Beatrice Fatusin

A Profile on Judge Roger Ede

“I found a bag of cannabis in the bush; I found a knife in the bush and you think

come of it, I wasn’t born yesterday. Though I must admit it can be entertaining at

times,” Judge Roger Ede says sarcastically whilst recalling some of the absurd

stories he’s been told during his career. However, with the Government’s cuts to

prison management services this could lead to an increase in the reoffending rate of

criminals like these that Ede mentioned.

Overriding assumptions on who I thought I would be interviewing, I met a slender,

humorous, rather restless, soft spoken man, expectedly dressed in his formal work

attire. With a vast years experience in the law field and working as a defence lawyer

for a number of years, today Ede works in the Bexley, Greenwich and Bromley

borough as a District Judge. He hesitantly states how his first time in the judge’s seat

was “A bit nerve racking. I thought people would find out I wasn’t any good but

fortunately they didn’t because I was able to do the job.” As far as I’m concerned it’s

the best job!” he exuberantly smiles.

Whilst also working in a Family Court in Wells Street, he deals with both family and

criminal cases. “Family cases are much more difficult emotionally. It's the cases

where the mother will say "I can deal with my drug addiction, I won't have a man

who's violent live with me again, I love my child, if you take my child away I have

nothing left living for,” He says in a derisive tone whilst raising his bristling eyebrows.

Most of the time that is not the case, as most women who say they will never be with

a violent man again end up having one, he sympathetically explains. One would

wonder how he manages to deal with his emotions whilst sitting on difficult cases

Beatrice Fatusin

and above all how he deals with the stress of his day to day job, he pauses while

jesting “Well what can I say, I can’t say alcohol can I!.”

Though one factor affecting his line of work currently is the government’s continuous

strategies to cut public spending. The Crown Prosecution Service having their staff

and budgets reduced means they have to deal with the same number of cases with

less money. “I know it’s necessary but while you’re cutting other things to make the

money available it puts everyone under a lot of pressure, trying the give the same

service with less money to do it,” concerned Ede explains while gesticulating. Yet all

these cuts could see a rise in the reoffending rates, as the government cuts prison

management services.

When asked how effective he believes prison is, he states while brushing his knee,

“I’m not sure that prison is effective at all really. In terms of rehabilitating someone

and turning their life around I don’t think it is.” “Sometimes people have the most

ridiculous stories though. I had a man with no arms assault a police officer and you

think how do you do that you’ve got no arms, he was trying to strangle the police

officer with his legs!” He laughs whilst attempting to eat his sandwich with one hand.

“People are just extraordinary!”

The Justice and Security Bill recently proposed having more closed cases. The

former head of the judiciary, Lord Woolf, has also thrown his support ‘behind plans to

allow more civil courts to examine secret intelligence in private’. Whilst voicing his

opinion on the idea Ede says “I can understand that the reason is so that information

can be given to the courts that the governments wouldn’t be prepared to give

Beatrice Fatusin

otherwise, because it would breach security”. However, recently the proposals have

caused a huge amount of controversy as Civil liberties campaigners oppose the

idea.

Ede says: “I think you can trust judges to make decisions on these sorts of cases.

There will be cases where they’ll want to give evidence from intelligence agents or

intelligent sources. With the proposal presently being debated in Parliament, could

this see a change in the judicial system? “I think that there are situations where it

would be appropriate to do that in a closed court, providing it’s the judge who can

see the evidence they want to give, hear the arguments as to why that should be

presented in private and then decide that it is appropriate that the case should be

heard in private,” Ede explains. How effective will this proposal be if it is

implemented?