Tens of thousands of people privately prosecuted for allegedly dodging rail fares under a controversial and opaque legal procedure are set to have their criminal convictions quashed, following a new court ruling.
Rail operators were given permission in 2016 to prosecute alleged ticket evaders in private hearings under the “single justice procedure”, which was created a year earlier to allow magistrates to decide on minor offences without defendants going to court.
But tens of thousands of these criminal cases have been brought under the Regulation of Railways Act 1889 – which is not allowed in the single justice procedure, the Evening Standard has previously reported.
Two rail companies – Northern Rail and Greater Anglia – admitted last month at Westminster Magistrates’ Court that they “got it wrong” over the procedure used to privately prosecute a combined total of at least 35,000 cases.
Chief magistrate Paul Goldspring, who has been reviewing six test cases involving prosecutions brought by the two rail companies, previously said there could be close to 75,000 wrongful prosecutions in total when cases involving other firms are also looked at.
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