LawByLak — Topic 22: Criminal Courts (OCR H418, Paper 1)

Criminal Courts and Lay People

Twelve of the twenty marks are for evaluation, and the disadvantages of juries have already been set as a full 12-mark question.

27 authorities, being 18 statutes and 9 cases · 40 spec checkpoints · 39 flashcards · 17 glossary terms · 56 scored practice cards · 4 real past-paper questions across 3 sittings, with 3 published exemplars

This is a statute topic, not a case topic, and that catches people out. Eighteen provisions to nine cases, and the exam content is the classifications, the thresholds and the numbers rather than a line of authority.

It is also unusually well evidenced: three scored exemplar answers have been published, so what the board rewards is not a matter of inference.

What is inside

• Classification and jurisdiction, with twenty offences to sort into summary, either-way and indictable only, including the two that turn on a threshold and say so on their own face.
• Pre-trial procedure and the appeal routes, drawn as flowcharts rather than listed as bullets, so a branch reads as a branch.
• Sentencing: the aims, the four categories, and the custodial limits with the change that most sources have not caught up with.
• Magistrates against jurors, thirteen rows deep, held in register so the two cards line up point for point instead of drifting.
• Ten disadvantages and seven advantages of juries, each in four steps. OCR’s indicative content gives you headings such as “twelve may be too many for productive discussion”, which is a heading and not an argument. Every one here is written out into something you can put in a paragraph.
• A thirty-item sorter across role, selection and evaluation, and fifty-six scored practice cards rather than reveals, because a reveal is not an exercise.

Eight errors in OCR’s own materials

Flagged with the correction beside each. The board cites a repealed sentencing provision in its guidance while marking from the current statute book; its Teachers’ Guide gives a custodial limit that changed in November 2024; the £5,000 fine cap has been unlimited since 2015; one mark scheme misprints a band and leaves a mark unallocated; and a published full-marks exemplar dates the Juries Act to the wrong year.

What we will not pretend

Half the specification for this topic has never been examined: lay magistrates, appeals, classification, the aims of sentencing and custodial sentences have not appeared. That is a reason to prepare them rather than skip them, and the guide says which is which so you can spend your time knowingly. Only two of the twenty-seven authorities carry an OCR badge, and the guide explains why badging is a poor guide to importance here.

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