Page 18 - Keeping the Peace

12 Keeping the Peace – A History of Honorary Justices in Victoria
Responding to society’s
most vulnerable
JPs had powers that also brought them very close to the lives of the most vulnerable. In cases of aggravated assaults on women and children, a JP had to ensure that the defendant could find guarantees to keep the peace and be of good behaviour for six months from the expiration of the sentence. JPs also had powers under the Lunacy Act 1915 (Vic). If the mentally ill had no means of support or was wandering at large, police could bring them before two JPs, or the JPs could visit and examine the person themselves, and following advice from a medical practitioner, organise a committal to a ‘receiving house’ to be assessed. The JP could examine any person deemed to be mentally ill at any convenient place and proceed in all respects as if the person brought before him was at a Court of Petty Sessions.18
Under the Marriage Act 1915 (Vic), the Court of Petty Sessions was able to compel the husband to pay maintenance. JPs could hear and determine matters involving charges of drunk and disorderly, prostitution, threatening or abusive words, obscene language or indecent drawings and riotous behaviour within a public place, in an open court at any time or place as long as all parties consented.
But are they qualified?
With such a vast judicial responsibility, The Argus newspaper commenced a systematic campaign to have JPs removed from the bench because of a perceived lack of integrity and balance in their decisions. In 1917, the HJs Association pointed out that Victoria could not afford to remove them from their role, noting that in 1912 the numbers of cases tried at the Court of Petty Sessions, 36,043, was much higher than those in the Supreme Court, 92,
or at the County Court, 545.
It also noted that petty sessions heard quasi-criminal matters including 947 maintenance cases, 44,165 electoral revision cases and 545 persons alleged to be ‘lunatics’.19 With HJs doing so much work, there was an argument that the justice system could not afford to do without them.
18 Ibid, p. 47. 19 ‘The Justice of the Peace’, 7 June 1917, p 11.