By: Mike Hosking | Tuesday, August 28, 2012 7:50 AM

I am glad to see I am not alone when it comes to jury selection and getting out of it. Most of us have and do, as in 56%. There are those who argue this is not good and it undermines the value of the system, that's if you place a lot of value on the system in the first place which as it turns out I don't. I place a lot of value on the justice system - I think by and large we are well served - but the concept of being tried by your peers is overrated, actually isn’t true and is well in need of an overhaul.

Firstly you need to remember that in the vast majority of cases, the people who appear in court are guilty. They are criminals. It’s generally accepted people aren’t arrested and charged with things they didn't do. Therefore what’s actually happening is you’re sitting on a jury, listening to little more than a parade of evidence that will simply confirm that the person in front of you did it. This, given the way the process works, will almost certainly take longer than it needs to therefore using up more time than you actually have. That, quite apart from anything, is why people try to get out of jury service. That's before you get to the inconvenience, the lack of compensation for those that take time off work or from their business, their kids, their families, all the things that make up day to day life that have to go on hold so you can eye ball some low renter who stuck a gun in a bank teller’s face or transferred money that wasn’t theirs into another account.

As for you being one of their peers - that's insulting. They’re criminals, you’re not. You’re not a peer, you’re an upstanding law-abiding citizen. They’re a crook.

So to a solution. Firstly we need judge only trials. Evidence is evidence, guilt is guilt. In most of these scenarios you don't need 12 people, you need one and the one can be a judge who has a brain, is alert to the facts, is experienced in the procedures. Along with that you can have a system that doesn't necessarily involve professional jurors but a pool of people that have the time, are interested in the process and can pass a series of tests as to their worthiness for the job. They can be limited to a certain number of cases each year, monitored on their verdicts and decisions and rewarded accordingly. In doing that you don't waste time dragging people in only to be sent home, you don’t have people writing the thousands of letters each year excusing them in the first place. You have people who want to be there which is the important part for those who argue we need to tighten up the system, if not bring in compulsion. In other words if you’re summoned, you go.

Compulsion doesn't work. The last thing you want are aggrieved, frustrated people looking for the first way out, people forced to be there would make an unstable jury, capable of very odd results. If the system isn’t working, there are plenty of ways of changing it without getting all dictatorial about it.

Photo: Edward Swift