Public spaces are increasingly policed by unaccountable officials bearing open-ended powers. On-the-spot fines mean that police and other officials can punish people for a series of offences ‘on-the-spot’, without legal checks and balances. Criminal offences that would have been tried in court are now often dealt with like a parking ticket.
The result has been arbitrary punishments for perfectly innocent activities. A woman was fined for feeding the ducks, as was a man who dropped a £10 note. One Women’s Institute group received threats of fines for putting up a poster and handing out leaflets, while others have been fined for putting up lost cat posters.
See our report: Pavement Injustice: the Rise of On-the-spot fines
With householders again shut up in their homes, and public services stretched by Covid cases, you would have thought that councils would have been focusing on the essential. Far from it. Over the past few months, we have received a number of…
For several years, the Manifesto Club has raised concerns about the practice of local authorities employing private security guards to issue litter fines on their behalf. These private security companies are in general paid per fine: they receive between 50% to 100%…
For several years, the Manifesto Club has campaigned against the practice of private companies being paid on commission to issue fines on behalf of public authorities. Normally, the arrangement is that the company receives 50-100% of the fines income. Unsurprisingly, private litter wardens have engaged in corrupt practices, including fining people for non-offences or trivial acts, fining people for litter dropped by accident, and tailing or following people. Our report ‘The Corruption of Punishment‘ – in association with Panorama – found that fines by the private litter police had topped 140,000 a year. Still worse, private companies were moving into the policing…
On 15 May, Panorama’s programme Inside the Litter Police exposed the shady and dubious dealings of the private litter police, who are paid per fine issued. These included: evidence that these wardens are paid a bonus according to volume of fines, and this bonus can reach £1000 a month; evidence that wardens pretend to call the police; images of wardens saying they will hand out fines ‘like Smarties’. These practices have been suspected for some years, but this is the first definitive video evidence, and so is very significant. One might have thought that councils would be shocked by the programme and reconsider their contracts with the…
There are several long-standing and recent campaigns against the private litter police exposed on Panorama on 15 May. Here are some petitions below, highlighting the abusive practices in different areas. Read and share, or start your own. ‘Stop the partnership between Kingdom and Ealing Council now‘ – a new petition to Ealing Council by Ealing Litter Prevention Team: In light of the BBC Panorama programme aired Monday 15th May 2017, which has illustrated the clear failings of Kingdom and their questionable working practices, we are calling on Ealing Council to drop their partnership with the company. Whilst we agree that action must…
For several years, the Manifesto Club has raised the alarm about the practice of private companies being paid on commission to issue litter fines for local authorities. It is our view that punishment should never be associated with a financial incentive; private companies should never be paid per fine. When this happens, it is inevitable that miscarriages of justice will occur. It is inevitable that these wardens will not seek to punish the worst offences, in the public interest; instead they seek to issue as many tickets as possible. Even if there are no offences, they still must issue tickets, without which they will not get paid. The result…
The Manifesto Club has collected new statistics showing the continuing rise of litter fines issued by private companies. The primary company is Kingdom Security Ltd, which purchased the litter fines operation from XFor Ltd, and according to our FOI responses now works in…
Another council – Gravesham Borough Council, in Kent – will contract a private company for the issuing of litter fines. The Manifesto Club argues that the issuing of fines by private companies on commission can gravely distort the operations of justice and law enforcement (see our report The Corruption of Punishment). There are several salient points in Gravesham Borough Council’s report about the contract: – There have only been 9 litter fines issued by council and police officers in 2014. This is likely to go up to two or three thousand once the company is contracted. – These private officers being employed…
Parents are organising against the increasing habit of fining families who take their kids on holiday in term-time. Fines for truancy have grown astronomically – from 3,483 in 2004-5, to 32,641 in 2011-12, to the record 52,370 in 2012-13. In many councils the majority of these fines are issued to holidaying families (two thirds of the total in Kent, for example). Prosecutions for truancy have also grown, reaching 8000 in 2012-13. One couple recently received criminal records for taking their kids on holiday to Australia. It is likely that fines in the 2013-14 school year will be greater still, after a regulatory…
I have just received a letter from an elderly gentleman in Glasgow, who was fined earlier this year while in the process of drying a bench. He has arthritis and wanted to sit down; he had one handkerchief but the bench was still wet, so he left the tissue for a minute to go to a cafe opposite to get some more tissues and finish the job. Yet no sooner had he stepped away from his bench, he was approached by a warden who slapped him with a fine for littering. He explained that he hadn’t left the tissue, he was only…
Is feeding the birds now a crime in the UK? Judging from the number of recent cases involving crust-scattering pensioners, you would have to conclude, yes. A woman in Blaenau Gwent was fined £125 for throwing a piece of bread roll for the birds out of her car window. In another recent case, a Devon woman was fined for ‘littering peanuts while feeding pigeons’. The Blaenau Gwent fine was issued by private security guards, paid on a commission basis, with a propensity to fine for negligible offences. (This is the company that issued a fine for a thread of cotton falling off…
The Ofsted chief has said that schools should have the power to fine parents who don’t read to their children, or who miss school events. This is the latest extension of on-spot fines, which are increasingly seen as the sole form of persuasion or sanction, and the answer to every social problem. The fine is the one way in which a school can communicate with parents, apparently. A school – an institution which is supposed to have a shared interest with parents in the education of their children – increasingly exerts authority through the use of coercive, pecuniary penalties. There are also…