is a debate to be had about the value of short sentences,” he said. “But whilst short-term custodial sentences are still part of statute they are a proper sentence and it is the responsibility of governors to apply the sentence imposed by the court.”

Mr Thornhill added that contradictions in sentencing practices were rife and that magistrates had asked Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, to address the problem. He added: “The system is quite fractured at the moment, there are just so many anomalies.” The problem is worst in the South East, where court caseloads and prison populations are mounting.

A spokesman for the Ministry of Justice said that sentencing was a matter for the courts, but added that ministers were committed to ending early release on licence “as soon as there is sufficient capacity in the prison estate to do so”.

Early release with electronic tags was, the ministry said, governed by strict eligibility criteria. The spokesman added: “Governors do not have discretion over a prisoner’s eligibility, but over whether they pass a risk assessment of whether they are suitable. Prisoners on both schemes are liable to be returned to prison if they breach their conditions.”

Source : The Times

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A woman who is seeking half her husband’s £400million fortune in a divorce settlement lost her battle against eviction yesterday and was told to get used to being poor.

Michelle Young, 45, must move out of her townhouse in Regent’s Park within six weeks or face being forcibly removed by bailiffs.

She had argued that being evicted from the property would cause her and her two daughters ‘exceptional hardship’.

But lawyer Felix Geiringer, representing her landlords, turned on the former model, telling her that if she wanted the court to believe her divorce fight had left her penniless, she should start claiming benefits and find a council house.

Mr Geiringer told Mrs Young it was time for her to face the reality of her situation.

‘The fact that she continues to wish to live in an £8,666-a-month house, to school her children in an expensive school, to come to court dressed in very fine clothes – the fact that she makes these choices does not bring her within the realm of exceptional hardship,’ he said.

‘Nobody in this country needs to be homeless. If she’s being evicted then the local council has an obligation to provide her with housing. She has access to benefits, her children can be schooled for free. The fact is that she is not seeking benefits that are available to her.’

Mrs Young is at the centre of one of Britain’s most high-value divorces, and is seeking a £200million settlement from her estranged husband, tycoon Scot Young.

Mr Young, a one-time ‘fixer’ to the super-rich, claims that the credit crunch destroyed his property empire and left him with debts of £27million. He has not paid Mrs Young any maintenance for almost a year, and their daughters’ £9,000-a-term school fees have gone unpaid since April, the court heard.

Mrs Young claims he has also failed to pay almost £24,000 in rent on the home she shares with the girls, who are aged 17 and 15.

She insists he has hidden his fortune in offshore bank accounts and secret property deals to avoid a court order to hand over half his assets.

Mrs Young has called for her husband to be jailed if he cannot explain how he lost his fortune, and her lawyers have asked for him to hear ‘the clang of the prison gate’.

But she has been unable to stop her landlords, Peter and Charlotte Bolland, from seeking her eviction.

Yesterday’s hearing at the Central London County Court laid bare the extent of her riches-to-rags saga.

Her lawyer Claire van Overdijk told the court: ‘In order to be able to survive and support her two daughters… she has sold all her jewellery now and has no assets worth selling to her name.’

Mrs van Overdijk said Mrs Young owed solicitors‘ fees of £120,000, and said her daughters’ unpaid school fees now totalled £36,000.

She added: ‘Mrs Young’s funds are effectively zero. At this moment in time she has no funds to her name.’

But Mr Geiringer said Mrs Young’s case was no worse than that of any other evictee who had come before the judge in these difficult economic times.

He told the court: ‘On a cold-hearted, rational assessment of her own evidence, the defendant is failing to come to terms with a change in her personal circumstances.

‘One can be sympathetic to that, and can accept that she is having a very hard time, but in my submission that does not reach the level of exceptional hardship.

‘The circumstances the defendant finds herself in are not more difficult than the average person facing eviction.

‘Everybody who is evicted from their residence has difficulties associated with that eviction.’

District Judge Michael Gilchrist gave Mrs Young a six-week stay of execution to find a new house, but awarded her landlords a possession order for November 25.

She appeared close to tears as she left the court, and she later issued an emotional statement in which she said she was ‘utterly distraught’.

It said: ‘My husband, Scot Young, has totally abandoned his responsibilities to his young daughters, and his failure to provide a safe and secure home for them is causing exceptional emotional torment.

‘He appears to have no concern for the welfare of his girls, let alone me.

‘He and those who aid him should be ashamed. He is clearly trying to destroy me and break our resolve to fight for what is rightfully ours.

‘Allowing his family to end up on the street is a despicable act and people will start to see what sort of a man he is.’

Mr Young has told friends that he will prove he has genuinely lost his fortune, and is now unable to pay his wife the £48,000-a-month maintenance she is seeking.

Family Court judge Mrs Justice Parker has warned Mr Young that he will face a six-month jail term if he cannot account for his losses at the next hearing, on November 13.

Source : Daily Mail

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Denton Wilde Sapte has launched its second redundancy round this year, with 29 support and secretarial positions at risk.

The top 50 firm announced the redundancy consultation yesterday with the bulk of the cuts expected to affect the London office, with the rest in Milton Keynes.

Twenty secretaries and nine support staff are included in the consultation.

In London, support staff working in departments including accounts, facilities, litigation support and marketing are at risk of redundancy, as are secretaries in departments including real estate, energy, infrastructure, disputes and employment and pensions.

The Milton Keynes cuts are expected to affect accounts and IT support staff as well as secretarial staff in the construction team. No fee earners will be affected.

A previous redundancy consultation resulted in 76 staff leaving the firm – including 37 fee earners.

Chief executive Howard Morris told Legal Week: “This is not something that we wanted to do, but we can now see the way the year is shaping up and even though we shall be on budget for the year, or above, we will have sufficient capacity to meet any increase in activity levels.

Source :Legal Week

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One of America’s biggest law firms is defying the turmoil in the commercial legal market with plans to build a London office of more than 200 lawyers within three years.

Greenberg Traurig, the tenth biggest law firm in the United States, with 1,800 lawyers and revenue of $1.2 billion (£754 million), has hired Paul Maher, a highly regarded dealmaker who was formerly vice-chairman of Mayer Brown, another big American firm, to build a City office.

Mr Maher, 50, born into a working-class family in North London, rose to become one of London’s top mergers and acquisitions lawyers and a senior executive at Mayer Brown, where he earnt more than £1 million a year. He left the firm in April after he was passed over for the role of chairman.

He had planned to set up his own firm in London, holding talks with private equity investors about funding his start-up costs, but he decided to join Greenberg Traurig instead after he was persuaded that its senior partners’ global ambitions fitted with his own.

Since July, Mr Maher has recruited 30 lawyers, some from Mayer Brown and some from White & Case. He expects to have 50 by the end of the year and said that the London unit would need to recruit 200 lawyers within three years to reach “critical mass”. That would make it one of the five biggest offices for an American law firm in London.

Lawyers at rival firms said that the move was a huge gamble at a time when others were cutting back in London and profits were plummeting.

Mr Maher told The Times that he had been given a broad remit to expand and planned to turn the traditional City law firm model “on its head”.

In a rare move, Greenberg’s American partners allowed Mr Maher to put his name above the door, calling its London office Greenberg Traurig Maher (GTM).

Its lawyers will be paid depending on performance rather than seniority, with a smaller ratio of junior fee earners to partners — some City firms employ as many as seven associates for every senior lawyer — and increased use of flexible working.

“We’re taking every aspect of a law firm and turning it on its head,” he said. “Do we even need offices in the City? Could we have everyone working from home, or should we put them all in Luton? I don’t just want photocopiers with views of the Thames.”

Mr Maher also hinted that GTM would become one of the first City law firms to float when new rules allowing external investment in law firms come into force in 2012.

He said that the traditional law firm business model had been rendered obsolete by the downturn and the “golden age” of City firms was over.

The Times

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Baroness Scotland of Asthal, the Attorney-General, has been placed under investigation after she admitted that she had employed an illegal migrant. Britain’s most senior law officer sacked Loloahi Tapui after the 27-year-old Tongan was revealed by the Daily Mail to have overstayed her student visa.

Lady Scotland insists that she did not knowingly employ an illegal immigrant, but questions remain over what action she took to ensure that Ms Tapui was allowed to work in Britain. The Attorney-General failed to clarify yesterday what checks she had carried out on her former housekeeper.

A spokesman for the UK Border Agency said the agency “will conduct this investigation as they would any other investigation into allegations of illegal working.” Lady Scotland faces a civil penalty of up to £10,000 if found guilty. Gordon Brown said that the Attorney-General had apologised to him for what she claimed was an “inadvertent mistake”. “I think people will want to wait to see the results of the investigation . . . before they pass judgment,” he said.

Opposition leaders, however, tried to increase the pressure on Lady Scotland by demanding to know what documents she had seen and whether she had retained copies, as is required by law.

Chris Grayling, the Shadow Home Secretary, said: “This is a Government that says all small employers should be prosecuted if they do not know the immigration status of their employees and yet we have senior ministers who cannot be bothered to make the checks themselves. There is a real ‘one rule for them, one rule for us’ attitude.”

Lady Scotland’s office said that Ms Tapui had been dismissed after her immigration status became known. “Baroness Scotland has never knowingly employed an illegal immigrant,” it said. “She hired Ms Tapui in good faith and saw documents which led her to believe that Ms Tapui was entitled to work in this country.”

Ms Tapui had overstayed her student visa by three years and had been refused a renewal twice, it was reported last night. The Home Office also received two tip-offs that she was living in the UK illegally. She married Alexander Zivancevic, a solicitor, in a Church of England ceremony in London in May 2007, and went on to use her marriage certificate as proof that she was living and working in the UK legally.

Source : The Times

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