My new toy
- Thread starter Tony S
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phil d
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on a point of law, all cases where there is consideration for a prosecution are referred to the CPS, as to whether there is likely to be a successful prosecution or not. the only ones that do not go through them are ones involving FPN's (fixed penalty notices), relatively minor offences such as, speeding, urinating in a public place, drunk and disorderly. These offences are dealt with by way of a fixed fine, usually £80 or £100, however should the recipient decide not to pay then they have the right to a court hearing,where they will usually if found guilty receive a larger fine than the original one. All court cases must start at the Magistrates court, even murder, the serious ones have one hearing at the magistrates and are then sent to the Crown Court as there is a limit on the maximum sentence that a magistrate can impose, back in my day it was iirc 12 months.
The unfortunate thing now with the CPS is that they are told to keep costs down and I have personally known cases where it has been a clear cut case with more than enough evidence to ensure a successful outcome yet the CPS wouldn't run with it. There was one recent case I knew of, I won't go into details, but the amount of evidence, not only forensic, but also in the form of cctv and witnesses was massive, however the CPS declined to run with it. This lead to a major argument between the detective running the case and the CPS legal people, the detective held his ground and in the end the case went to court, at the end of the day some very nasty people were locked up for a very long time. unfortunately these days we seem to be seeing some form of bullying tactics being used, take a law abiding bloke who's got a clean record, he ends up in a fight with someone trying to steal his car and gives the thief a beating, now the CPS are more likely to take that case to court than one involving a career criminal, it's based on outcomes, the law abiding bloke probably won't have a high powered brief and probably won't know all the questions to ask, so he's quite likely to be convicted, the career criminal on the other hand will know every trick in the book, I've even known people get off on a technicality because the caution wasn't worded correctly!
The Police too are target driven in a lot of cases, for instance did you know that different offences carry different points scores? A police officer is required in most forces to earn a specific number of points per month to show they are doing their job! Lets take the following scenario to show how silly this has become.
You are walking home from work and a drunken lout throws a punch at you hitting you in the face, you hit him back, he falls down and you ring the police, who arrive to deal with the matter. Now this is were it gets interesting,you tell the officer that you were minding your own business when out of nowhere this drunk punched you in the face, ok that is a reported crime, the officer arrests the drunk and scores one point. Now he asks you what you did when you were hit, you tell him you hit the guy back, naturally, this is classed as a detected crime, so the officer scores 2 points! See where I'm going with this? In the good old days the drunk would be carted off and charged with assault and being drunk and disorderly, you'd go home with a sore jaw. Now because of the points system, you could find yourself being charged too, madness!
The unfortunate thing now with the CPS is that they are told to keep costs down and I have personally known cases where it has been a clear cut case with more than enough evidence to ensure a successful outcome yet the CPS wouldn't run with it. There was one recent case I knew of, I won't go into details, but the amount of evidence, not only forensic, but also in the form of cctv and witnesses was massive, however the CPS declined to run with it. This lead to a major argument between the detective running the case and the CPS legal people, the detective held his ground and in the end the case went to court, at the end of the day some very nasty people were locked up for a very long time. unfortunately these days we seem to be seeing some form of bullying tactics being used, take a law abiding bloke who's got a clean record, he ends up in a fight with someone trying to steal his car and gives the thief a beating, now the CPS are more likely to take that case to court than one involving a career criminal, it's based on outcomes, the law abiding bloke probably won't have a high powered brief and probably won't know all the questions to ask, so he's quite likely to be convicted, the career criminal on the other hand will know every trick in the book, I've even known people get off on a technicality because the caution wasn't worded correctly!
The Police too are target driven in a lot of cases, for instance did you know that different offences carry different points scores? A police officer is required in most forces to earn a specific number of points per month to show they are doing their job! Lets take the following scenario to show how silly this has become.
You are walking home from work and a drunken lout throws a punch at you hitting you in the face, you hit him back, he falls down and you ring the police, who arrive to deal with the matter. Now this is were it gets interesting,you tell the officer that you were minding your own business when out of nowhere this drunk punched you in the face, ok that is a reported crime, the officer arrests the drunk and scores one point. Now he asks you what you did when you were hit, you tell him you hit the guy back, naturally, this is classed as a detected crime, so the officer scores 2 points! See where I'm going with this? In the good old days the drunk would be carted off and charged with assault and being drunk and disorderly, you'd go home with a sore jaw. Now because of the points system, you could find yourself being charged too, madness!
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