Dates of important JCIO meetings in August 2021 where records of the meeting are available
Dear Judicial Conduct Investigations Office,
As advised by Laura Walters at the JCIO, I have 'refined the scope' of my previous request (she says '. You could, for example, request the JCIO meeting information from a specific month such as December 2021') This is to ensure fulfilling the FOI Request doesn't exceed the £600 limit.
I would like to know the dates and record of decisions taken at IMPORTANT JCIO meetings in August 2021. I have a source whose identity will remain confidential.
It's curious there is this frenzy of 'important' meetings (I originally specified I only wanted dates and records of 'important' meetings) when - in 2018 - you had no dates or records of 2 sets of meetings that made the most crucial changes to things you could and could not complain in a judge's behaviour in the JCIO's history. Glad to see you are no longer failing in your responsibility to maintain efficient record-keeping.
Yours faithfully,
Dudley Jones
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Good afternoon,
Please find attached a response to you FOI request.
With regards,
Laura Walters
Judicial Conduct Investigations Office
81-82 Queens Building
Royal Courts of Justice
WC2A 2LL
[1][IMG] [2][IMG] [3][IMG] [4][IMG]
Please note: In accordance with Section 139 of the Constitutional Reform
Act 2005, information about judicial disciplinary cases which relates to
an identified or identifiable individual is confidential and must not be
disclosed without lawful authority. This does not apply to formal action
taken at the conclusion of the disciplinary process, which is published on
the JCIO’s website as per the Lord Chief Justices and Lord Chancellors’
publication policy. Personal data is protected under the UK General Data
Protection Regulation and the Data Protection Act 2018.
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OLoughlin, Anthony (JCIO) would like to recall the message, "FOI response".
Good afternoon,
Please find attached a response to your FOI request.
With regards,
Laura Walters
Judicial Conduct Investigations Office
81-82 Queens Building
Royal Courts of Justice
WC2A 2LL
020 7071 5688
[1][IMG] [2][IMG] [3][IMG] [4][IMG]
Please note: In accordance with Section 139 of the Constitutional Reform
Act 2005, information about judicial disciplinary cases which relates to
an identified or identifiable individual is confidential and must not be
disclosed without lawful authority. This does not apply to formal action
taken at the conclusion of the disciplinary process, which is published on
the JCIO’s website as per the Lord Chief Justices and Lord Chancellors’
publication policy. Personal data is protected under the UK General Data
Protection Regulation and the Data Protection Act 2018.
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Dear Judicial Conduct Investigations Office,
Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of Information reviews.
I am writing to request an internal review of Judicial Conduct Investigations Office's handling of my FOI request 'Dates of important JCIO meetings in August 2021 where records of the meeting are available'.
In my previous FOI Request, the JCIO claimed there were so many important meetings continually being held where important decisions had been made, that they suggested I restrict the scope of my request to one month (say 'December in..') to avoid exceeding the £600 cost limit. This struck me as curious since their previous track record of efficient record-keeping ranged from deplorable to non-existent.
Can I ask for clarification Ms Walters? Are you saying that the situation has now changed, and there were no important meetings held in August 2021 where important decisions were recorded? if that is the case, can you point me in the direction of a more fertile month for meetings and provide the information requested for that month.
Should you not be aware of any month in the last 3 years where records of meetings held were available, could you make that clear. I would regard an important meeting as one where, for example, a change was to be made to the list of examples of things about a judge's conduct you could, or could not, complain about.
Since you have told me the list is not exclusive, it only provides some examples of judges' misconduct, can you tell me where I can find a definition of 'misconduct' (in relation, obviously to a judge's behaviour) on the JCIO website or anywhere else?
A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is available on the Internet at this address: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/d...
Yours faithfully,
Dudley Jones
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We do not respond to requests to intervene in court cases, requests for
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We suggest seeking advice from a solicitor, law centre or the Citizens
Advice Bureau.
Before making a complaint, please read the [2]guidance on our website
about the types of complaints we can and cannot accept. Complaints which
are outside our statutory remit will be rejected.
Complaints about judges and coroners
Make your complaint using our [3]online portal.
Complaints about magistrates (justices of the peace)
Send your complaint to the relevant local [4]advisory committee.
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Good afternoon,
Please find attached a response to your internal review request.
With regards,
Judicial Conduct Investigations Office
81-82 Queens Building
Royal Courts of Justice
WC2A 2LL
[1][IMG] [2][IMG] [3][IMG] [4][IMG]
Please note: In accordance with Section 139 of the Constitutional Reform
Act 2005, information about judicial disciplinary cases which relates to
an identified or identifiable individual is confidential and must not be
disclosed without lawful authority. This does not apply to formal action
taken at the conclusion of the disciplinary process, which is published on
the JCIO’s website as per the Lord Chief Justices and Lord Chancellors’
publication policy. Personal data is protected under the UK General Data
Protection Regulation and the Data Protection Act 2018.
══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════
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Dear Anthony Oloughlin,
This is the kind of evasive and devious response I have come to expect from the JCIO about any request for information about their record-keeping.
It is yet another example of your disregarding your obligation under the FOI Act and the ICO to maintain efficient record-keeping. You have responded to a series of FOI Requests from me, dating back 4 years about the abysmal state of your record-keeping either with a 'vexatious' dismissal (based on the fact that I've made a number of such requests because I keep getting evasive responses) or, as in this request, with 'we don't hold recorded information about this request'.
Typically you ignore that part of my request for an internal review that focused on your claim you don't hold information on important meetings in a specific month. I had been directed by you to restrict the scope of my request to a single month to comply with the £600 maximum for the time it would take to retrieve all this information. Instead, you focus on a follow-up query about where I can find guidance on policy matters such as your definition of 'misconduct'.
Your remit only allows you to investigate judges' "misconduct" and yet you admit here that you don't have a definition of 'misconduct'. I shall submit another FOI Request asking in what year you decided to ignore perfectly good definitions of 'misconduct' in, for example, the Cambridge English Dictionary which defines it as:
'unacceptable or bad behaviour by someone in a position of authority or responsibility'
I confidently predict your FOI Response will say: 'we have no recorded information about when a meeting took place in which we decided we would ignore a dictionary definition of 'misconduct' and rely instead on providing some examples of what we think constitutes 'misconduct'. When I questioned you publicly about why the misconduct of three judges found watching porn on an office computer warranted the most extreme sanction (they were 'struck off') but didn't feature in the list of examples of judges' conduct you COULD complain about, you rebuked me, saying the list wasn't meant to be an "exhaustive" list of examples. A typical, disdainful JCIO response. I pointed out it could be added to the list and described as 'inappropriate use of an official computer in 'off-duty' hours'. Significantly, you later made a slight revision to my suggested wording, and added it to the list of things you COULD complain about. I was flattered.
Of course, not providing a definition of 'misconduct' enables you to say 'misconduct' means whatever we want it to mean. And the list of 'examples' becomes a de facto 'definition': if a member of the public has the confidence to say to you: 'Is this outrageously bad behaviour by a judge an example of 'misconduct' that doesn't feature on your (non-exhaustive) list, something I could complain about, you are free to say: NO'.
Thus when I asked whether 3 examples of bad behaviour that I'm confident legal authorities like Joshua Rozenberg QC would accept constituted 'misconduct', I seem to remember you dismissed my enquiry as 'vexatious' (your 'go-to' get out of jail free card).
You don't provide a definition for 'misconduct' but you do provide criteria for deciding whether behaviour by a judge which might generally thought to constitute 'misconduct' is automatically excluded from investigation. One criterion is if behaviour by a judge 'is related to a judicial decision' (e.g. is it related to a verdict given by the judge).
Unfortunately, there seems to be no logic or consistency in the way this criterion is applied. This is because something you CAN complain about, that's on the JCIO list of things you can complain about, is a judge 'falling asleep in court'. The JCIO maintains that if a Judge falls asleep 15 mins into a trial beginning, and wakes up shortly before giving his verdict, his falling asleep will not in any way be 'related to a judicial decision'! As we are daily discovering with our PM, you couldn't make this up. You make the rules, you dismiss a perfectly good CED definition of 'misconduct', and you are largely unaccountable to the general public.
I will be referring your appalling record when it comes to record-keeping to the ICO. The most damning evidence of your lack of transparency and abuse of the FOI Act is your FOI Response to my query about record-keeping in 2018. That was the year in which you made the most radical changes to the list of things about a judges' behaviour that one COULD and COULD NOT complain about to the JCIO. They were and still are, the most radical changes in the history of the JCIO.
The list of things you could complain about was REDUCED from 6 to 4. The list of things you couldn't complain about INCREASED from 8 to 18. Also some things you formerly could complain about switched sides and became things 'you couldn't complain about'. Naturally there was no explanation or justification for the switch.
I was astonished by the JCIO's FOI Response to my request for the date of the meeting at which these changes were made (I assumed at this time only one set of changes had been made). They informed me that 2 sets of changes had been made: one in the spring, the other in the autumn but they had no record of the dates on which these changes were made, no recorded information about meetings when these decisions were taken, and they didn't even know what changes were made at which meeting.
The JCIO's absence of any record-meeting needs to be made public. They are not fit for purpose.
Yours sincerely,
Dudley Jones
Thank you for your email. This an automated response. Please do not
reply.
This email address is for general enquiries only. We aim to reply to
enquiries within 10 working days.
We do not accept or respond to complaints sent to this email address. If
you wish to make a complaint, please submit your complaint on our
[1]online portal.
If you have not made a complaint this way before, you will need to
register first before you can submit your complaint.
We do not respond to requests to intervene in court cases, requests for
advice about court procedures or requests for legal advice.
We suggest seeking advice from a solicitor, law centre or the Citizens
Advice Bureau.
Before making a complaint, please read the [2]guidance on our website
about the types of complaints we can and cannot accept. Complaints which
are outside our statutory remit will be rejected.
Complaints about judges and coroners
Make your complaint using our [3]online portal.
Complaints about magistrates (justices of the peace)
Send your complaint to the relevant local [4]advisory committee.
Complaints about tribunal judges and members
Send your complaint to the relevant tribunal [5]president’s office.
Your personal data
You can find information about how the JCIO collects and processes
personal data in our [6]Privacy Notice.
══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════
This e-mail and any attachments is intended only for the attention of the
addressee(s). Its unauthorised use, disclosure, storage or copying is not
permitted. If you are not the intended recipient, please destroy all
copies and inform the sender by return e-mail. Internet e-mail is not a
secure medium. Any reply to this message could be intercepted and read by
someone else. Please bear that in mind when deciding whether to send
material in response to this message by e-mail. This e-mail (whether you
are the sender or the recipient) may be monitored, recorded and retained
by the Ministry of Justice. Monitoring / blocking software may be used,
and e-mail content may be read at any time. You have a responsibility to
ensure laws are not broken when composing or forwarding e-mails and their
contents.
References
Visible links
1. https://jcio.microsoftcrmportals.com/
2. https://www.complaints.judicialconduct.g...
3. https://jcio.microsoftcrmportals.com/
4. https://www.complaints.judicialconduct.g...
5. https://www.complaints.judicialconduct.g...
6. https://www.complaints.judicialconduct.g...
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