A summary offence can loosely be defined as a minor violation of the law. Parliament has over the years enacted numerous rules to govern everyday activities of citizens in the interest of a peaceful and orderly society. It is therefore an offence to spit in public, to behave in a disorderly manner, to ill treat or abandon a child, to litter, to mistreat an animal, to pick your neighbour’s fruit, to withhold an employee’s wages. Most of these offences are punishable in the Magistrates’ Court by fines rather than by imprisonment.
Although the Magistrate himself is constrained upon the conviction of an accused person of many summary offences to impose non-custodial penalties (fines), Parliament has nevertheless deemed it necessary in the public interest
