What if I don't turn up?
That depends on whether you have been bailed to court by the police, or summonsed. It is your duty to attend court when required and in general, you need a very good reason for not doing so.
Failing to answer bail without reasonable excuse, is an offence in itself, under the Bail Act. It is another offence, having failed to answer bail but having a reasonable excuse, to fail to surrender to the police as soon as reasonably practicable thereafter.If you are bailed to appear at court, but do not do so, a warrant will be issued for your arrest. Once the police arrest you, you will be brought to the court which issued the warrant, from wherever you are. If you are arrested too late to be brought before the court that day, you will spend the night in police cells. Magistrates' Courts open on Saturday morning just to deal with people arrested too late on Friday to be dealt with on that day. (That will generally be from lunchtime onwards, but varies from place to place.) No courts sit on Sunday, so if you are arrested on Saturday, the result is likely to be that you spend the rest of the weekend in custody.
Despite the duty to surrender to the police, many people will avoid doing so at the weekend, so as not to have to wait in police cells before applying for bail at court on Monday. That course of action does make some sense, if the person has already committed a Bail Act offence, for example by simply forgetting the date (never a reasonable excuse). However, if someone has an excuse for failing to appear at court on a Friday, but opts to delay surrendering until Monday, this would mean that an offence had now been committed, although none had been when the court date was originally missed.
Once you are before the court, it is your opportunity to give your explanation of your failure to attend. If the explanation is good enough, the court may accept that no offence has been committed.
For many people, the most important consequence of failing to answer bail, may be loss of bail in the remainder of the proceedings. Rather than being bailed to return to court, you might be remanded in custody until the next hearing at court, which would mean you would be kept in a local prison. In addition, whether immediately or at the end of the case, the court will consider whether to impose a penalty for failing to answer bail.
If a summons has been issued, and the court has proof that it was in fact received, they may issue a warrant for the arrest of a defendant who has not come to court.
What happens when I come to court?
The first - and in most cases only - court you will have to attend, will be a Magistrates' Court. The first thing the court will hope to achieve, will be to hear whether you admit or deny the allegations against you. At this point, the court will consider whether it can deal with the case itself, or whether it is so serious that it must be dealt with at Crown Court. In most cases these issues will be dealt with at the first hearing. Sometimes, your solicitor may ask for the case to be adjourned (put off) so that the evidence can be considered before you decide whether to plead guilty or not guilty. Another possible reason for an adjournment might be to make an application for legal aid.
If you plead guilty to a charge, the court will have to decide what sentence (or punishment) to impose. This may happen on the first time you appear at court, or the court may adjourn the case for about a month so that a report on your background (known as a Pre-Sentence Report or PSR) can be prepared by the probation service. This is done in more serious cases, when a prison sentence or community penalty is being considered. It is unusual, therefore, for someone to be sent to prison on their first day at court. This can happen where the court sees prison as inevitable. An example would be where someone has driven a vhicle while disqualified from driving. Especially where someone has previously committed this type of offence, the magistrates may send someone to prison as soon as they plead (or are found) guilty.
If you deny the charge against you, there will need to be a trial to determine whether the court believes the allegation. It would be unusual for the date of the trial to be fixed as soon as you plead not guilty, even if the case is to be dealt with in the magistrates' court. Normally, there will be another hearing, called a Pre-trial Review, at which both sides will tell the court what will be in dispute, how many witnesses they plan to bring, and how long they think the trial will last. The court will then fix a date for the trial.
If the case is serious enough, the Magistrates' Court may refuse to deal with it, sending it to the crown court for either trial or sentencing. There is a category of offences, known as "either way offences", in which even if the magistrates think they could deal with the case, the defendant has the option of going to the Crown Court. This decision is often taken by people who deny the allegations against them, and wish to be tried by a jury. Although, overall, a greater proportion of defendants are found not guilty by juries than by magistrates, it is worth remembering that Crown Court judges have much greater powers of sentencing than magistrates when a defendant is found guilty. At present, the government is planning to remove the right of defendants to choose the venue of their trial.
Sentencing
The sentences available to the courts for adult defendants, in order of seriousness, are as follows:
In general, where someone has had any given type of sentence in the recent past, a court is more likely to move on to a more serious sentence for the next offence, particularly where the offence is similar to the previous one.