'Blind Knight'

On reading last weeks column 'From the Courts' in Salient I was disturbed by Les Knight's first article where he felt the respective Magistrate Courtrooms 1,2, and 3 catered for different social classes. I take point with this and everything else Mr. Knight has to say.

Rooms 2 and S are not predominantly occupied by traffic cases, and it is utter rubbish that the more 'socially acceptable' offences are heard in these courtrooms. If Mr. Knight had taken care with his observations he might have noted that he least socially acceptable crime of all is usually heard in Room 2 in its preliminary stages: murder.

With regard to Mr. Knight's belief that the stmosphere is less tense in Rooms 2 and S because of 'less social condemnation', I suggest to him that it is not and that he ought to sit in on a murder or assult hearing in Room 2 instead of traffic offences. If the atmosphere appears to be a little less tense on occasions it is because the rooms are smaller than Room I and thus a much smaller public is present.

Most ludicrous of all is Mr. Knight's summation that the defendants in Rooms 2 and 3 are more expensively dressed and more articulate — did it occur to Mr. Knight that the majority of cases in 2 and 3 are defended hearings and the defendents are generally dressed in the same mode there as the defendants in Room 1, with a few exceptions? He concludes that a different class of people' are tried in different courts!!

I recommend Mr. Knight to familiarise himself more closely with the Court process before he criticises it.

Greg Milicich.