You are wrong here, and this is where the article is wrong. They have called out-of-court settlements "Fines". The issue of follow-up prosecutions for uncollected settlement offers is completely separate. The article attempts to be lumping SJP prosecutions in with agreed and paid out of court settlement.
I put 'fines' in '' marks, because technically speaking a fine is something imposed by a court.
However, in everyday language people say they are 'fined' for overstaying car parking in a private car park, or for a penalty fare, or whatever.
While the language used is imprecise, it's entirely unambiguous:
New figures show a train operator has made more than half a million pounds worth of out of court settlements for fare evasions in the last four years. Some of the fines that have been paid – and can’t now be overturned – should never have been pursued.
A Freedom of Information request by The Lead to Northern rail has revealed almost 6,000 out of court settlements made by the government-run rail operator for fare evasion charges between 2020 and November 2024, totalling over £560,000.
This is clear that they are referring to the 'settlements' as 'fines', which is what most people consider these letters to be, and in plain English they are (even if not in a strict legal sense).
Plainly also, the article is
not 'abysmal' as you put it, because it contains 1500 words addressing an issue that they have identified on the basis of their own research - namely that Northern made 6000 settlements averaging £94 each. This is good reporting, not abysmal, and the misuse of one word out of 1500 doesn't change that fact.
Your argument is that "many of the 6000 settlements would have been validly obtained, without making illegal threats", however, I'm not sure sure that you have any evidence that is the case, and in any case it does clearly say that this is "some". "Some" is obviously a number between 0 and 6,000, and you seem to be of the opinion that "if you don't do your job properly and make threats to people that aren't valid in law, then that's all well and good because well probably most of them were validly obtained!?"
We specifically know that Northern issue Penalty Fares, which are a statutory civil
alternative to criminal prosecution, however they wrongly prosecuted people following appeals against those PFs.
It's therefore reasonable to assume that many people were wrongly extorted by Northern, and this is of much greater consequence than the fact that many of the 6000 people are probably "bang to rights": these are "miscarriages of justice" in the sense that they involved false threats of the criminal justice system and are therefore weighty - not as weighty as the actual convictions, but more weighty than the essentially trivial matter of Northern getting a few hundred grand from the "bang to rights" group.
Agree. Unfortunately an intimate knowledge of railway law is not core to the courts system. There isn't even a sentencing guide for the Byelaw Offences. This is what happens when you defund the legal system.
?
There is a general guideline
www.sentencingcouncil.org.uk
There is also one for RoRA
www.sentencingcouncil.org.uk
The Sentencing Council don't create guidelines for fun, but where there is a need, e.g., because of inconsistent sentencing.
RoRA needs the guideline because it's a 19th century offence with a possible prison sentence in statute whereas in reality it is similar to other minor offences where a fine is usual.
The Byelaws have a maximum sentence of a fine, so there's no need for a guideline.
In addition, it's not clear that it's about the intimate knowledge of railway law, but specifically a-la-Post-office, a risk associated with private prosecutors. Legal staff at TOCs were legally incompetent, and prosecuted people wrongly. While it's true that the courts did not identify this issue, which followed a change in the law to introduce SJP, which was intended to make it cheaper and easier for TOCs to prosecute, the two main issues would be the over-aggressive TOCs, and the inherent trust that's likely to arise in any given system between key players: if Joe Public privately prosecutes someone, the court is going to be suspicious of them and question their behaviour, because Joe Public is not a part of the system, and is not a trusted insider.
In this case, bulk private prosecutors such as TOCs have high trust within the justice system because otherwise the system doesn't work. It is just unfortunate that they breached the trust placed within them and harmed the credibility of the justice system as a whole.
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