New Jury Duty Laws
I got a summons to jury duty yesterday. There seem to have been some recent laws passed to make it harder to get out of. Fine, I'm all for fair trials and the process of law working well and all that. What happens is you now get once chance to defer your jury duty for up to six months. I'm going to use that, as the date of my duty happens to fall when I will be away on holiday.
What concerns me is there is now no provision for getting out of jury duty if you are carer to a child. You can only defer. This does not seem very well thought out. What happens if you get a summons if you are a mother with a newborn child? You can't take a child to court. Even if you defer for six months a child of that age will still need to be breastfed during the day. What happens if you can't arrange childcare? There are such things as waiting lists for day care centres, and not everyone is lucky enough to have people who can take a child or children for an indefinite period of time. Trials are held during normal working hours, but if a jury retires to deliberate their verdict that can go on after normal day-care closing hours. You can't contact anyone when that happens, except in an emergency. Does it count as an emergency if there's no-one to pick your child up from day care?
The government attitude seems to be that it's not their problem. From the summons document: "Do not bring children to court with you. It is your responsibility to make arrangements for child minding while doing jury service. If you require more time to consider your options in this regard you may seek to be deferred from this summons. This should assist you in making appropriate arrangements for child care for your deferred jury service."
Also a juror is reimbursed for public transport costs, and an employer is reimbursed for waged paid to a juror, but there's no reimbursement for child-care fees.
I am very angry about this. Even though I am going to defer it's already causing me a great deal of stress as to how I am going to manage child care for my daughter during this time.
Does anyone know who to write to with a view to getting some more sensible legislation that doesn't make life hard for women and children put in place?
(cross-posted everywhere in feminist outrage)