Britain: More than 2,000 serious criminal cases thrown out after prosecutors were not ready

More than 2,000 cases that should have gone to trial in the Crown Court were thrown out last year because they were not ready, a watchdog says today. The cases involve serious offences including burglary, theft, assault occasioning actual bodily harm, possession of drugs and possession with intent to supply drugs.

The inspectors of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) say today in their report on the performance of the service that even though this throw-out rate is better than it was, it remains poor. In total 2,325 cases were lost because prosecutors were not ready to proceed. The cases come before magistrates, who decide if the cases should be sent to the Crown Court for trial. Under pressure not to grant repeated adjournments for prosecutors, magistrates are increasingly taking a tough line and discharging cases when papers are not ready, evidence not complete or witnesses not lined up.

Stephen Wooler, the chief inspector of the CPS, said that the issue had been flagged up in the inspectors’ previous report and “yet there continues to be too high a number”, he said. The total represented 2.5 per cent of all cases destined for the Crown Court. That was particularly the case now that the CPS had taken over responsibility for bringing charges and therefore should have sufficient evidence to lay a charge in the first place.

The discharge rate is slightly better than for 2005-06, when it was 2,420; and for 2004-05, when it was 3,444. Thousands of cases are thrown out by the CPS itself before they even get to court. In the year up to March last year, the CPS decided before a charge had been laid that there should be no further action because of insufficient evidence in 169,821 cases and on public interest grounds in 16,276 cases.

After charge, the cases are continually reviewed. In the same year, the CPS stopped proceedings in 107,651 cases in the magistrates’ courts — or nearly 11 per cent of the 998,910 cases that went to trial before magistrates; and a further 12,102 Crown Court cases, or 13.1 per cent of all the 92,340 cases that went to crown court trial.

In general the inspectorate report found that the CPS had improved its performance, with higher conviction rates in both magistrates’ courts and the Crown Court. At the same time the courts’ workload had fallen, with more offences dealt with through increasing the use of cautions, fixed penalty notices and formal warnings. Out of 42 CPS areas in England and Wales, five were rated as excellent: Humberside, Lincolnshire, Norfolk, South Yorkshire and Warwickshire; 15 were assessed as good; and 20 as fair. Two areas, Leicestershire and Surrey, were assessed as poor. The report says that these latter areas “were the subject of inspections during 2006-07 and both are starting to address the concerns, under new management teams and with the benefit of assistance from CPS headquarters”.

Mr Wooler said that the CPS now needed to focus on its core area of magistrates’ courts’ work. “The policies of taking over charging, and also of doing more advocacy work in the Crown Court, are both very sound policies — but they are very intensive and has meant the CPS’s resources are stretched.” The CPS welcomed the report’s finding that more areas had qualified for the “excellence” rating and that nearly all 42 areas were up to standard.

Report here



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