Last night’s Panorama programme, available here on iPlayer, raises the serious issue of the ‘caution culture’ that has arisen in the police in the past 10 years.
The programme featured victims of serious crimes whose assailants have been reprimanded with cautions and fixed penalty notices instead of facing court. This debate over cautions is, at its root, a debate as to the purpose of the police service: is it to bring cases before a court for justice to be administered in public or to administer justice themselves in private?
A caution for an offender is often the ‘easy way out’ and used by the police as a convenient alternative to court action. It also helps to boosts a force’s or a BCU’s detection rate, a common component in performance related pay of senior police officers.
The Magistrates’ Association have long warned against increased police powers to administer justice, fearing they will be misused by the police. They have been joined by a somewhat unexpected voice: that of Met Boss Sir Paul Stephenson.
As far back as September, he was criticising the approach pioneered under Labour where fixed penalty notices and cautions were used in lieu of court action:
I have a real concern that it reduces the respect, majesty and full, proper implementation of what should be the right system [...] In a way we have been going down a line of, instead of finding the right system we have been finding a way around it.
He goes on to argue offences should be brought before a court and justice dispensed there:
“I think we have to look again at the number of times we do cautions and we have to look again at fixed-penalty tickets. We have to look again at how we can make the summary justice system dynamic, faster and responsive so we can have magistrates giving the right sentence. I think that magistrates would support this.”
He has continued these attacks on the caution culture at the weekend:
“The outcome [of the rise in cautions] has been an almost uncontrollable increase in cautions and the introduction of the fixed penalty ticket, which in the public’s mind equates to a parking ticket, which should not be [the case] with theft and thuggery,”
Once again, we find ourselves in agreement with Sir Paul.
Related posts:
- Magistrates’ Association on New Police Powers The Magistrates' Association has criticised the Government's proposals for new...
- MET Police Credit Cards #1 The Metropolitan Police is having problems with its officers issued...
- “Police are there as Public Servants” Events of the past week in HMP Britain have underlined...
- End to Right to Trial by Jury in England and Wales Article 6 of the European Human Rights Act and the...
- Sussex Police loses Richard Taylor Inquiry Report In early 2007, we sent Sussex Police an Freedom of...