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Teenagers and students who cannot afford to pay thousands in Covid party fines face criminal records as legal experts called for the fees to be waived.
Around 57,100 under 25s were slapped with a fine during the pandemic for breaching restrictions, according to a National Police Chief’s council report.
Some were given a staggering £10,000 penalty charge notice for hosting large parties during the height of Covid.
Despite them only making up 8 per cent of the population, almost half of the penalty notices – 48 per cent – in England and Wales were 18 to 24-year-olds.
Three years after the first lockdown, cases are still going through courts. But many youngsters are disputing the fixed-term penalty notices or failing to pay them.
Charlotte Evans, 20, from south Wales, failed to attend court over missed payments
She paid just £101.50 but magistrates have since agreed to cut her penalty to just over £500 after hearing she is unemployed
A Covid-19 fine analysis showed that 54,108 – 43 per cent – were escalated to the courts.
One of those youngsters is Charlotte Evans, 20, who was ordered to pay £2,021 over the raucous house party raided by police in January 2021.
Police were called to her bottom-floor flat, in Gelligaer, near Caerphilly, South Wales, after neighbours reported a ‘loud party’.
A court heard her neighbourhood was in Coronavirus Alert Level 4 at the time, meaning household mixing was banned.
The young mother paid just £101.50 but magistrates agreed to cut her penalty to just over £500 after hearing she was unemployed.
Officers saw eight to 10 people flee by jumping over the back garden fence into a lane and six in the living room.
Evans failed to attend court in July 2021, when Newport magistrates found her guilty of breaching the regulations and ordered that she must pay a £1,760 fine, £176 victim services surcharge and £85 in prosecution costs – totalling £2,021.
But she paid just £101.50 and then failed to attend a court hearing over the missed payments.
Police turned up at her home to arrest the young mother, who has a three-year-old daughter.
Her solicitor Gareth Morgan told the magistrates she was unemployed.
Presiding Justice Andrew Hunt told Evans: ‘What we have been told by your solicitor is you were unemployed at the time and remain unemployed. What you get through benefits is £120 a week.
‘We times that by four, so we reduce your fine from £1,760 to £480. Your victim surcharge is reduced to £48 but you still must pay court costs of £85.
‘When you add that all up, it comes to £613 dead. But we’ve heard that you’ve already paid £101.50, which means you’ve got £511.50 to pay. Bottom line, you owe that.’
Magistrates in Newport said the penalty would be deducted from Evans’ benefits.
University of Edinburgh’s School of Law and the University of Stirling professors have called for the government to waive unpaid fines because their research suggests penalties were disproportionately to young people, students and ethnic minorities.
They have urged the Independent Commission on UK Public Health Emergency powers to use the findings to implement a ‘more proportionate legislative and policing response in the case of future pandemics’.
Professor Susan McVie of Edinburgh University, who was part of an independent advisory group in Scotland that scrutinised policing during the pandemic, told The Sunday Times: ‘There is a case to be made for having an amnesty on any fines or charges resulting from the pandemic, on the basis that it serves no purpose to continue to penalise people long after the pandemic has finished.’
Like a parking ticket, if the fines are paid on time, they are ‘non-recordable’ and do not appear on criminal record checks.
If they are ignored and a person is called to court, they can be given a criminal record which employers could see.
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