unit 4 3.4

• Police


  • Main agency for the detection, investigation and prevention of crime
  • Have specialist departments, units and sections dealing with serious and complex cases, such as terrorism
• Police forces have specialist departments, units and sections dealing with serious and complex cases, such as terrorism
• In recent years, the police have made progress in prioritising some offences of concern to the public such as domestic abuse, where increasing numbers of cases are being reported and recorded
• Two-thirds of domestic abuse practitioners felt the police's approach had improved in the previous three years


  But the arrest rate has been falling, police are not using bail conditions to protect victims, staff shortages are causing delays in responding to incidents, putting victims at risk, and body-worn video cameras are not always being used to gather evidence
• The Macpherson Report noted the failure of the Metropolitan Police to gather evidence and investigate leads in the murder of Stephen Lawrence that could have led to a successful prosecution of the five leading suspects in the case
• The number of offences recorded by the police rose from 4.5m in March 2016 to 5.7m in September 2018


  But police clear-up rates have been falling, from 15% of cases resulting in someone being charged in 2015 to 8.2% in 2018
• The Metropolitan Police dropped 2.6 times as many cases on the day they were reported in 2017 as they did in 2016 - a total of over 34,000 in the year
• From 2010, the government made major cuts in police budgets and this has been a cause of police decisions to drop investigations
• The police have become better at recording crimes, for example in the area of domestic abuse, and this has led to a greater proportion of offences now appearing in the statistics
• The Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW), a survey of victims, shows that the overall crime rate had been falling for several years to 2017 and in 2018 had remained level, rather than increasing as the police statistics indicate
• Police statistics tend to pick up more serious crimes (they are more likely to be reported) and ones where a police crime number is needed for insurance claims (e.g. burglary and vehicle theft)
• Recruitment of officers from minority ethnic backgrounds has increased, but minority groups continue to be under-represented in the police force, including in senior ranks
• Stop and searches are still disproportionately used against Black and other minority groups
• Tasers are used disproportionately against people of minority backgrounds
• In 2014 South Yorkshire Police invited the BBC to film their raid on the home of Sir Cliff Richard in connection with historical child abuse allegations. No charges were eventually brought and both the police and the BBC had to pay damages to the singer
• Crown Prosecution Service (CPS)

  • Acts as the main independent prosecutor for England and Wales
  • Aims to achieve social control by preparing cases and presenting them in court to secure the conviction of offenders
• In 2018, the CPS prosecuted 80,000 cases in Crown Court and over 450,000 cases in magistrates' courts, with 84.1% of the defendants that it prosecuted being convicted
• The CPS's specialist rape prosecutors had been advised to drop a number of supposedly 'weak' cases to improve the CPS's overall performance by ensuring that a higher proportion of its prosecutions would succeed
• The CPS has suffered budget cuts of 25% in recent years and has lost a third of its staff
• Alison Levitt QC: '"A system that only prosecutes safe cases is sending attackers the message that vulnerable people are open to abuse as the CPS will not prosecute."'
• The CPS's Full Code Test includes the evidential test. Prosecutors must be satisfied that there is a 'realistic prospect of conviction' - in other words, that the evidence would be more likely than not to convince a jury to convict.
• Critics argue that the CPS should be focused less on trial outcomes and more on bringing cases to justice.
• The number of rapes reported more than doubled between 2014 and 2018 while the number of prosecutions actually fell.
• In recent years the CPS has suffered budget cuts of 25% and it has lost a third of its staff.
• The Director of Public Prosecutions, Max Hill QC, said in 2018 that the CPS cannot sustain further cuts because digital technology is imposing heavy additional workloads on its staff, with the need to analyse content of smartphones in the search for evidence and to comply with rules for its disclosure to the defence.
• In one case, it took 600 hours to analyse the content on one phone.
• A number of rape and other prosecutions have collapsed as a result of the CPS and police's failure to discover and disclose evidence such as text messages stored on victims' or defendants' phones.
• After the collapse of a rape case against Liam Allan in 2018 due to evidence being disclosed only after the trial had started, around 30 other cases that were due to go to court had to be reviewed and some halted.
• In some high-profile cases, the CPS has failed to build an adequate case and this has led to the prosecution collapsing.
• In the murder of ten-year-old Damilola Taylor, the CPS rested its case on an obviously lying witness, when proper checks would easily have established the unreliability of her evidence.
• Other criticisms of the CPS

  • It has been criticised for being too close to the police
  • It has been criticised for being too bureaucratic, inefficient and slow in proceeding with cases
  • There have been examples of cases where suspects have only found out that the case against them has been dropped by reading about it in the media
• In the media, judges are often presented as old, white, upper-class males who are out of touch with modern society.
• Judges are sometimes suspected of making biased judgements as a result of coming from a narrow, unrepresentative section of society.
• Judges' backgrounds


  • 71% are male
  • More than half are aged over 50
  • Only 5% are from minority backgrounds
  • 74% were privately educated
  • Two-thirds are former barristers
• Although there are examples of male judges showing a lack of empathy for female victims of sexual assault, it is hard to demonstrate a clear pattern of bias.
• In 1989 Judge James Pickles sentenced a man to probation after he was convicted of sexually assaulting a six-year-old girl, but jailed a woman for contempt of court for refusing to give evidence against her ex-boyfriend, who had assaulted her.
• In 1990 Judge James Pickles sentenced a 19-year-old single mother with a ten-week-old baby to six months on a charge of theft, commenting that getting pregnant was no reason to escape custody.
• Women and ethnic minorities are under-represented among the judiciary.
• In 2017, 24-year-old Lavinia Woodward was convicted of stabbing her boyfriend. The judge gave her a suspended sentence, saying that a jail term could damage her prospects of a medical career.
• The journalist and barrister Afua Hirsch argues that Woodward's treatment contrasts sharply with that of other women in the criminal justice system, who often receive custodial sentences despite having similar problems.