Jury service expenses are ridiculous

Jeez…don’t wish that upon yourself. If you’re called to the High Court you could
be there for weeks. My friend was there for over six weeks on a case involving a ring of paedophiles and she felt traumatised by the end of the trial.
The first time I was called for JS the dates clashed with a surgical admission and I was excused. The second time I was called was about 15 years later and had to attend at the Sheriff Court. I had to listen to tales of machete yielding delinquents having prearranged fights in their local park and of underage teenage girls drinking Buckfast wine in squats with older men and causing havoc in the neighbourhood.
Meanwhile all my daywork was accumulating awaiting my return.

It is mad what they 'offer'. It is meant to be the criminals that get punished, not the jury.

I know someone who managed to not do it due to being a night shift worker for several years, so would likely fall asleep during the trial.

Why do you think we need juries?

Personally I’m very opposed to them. The fact that I as a tax payer have to pay jury service costs, usually just to have individuals wait around for days on end, plays a part. It’s inefficient.

I’d like to see a much leaner court system, 1-3 judges. That way some cases actually have a chance of not being constantly postponed with everyone’s time wasted, inc witnesses, lawyers, victims and police officers. It’s you and me that pay the costs of this, but it’s much more horrific if you’re a victim of a serious crime waiting for justice for 1-2 years

🤬 £640 maximum for 2 weeks , half a month. Very small % will serve more than 10 days, to get to higher rate.

you are being very blasé with others peoples loss of earnings on low wages. Stating its “not that much” loss if your only on min wage is best ignorant of what it means to be struggling on min wage, or is just click bait derision and contempt.

frankly shame on you.

On the jury service I did, one man was a self-employed garage mechanic. Our case was supposed to last two weeks but ended up lasting about four or five. He was so worried, as his clients had booked their cars in and he couldn't do them. He knew that they would go elsewhere and might never return to him.The irony was, he barely spoke English and hadn't a clue what was going on in court. When it came to us deciding he just said: I will agree with whatever you all say as I couldn't understand.

Total waste of his time while jeopardising his career.

OP, defer. Just say that you are self-employed and have no one to delegate your work to or care for your children during that period.

The system totally sucks.

What happens if you’re so traumatised by DA that you hate men. So if the defendant is male, you’d vote guilty regardless?

I got called up. My employer said I'd have to take it as unpaid leave and as the expenses were less than my earnings, it left me short that month.

Every day we were shown into a waiting room. I sat there for about 4 hours and then they said I could go home. I never actually sat on a jury. It was the most boring fortnight that I've ever had.

I'm still livid that I lost out financially and wasn't actually needed.

jury service is 10 days unless you’re selected onto long case. Many jurors only serve for less than that, some jurors will sit around for days and never be chosen to get into a court to actual ply serve on a jury. Mostly they’ll be sent home each day at around 11-12am when courts know they’ve got the jury filled for cases that day.

Hence the overwhelming number of people only get the £64 rate or the lower rate. If you are asked to come late or dismissed early in day while you are actually on a jury, you get the half day allowance irrespective of fact that most people whose employer isn’t paying your salary can’t just pop in and out of work for half days and get pay.

for a significant amount of people 10 days taking home £640 ish or less will tip them into debt. Nice one, uk government

yep you get food allowance, but as I said in earlier post it cost more than 50% of daily allowance for a cup of tea and you can’t bring in your own thermos, or tea bag. The contract caterers are raking it in. The only free tea is when locked in deliberation in deliberation room, and even then we had to push for more than 2 cups in a day.

Well yes, but there are way more people who are employees than self employed.

Also, what self employed get is on the Gov.UK website too. (Hint; it's the same as 'employees' get.)

HTH.

www.gov.uk/jury-service/what-you-can-claim-if-youre-self-employed

If you read my post above - and click on the link, you will see that you can claim for food and travel costs separately. And after 10 days, the amount you get (for lost income) doubles... If it's less than 10 days, well, you're not losing that much income anyway then.

Making jury service more difficult will coincide with starting to withdraw it.

Not compensating you enough for childcare surely could be seen as discriminatory? There must be loads of parents like you.

That’s for employees. Presumably different for self-employed people.

I was just thinking that isn’t even the minimum wage!

OK, I have just looked at this - as I was puzzled about how and why the money you get is so low.

Seems after 10 days you get more... £129 a day, plus travel and parking costs...

I mean, that is still only just a bit more than minimum wage for many, but it's more than the £64 a day being talked about here. It's double...

https://www.gov.uk/jury-service/what-you-can-claim-if-youre-an-employee

What you can claim if you’re an employee

You will not be paid for doing jury service, but you can claim some money back if your earnings are affected. For each day you’re at court, you can usually claim:
Up to £64.95 to help cover your loss of earnings and the cost of any care or childcare outside of your usual arrangements

For the first 10 days of jury service, you can claim up to:
£64.95 a day if you spend more than 4 hours at court
£32.47 a day if you spend 4 hours or less at court

If your jury service lasts longer than 10 working days, the amount you can claim increases. You’ll be able to claim up to:
£129.91 a day if you spend more than 4 hours at court
£64.95 a day if you spend 4 hours or less at court

The cost of travel to and from court
You’ll be told how to claim expenses after your jury service has ended.

Taking time off work
Give a copy of your jury summons to your employer.

Your employer must let you have time off work, but can ask you to delay your jury service if your absence will have a serious effect on their business.

Problems with your employer
If you’re not allowed to take time off work for jury service, you can complain to an employment tribunal.

If you’re sacked because you do jury service you may be able to claim unfair dismissal.

Getting paid during jury service
Your employer can choose whether or not to pay you during your service.
If they do not pay you, you can claim for loss of earnings from the court.

If you get benefits or financial support
Show your jury summons to your benefit office or work coach as soon as you get it.
You’ll continue to get financial support and benefits (such as Universal Credit) for the first 8 weeks. After that, the court will give you a loss of earnings form to give to your benefit office or work coach.

How you travel to court The court will pay
Bus or underground
Cost of the ticket
Train
Cost of the ticket (standard class return fare)
Bicycle
9.6p per mile
Motorcycle
31.4p per mile
Car
31.4p per mile - check if the court will pay for parking
Car - for one other juror as a passenger
4.2p per mile
Car - for each additional passenger
3.2p per mile
Taxi
The fare - ask the court for permission before using a taxi

Food and drink
How much you can claim depends on how many hours you spend in court each day.
Time spent each day The court will pay up to
Up to and including 10 hours a day
£5.71 per day
Over 10 hours a day
£12.17 per day

I know. My friend has been summoned twice but had to get excused both times due to being a carer for a disabled relative. I've never been summoned but I'd actually like to do it.

Small point, cos everything else is valid. If you have to come by car cos public transport is not variable, they WILL pay parking…blurb you get form court seems to say otherwise (I think to pressure people not to drive) but they do pay.
pin fact car allowance was only generous allowance,it fully covered my car journey and parking paid seperately.

hey ho, small point though

Let me reassure ..we had 18 your old, still living at home, on our jury. She was a valuable contributor. She said the whole thing was very positive for her in terms of her development (even though we all found bits a bit harrowing). Her education in state school had set her up to listen carefully, recall clearly , and ask curious questions of the jury which helped prompt discussion.
yes she took a bit of encouragement for her to voice her opinions, but so did some of others and they were much older with a lot of life experience.

It is shocking the expenses , I had to fight tooth and nail to be excused a few years ago I suffer with MH (ptsd) not long been out of a MH unit also don’t have faith in the justice system due to my own experience of them (cause of my PTSD)

Have you served on a jury? Genuine question.

my one positive takeaway from my 3 weeks service 18 months ago (see my previous post on sheer frustrations) was the attitude and approach by all the jurors.

it is a common misconception that the jurors need knowledge of law and therefore “spent years training on the law and are experts on it, hearing evidence and deciding if the law has been broken” would produce a better, quicker judgement. That is simply not the jurors job. That’s judges job to explain the law, it’s the CPS barrister and his their terms job is to present evidence of the crime, and defences to present evidence on why the defendant hasn’t broken the law. The jurors job is simple: which evidence do we believe is the truth. That’s it. What We agree is the truth is the verdict of guiltily or not guilty. Jurors are never asked to make decisions on the law itself. In fact it’s outside of a jurors role. There is a full briefing document giving the details of the law and what very spepcifc things you are be asked to decide. The judge constantly steers the jury on matters of the law, and the barristers for that matter 😳

all the jurors on my case were taking that seriously. They listened to copius instructions from judge on matters of law. They diligently read 3 ring binders of written evidence which we waded through verbally line by line in court. They took deligent notes on evidence to remind themselves later what they’d heard. We as a group discussed many times when one of us was not clear on a point of evidence, or had missed something others heard, or where we interpreted something said differently. We helped each other resolve it or sent questions to judge (which you can do). We deliberated in a very disciplined way listening to each jurors points in turn before even discussing the verdict. We treated each other and the defendants and witnesses with respect

it was a bloody refreshing reminder, frankly, that most people care, they want to do a good job, and as humans we are mostly smart enough to listen and understand no matter our age, education etc. yes, people have different personalities on a jury and sure some of them I’d not wanted to work with in “real “ life or hang out with, but we were all mature and tolerant enough to deal with it, respect each other and mostly respect the law, court (even if we did get all pissed off with time wasting and lack of reimbursement ) I honestly don’t believe that was exceptional, I’ve talked to many people who’ve said same thing.

Your analogy that “If you have a medical problem you don’t have a group of people representative of the population deciding what is wrong with you. ”, is a false one…the jurors are not there to decide what the disease is and the prognosis , they’re there to assesss which side of defence and prosecution truth telling. Validating the story. Just the same as why I as asked to attend every appoint my exh had with psychiatrist for his severe and enduring mental health issues, for 15 years, because the doctor wanted to hear both his patients perspective and the only other observer of the symptoms during the 6 months between appointment. That allowed psychiatrist to determined where truth lay. I didn’t need to be a psychiatrist myself to do that.

you are also not taking into account unconscious bias. We all have it. Even judges. Magistrates (hence why people have right to be heard by their peers in court) Police, barristers, solicitors, CPS . And even the sort of people who’d be willing to train as professional jurors . A jury is randomly selected. Literally 3 seperate machine random generators to actually get onto jury- the last one whilst you are standing in court down to last 15 selected to get to final 12. That way it is best protection for accused to avoid a prevalent unconscious bias of those listen to evidence and determine the truth. With all the training in the world a professional jury would not ever rid themselves of the risk of a prevalent unconscious bias.

it sure aint perfect. Miscarriages will occur, especially in cases of rape for instance, where the idea of professional jurors has often been touted and perhaps the strongest case exists. But that has never been touted on basis of a professional juror knowing more about the law on rape! It has been touted to counter the sadly prevalent unconscious and conscious bias in jurors (and general population) about believing rape victims and a huge tendency for jurors to victim blame etc.

apologies if you have served, and your experience was different in that you found your fellow jurors a bunch of bozzo idiots or prejudice ignoramuses. For me it was the one light in whole process that as hums we want the best for each other generally, want fairness, and are pretty intelligent

But that is FAR too sensible, and too good an idea, and would make peoples lives easier......

They're never gonna do that! 😆🙃

I'm not sure of your system, but I've been excused twice, and used childcare reasons.

One instance was this year. I'd have had to take unpaid leave from work on days I'm called, still keep on top of my workload, DH would have had to stuff his hours around & possibly take leave as well. Plus I'd have to pay for parking.

No thanks.

I’m not convinced they should be representative of the population though.

My friend’s son who recently turned 18 has been called up for JS. He gets top grades at sixth form but has not yet moved out of home and spends his free time in his room watching shit like Andrew Tate and Charlie Kirk on Youtube. Even she as his mum is worried about him sitting on a jury.

Haven’t read all the thread but check whether your buildings and contents insurer will pay out. It’s a while since I did mine and I can’t remember the insurer but my employer wouldn’t pay my salary and the insurer paid the difference between the JS reimbursed rate and my take home salary.

Yes it's ridiculous. Think this £64 a day figure is right now. Funny, about thirty plus years ago when I had to go, it was around £120 a day ?!

But why does a jury need to be representative of the population? (Other than that is the basis of them.) If you have a medical problem you don’t have a group of people representative of the population deciding what is wrong with you. You have trained experts, who are more intelligent than average and have spent years learning about the problem you have. Why couldn’t we have professional juries, who have spent years training on the law and are experts on it, hearing evidence and deciding if the law has been broken? Why is a group made up of people who largely know nothing of the law better??? I genuinely don’t understand.