Yesterday evening, the government instituted a little-known procedure called the Additional Courts Protocol. Set up following the 2011 London riots, this involves emergency ad hoc magistrates’ courts sitting 24 hours a day to deal swiftly with the troublemakers.
This was the right decision. But it still may come back to bite the people who made it.
It’s not difficult to see the advantages. Quick justice, bypassing the usual bureaucracy and reducing the scope for suggestions that witnesses’ memory may have faded, may well give offenders a salutary shock: the prospect of it can concentrate minds in future.
It also must be admitted that in the present case, invoking the Protocol has big upsides for a government whose senior ministers’ reaction has so far been seen as pretty wooden.
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