Campaign seeks to recruit 4,000 lay magistrates in England and Wales

Largest recruitment effort in 650-year history of magistracy comes amid 372,000 backlog of cases in magistrates courts Adults in England and Wales are being encouraged to apply online via "a revised, streamlined recruitment process" to become a lay magistrate, in an effort to tackle a backlog of criminal cases caused by the pandemic. A week after announcing plans to double the maximum sentence that magistrates can pass to a year, Dominic Raab, the justice secretary, said the judiciary would recr...