The four porn judges have set a new benchmark for backwardness

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/17/porn-judges-benchmark-judiciary-internet

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It may surprise the younger reader to learn that the workplace didn’t instantly devise a policy on pornography to greet the arrival of the internet. People tended not to convey their porn to work in magazine form, so it was understood that it wasn’t part of professional life.

But there was so much you could do on the web that you didn’t normally do while you were working (shopping, Friends Reunited); it felt as though it may not work to the old rules.

I had a newspaper colleague who spent a fortune on privacy software when he went on holiday, not realising that it locked only what was on his hard drive, and didn’t obscure his internet search history. That went: porn, porn, porn; Delft pottery; more porn.

Ignorance is the kindest possible interpretation of the behaviour of the three judges: the district judge Timothy Bowles, the immigration judge Warren Grant and the deputy district judge and recorder Peter Bullock, who were removed from post yesterday after the discovery of pornographic material on their office computers.

A fourth judge, the recorder Andrew Maw, had been looking at similar sites but resigned before anyone got a chance to reprimand him. The investigators were satisfied that no illegal pornography involving children had been accessed, so that’s something.

Judges are notorious for being stuck in the past: for not knowing who the Beatles are, for needing text messages – indeed the existence of mobile phones – explained to them. By this, rosy light, they simply knew not what they did. They were stuck in the mid-90s; they had only just discovered the internet and were pushing at the boundaries of what they could reasonably do with it.

The problem is that this kind of detachment, this ability to remain resolutely two or three decades behind everyone else, has other effects, which are visible throughout the profession: a failure to process diversity, to overcome their own bigotry.

Judges are notorious for being stuck in the past … By this, rosy light, they simply knew not what they did

Only 15.5% of high court judges are women, and 4.5% are from an ethnic minority background; only 10.5% on the court of appeal are women, and there are none with an ethnic minority background.

Richard Hollingworth recently resigned having said, in open court, that a person with the surname Patel wouldn’t have an important job that she couldn’t take time off from, and must be working in a shop or an off-licence. What I think is almost as out of touch as the racism is the fact that he thinks important jobs are harder to get time off from than jobs in shops: flexibility is a one-way street in low-paid work, generally. Those in high-paying jobs encounter much more understanding.

Given the importance of the judiciary, it’s of little surprise that it faces constant pressure to create a more equitable and transparent hiring process. It would be unfair to say it hasn’t tried; and in matters of justice we must be fair. But, so far, it has failed; and that failing – which I’d argue is much more important than four guys failing to demonstrate the standards expected of them in their flock-wallpapered wank-booths – both stems from, and perpetuates, the judiciary’s archaic stuckness.

I think there is another dimension, a peculiar human frailty that a judge would be particularly susceptible to: it is no easy thing to sit in judgment upon another human. You cannot empathise with them too much; you cannot be constantly putting yourself in their shoes or you would never convict anybody. And yet, so much transgression must be horribly comprehensible, on a human level, if you open your mind and allow yourself to comprehend it.

So we rely on them to be rather closed-minded, to take a rule-based approach to the human condition, and that makes it inevitable that, not only will they breach some of their own standards, but they will conceive of themselves as something other than your run-of-the-mill person, to whom these rules and laws don’t apply.

Looking at the full list of reprimands issued to judges over the past few months, I am amazed at how anodyne their behaviour is: there’s a little bit of speeding; one judge who failed to pay her council tax. Generally, it is all swearing and a little bit of falling asleep.

The behaviour of the pornography four, by contrast, goes way beyond what you’d expect. If it were one judge, you could conceive of it as a nervous breakdown expressed through sex addiction. Four judges: one can only assume they fell in with – indeed, became – their own bad crowd, with consequences to which they must sacrifice their careers.

I’m trying to imagine what a judge might say here: if it were up to me, I’d probably give them a wigging and have them stoke up the firewall.

• This article was amended on 19 March 2015 to correct a reference to ethnic minority backgrounds.