Cautioned for not having Train ticket

[Esio Trot]

Originally Posted by Yasmin

Hi reduk054,

Thank you for your response. I am still pondering as to how I should reply to this letter. I too think it is a ridiculous amount. The adult fare is 10.40, so that leaves quite a large admin. fee!
My son, tells me, he tried to pay the inspector, and he wouldn't accept the fare. I think I will just post the fare with a copy of the letter and see what happens.

It is your son that they claim was fare evading. If it were me I would get a postal order (so they don't have your name which they would if you sent a cheque) for the fare involved and get your son to send it in with a covering letter like I suggested. DO NOT WRITE YOURSELF - you are not personally involved - they don't even have your name.

Once the fare is paid, then the administration fee is non-enforceable as far as I understand it. Like private parking tickets - you have not entered into any contract to be liable for the extra on top. Once they have the fare money they are not at a loss.

[Yasmin]

Thanks E.T. Yes that makes sense....Will get him to do that over the w. end.

[reduk054]

Esio, great advice for Yasmin, your input to this posting has been invaluable, thank you, i have learned a lot from you, and really only to question the train companies about preying on the "soft" targets, i.e. people who are more likely to pay their fines, rather than just disappear!
Thanks again, Yasmin - good luck!
Red

[blahtom123]

This thread is a great read, thanks for everyones input.

I am in a similar situation myself, regular travelcard holder, but forgot to renew it when it ran out. Was 'caught' by the transport police and 'cautioned'. He said that if I did it again I would go straight to court. I paid the £20 penalty fare there and then, and was on my way, after he gave me the usual spiel about how its just not worth doing it again.

My question is, since I paid the £20 penalty there and then - can I expect anything further from the train company? Can they come back and demand more money or take me to court?

Thanks.

[buzby]

I have no direct experience of this situation (on trains) but I believe the payment of the Penalty is an acceptance and settlement of any outstanding debt to the firm. Attempting to prosecute further would be a gross injustice.

[blahtom123]

Thanks buzby. I do hope this is the case.

[schmooze]

Hi,
I have a similar situation and now it has been brought to my attention I am quite worried.

I traveled through london on my oystercard, and was assured by friends that I could use pre-pay to get to romford and that it would have been accepted. rail stations in outer london do, some dont. this didnt.

Instead of walking through the gates, like an idiot, I went to an attendant and asked where the oyster scanners were. he said I couldnt use oyster. I offered to pay the fare, and he told me I would have to pay the fine. At the time I was incensed that I would be penalised for a simple mistake - had i gotten off two stations earlier it would have been no problem. I paid whatever I had in my pocket, 80p I think, and waited for my parents to receive the ticket, as their address is more stable than mine.

They never recieved anything, so i presumed that they guy had realised what an idiot he was being and dropped the matter. Now however, I am slightly paranoid that my parents have lost the letter and that a problem is building up behind my back....
also, I need to get a CRB check - would this show?

thanks,

[Maursh]

Hi there,

I was looking at this thread with some fascination since some 5 years ago, I was stopped by a "revenue inspector" without a ticket. I won't bore you with the details of the whys and wherefores, but I was issued with a court summons off the back of this. I learnt some very interesting facts about this process which I would like to share which with you, although I appreciate that it might be too late for some:

1) firstly, prosecution for fare evasion is independent of a penalty fare. If you look at some train companies websites they will fully admit that penalty fares are there to boost their revenues. This means that if you pay a penalty, the rail company can still seek a criminal prosecution if they believe you are guilty of fare evasion;

2) a penalty fare, by a private rail company is a CIVIL DEBT. If the rail company threatens you with a criminal prosecution if you do not settle a civil debt (verbally if you have a witness or in writing) the rail operator could be accused of "obtaining property by threats" which is a criminal offence under the 1968 Theft Act. You can refuse to pay a penalty fare and all the operator can do is come after you for the cival debt, but cannot prosecute. If you plan to refuse verbally make sure that you have a witness to show that you were invited to pay a penalty and you refused.

3) if you were in the unfortunate position that I was in, in that you are facing prosecution, the prosecution must prove "mens rea" - guilty mind. That is, they must prove that you willfully, deceitfully and intentionally set out to defraud the railway. This is extremely hard to prove in most circumstances - so if you are ever at risk, do not do anything that might be regarded as incriminating. In HM courts, they need to prove your guilt, you do not need to prove your innocence.

4) fare evasion is a railway by-law so it is not an arrestable (nor I believe recordable) offence. However, it is an arrestable offence to refuse to give your name and address (or to give false information). If you do find yourself under caution (and RPI must caution you) then I recommend giving your name and address and nothing else. You will also be asked to sign something - I believe that you can refuse without recourse.

For whomever was asking about the CRB check: if you are successfully prosecuted then you will have a criminal record for a dishonesty crime which will obviously show up. If you don't yet know if they will prosecute (the court summons took 7 months to come through for me) I don't believe that it will appear, since it is a non-recordable offence. However, pending prosecutions usually do appear, so I am not certain about this.

Incidentally when the private prosecution company (oh yes, the CPS are really not interested in this sort of petty misdemeanor) realised that I was fighting this all the way, they dropped the prosecution - they just want easy targets to boost their statistics.

As a final note, I want to be clear that I am not encouraging fare evasion, I believe that it is a fairly serious measure of social disorder. But I was an innocent commuter who was facing a disproportionate reaction with serious personal consequences from an over-zealous train company. Their website proudly boasts how many successful prosecutions they had achieved but they don't seem to realise is all they are doing is slapping criminal records on law-abidding citizens who are doing their best to get through each day. The real fare evaders, the repeat offenders who assault RPIs and blatantly ignore penalty fare notices etc, I assume are still at large.

[StoneLaughter]

If a penalty fare is a civil matter and not covered by Transport Law, then I assume it's covered by the same Contract Law which covers bank charges; i.e. it is a penalty for breach of contract and cannot be legally enforced in any way. This being the case, they could chase me as much as they liked; I still wouldn't pay it! Does anyone know if any other Law covers this and provides for a lawful penalty? Or is it simply a contractural penalty which they're "winging" to see how much they can get?

[t-star]

Penalty fares ARE covered by the Transport Act 2000. If you have any problems you need to refer to the bylaws of the TOC that issued you with the PF. See the following links..

Link for the Penalty Fares Rules

http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/rail/legis...altyfaresrules

Example Of Railway By Laws

1263RailwayBylaws.pdf

hope these help



t-star

[blahtom123]

Maursh, could you expand a little on your situation 5 years ago?

[Maursh]

You mean of the circumstances of why they attempted to prosecute me for fare evasion? I have outlined the details below, although if you are concerned about them coming after you, I wouldn't be. They might if you were a repeat offender (if you had been caught 10 times for example) but the prosecutions don't appear to be originating from the BTP but from private prosecutions. Although, having said this, the tfl is not a private operator so the policies might differ slightly.

I was travelling regularly on a 5mins commuter route on the DLR where I would buy a ticket each way for £1 at a machine since a travelcard was unavailable for that route/zones. A blockade had been set up at the station where I disembarked complete with BTP. I was unable to find my ticket for that journey, although I had a handbag full of tickets for journeys on previous days and weeks so it took me some time to identify that I couldn't find the ticket, getting more and more flustered. They took details, ID read me my rights etc. That happened in September. I received a letter from them in November asking for mitigating circumstances before they forwarded my details to the prosecution team. I duly responded explaining that I had bought a ticket but had lost it, and that I could evidence that I was a regular user of that route who always bought a ticket (I had about a months worth of them in my handbag). I didn't hear anything further until April when I received a court summons a day after the date of the hearing. I immediately called the court and asked what had happened given that I hadn't even been aware of the summons. They said that it would be rearranged since they hadn't heard from me (automatic guilty if I missed the next one). I then sought legal advice. I spoke to a few solicitors who were completely disinterested and said that there was no defence and that I would be better sending in a guilty plea by post. I didn't want to do that since I was totally innocent, my career might be impaired by such a record and furthermore I thought that it was a completely disproportionate "punishment" for a £1 fare issue with someone who had no previous history of fare dodging.

Anyway, I sought advice from a corporate lawyer friend of mine. He spoke to a few friends and learnt that a similar thing had happened to the wife of one of his colleagues. Her circumstances were slightly different in that she hadn't been able to buy a ticket before she boarded, had tried to find the guard on board but had a child in a pushchair and had been unsuccessful. Anyway both she and her husband were lawyers (barristers I think); they put their thinking caps on and wrote to the prosecution team saying that they were aware that they had to prove guilty mind, that she would be entering a not guilty plea and this was the defence that they would be offering (i think it was just as I wrote above, unable to buy ticket, tried to find guard on board but limited by young child and pushchair). They dropped their case against her.

I did something very similar: explained that I would be entering a not guilty plea, that my defence would be that I had bought a ticket but misplaced it and asked for them to provide CCTV footage of a 15 minute interval of the exact machine where I had bought the ticket.

I hadn't heard back from them and turned up for court for the second hearing. I was greated by some guy on the prosecution after I checked in with the clerk that they would drop the case if I agreed to pay a £10 admin fee, which of course I agreed to.

[blahtom123]

Great, thanks for the insight. Really inspirational for all those who are facing a prosecution.

Yeah that's what I was thinking concerning the penalty fare. I understand that its possible for a prosecution to be brought, although it seems very unlikely. The revenue inspectors seem to be working in a strange way where some regular inspectors issue penalty fares only, and big teams sweep large areas at a time prosecuting everyone who doesnt have the correct ticket with no exceptions (such as all the 80p TFL prosecutions recently).

Its a very strange way of working...

[StoneLaughter]

If one uses a solicitor in a Magistrate's Court and one is Acquitted, can one ask for one's costs?

[Maursh]

Because fare evasion is a non-arrestable offence, you are not entitled to free legal advice / defence, as you would be for pretty much any other crime.

I believe that you could put in a claim for the recovery of your legal costs if you were acquitted. It doesn't guarantee that the judge would award them though.