Judges In The Dock (C4)

Who wouldn't want a six-figure salary and a job for life? What's more, no one can tell you off if you keep getting things wrong.

All that can be yours if you sit as a judge. And it's likely to stay that way because, despite Government plans for overhauling the judicial system, there are no proposals to make judges responsible for their actions.

Unlike, say, doctors, their work isn't subject to scrutiny and discipline.

Reporter Mark Easton decided to take the law into his own hands and investigate. What he found, as he checked to see if our judges are any good, didn't make comfortable viewing.

Most judges, he concluded, are good at their job. They make the odd mistake (who doesn't?) and the Court of Appeal rectifies them by changing the sentence. But a small number seem to make one error after another, either being too tough or too soft.

None of the judges he named as prime offenders were willing to talk to him on camera. Several sent notes explaining why they wouldn't. This was a pity but not wholly unexpected as they strike you as people who consider themselves above the law, probably because they are the law.

Unable to consult public documents listing judges who keep getting it wrong, Easton decided to trawl through the records of cases heard by the 600 Crown Court judges over the past seven years. If a verdict was altered by the Appeal Court that counted as the original judge getting it wrong.

The worst offender cropped up 56 times in this research. Appeal judges called his handling of just one case "inadequate, inappropriate, dangerous, irrelevant, positively misleading, inaccurate and incomplete".

It hardly inspires confidence in people who make decisions on other people's lives. No Crown Court judge has ever been removed for incompetence, and only one has been sacked,after getting caught smuggling whisky.

Easton's call for a system of public appraisal didn't seem unreasonable, although someone took the view that it was fine to criticise judges but not strike at their independence by making them subject to public scrutiny.

Try telling that to the 76-old woman who was jailed for nine months for handling, after police found items stolen by her son in her house. Nineteen days later, the Court of Appeal freed her. The same judge was also responsible for freeing a drug dealer, showing a lack of consistency in his decision-making.

Appeal court judges alter sentences with comments such as "so lenient it should never have been contemplated" or "unnecessary and wrong" - after much time and expense has been spent on the appeal.

Reports of judges who fall asleep during cases or show ignorance about current pop stars may be good for a laugh. But it doesn't seem so funny if you're in court facing them.