The thing is, few of these cases make it to trial, because the CPS has to demonstrate it’s in the public interest.
The result is that the police are still opening investigations they are asked to, and the CPS is still examining them; it’s a lot of energy spent on no outcome.
That is the actual problem, not the prosecutions, which remain unusual from what I can see.
There needs to be better guidance on the relevant legal standards. Separately we need to do something about (civil) libel laws, but that is a parallel and not criminal law issue.
I mean, the law _is_ selectively enforced, and it's the CPS' job to decide who to prosecute. That's not so much a legal issue as a social/structure and purpose of police issue.
Moreover in terms of the general law and how that law should or shouldn't be written, I can only recommend this discussion which is more detailed than any discussion we could have here and a more informed source:
...Yes, those don't seem to be persuasive, especially when the laws prevent the defendant from properly conducting their investigation by denying them large and important classes of information, and even more so when the police are required to investigate the prosecution's case for them. This seems like a major failure mode for the entire judicial system.
In the UK, the Crown Prosecution Service is supposed to act in the public interest. Not indulge the public's every whim.
It's an imperfect system, but they do put a lot of care into weighing the different factors, far more than I ever will. I'm happy it's their job and not mine.
It is pretty much how policing works in the UK. Declare it a civil matter, get it off the books as soon as possible... and that's not mentioning the mountain of police misconduct court cases that have popped up recently.
Sadly the only chance of getting anything out of them is if the media get involved and hold their feet in the fire a bit.
Most of these articles I have read in the past few years always leave me with the same question. Why is there not more focus on the police investigation. Why did they police decide not to press charges? If our police forces are failing to press charges against rapists, shouldn't that be a big priority to change? Aren't the police more accountable to the electorate than Microsoft's internal HR policy. I feel like there are a lot of questions that aren't brought up. Do people believe that the standard of evidence for Police is too high but isn't politically possible to change? If the police standard of evidence is too high, what should the standard of evidence be? What should the standard of evidence be for Microsoft? If someone files a police complain but that complaint is dismissed for lack of evidence, how exactly should Microsoft evaluate that claim?
I just feel like many of these articles stop short of discussing obvious questions, and it leaves me suspicious.
We may need to wait for the report to be clear on where the failures were, but there's lots going on there.
Part of the context of that has to be a pretty systemic UK-wide issue affecting public institutions where child-abuse was ignored. It's not clear that heavy-handed policing, in that context, would lead to a different result. It certainly wouldn't in many high profile cases, where police had been strongly encouraged to ignore the issue.
Not the police. It's a failure of the courts. Prosecutors are simply not charging or reducing charges for these offenders. The police routinely arrest the same people over and over again - including for gun charges! But the courts let them out.
Case in point. A couple of teens stole a car, smashed it into another car, killed a 6mo old and put his mother in the hospital. The charges? Trespassing.
To me, this really doesn't have to do with CP, but with police that over reach and are not punished for that. It happens in non-CP cases, and the result is the same, no punishment.
Indeed. I've recently had an issue along those lines albeit on a lesser scale as a witness. The police were more interested in securing a good case for the CPS than actually fairly evaluating the situation. I was actually advised that my statement should only refer to the facts which were likely to aid a conviction rather than be a fair and balanced account of what happened. The moment a conviction was not obviously going to happen, they recommended that I withdraw my statement before they submit the case to the CPS.
I wrote an addendum sheet for the statement instead stating that they'd asked me to do that. That didn't go down well so I better move to another area if I want any policing or assistance in the future...
For ref, no-one was hurt other than insurance companies in this case. Two idiots bounced a car off each other at 20mph - neither need prosecuting.
I think the only real catching point is that the courts don't care about rights nor are police willing to really investigate claims against another officer. I have some very recent/on-going experience with this. There was a trooper who knowingly held a false charge against us, leading to restrictions in our freedoms and small costs. I contacted a civil rights attorney who told me the courts don't care unless we sustained significant costs/damages. Recovering costs would be great, but we would mostly like to see protections put into place so this doesn't happen to others (and maybe get this bad trooper removed). I filed one successful complaint against him. Then he took further actions and I filed another complaint. That complaint was closed without any investigation or justification - they didn't even tell me they were closing it.
As someone who works on investigations into such offences; this weighs on my mind constantly.
There are perhaps one or two cases (out of several hundred) that still have me lying awake at night. In deeper moments of reflection I know I made the right call on them, but I still worry about it, as part of the process of self-assessment. Sadly I don't always see so much concern in others within the same field.
Child abuse is one of those horribly amoral crimes that clouds our personnel opinions, and so often I see prosecutors who simply hate the defendant on a personnel level. That sort of approach sickens me, it is exactly the sort of approach that screwed this guy; from the cop to the judge it was the same problem.
I can't talk for anyone else, but stories like this mean that tomorrow, as with every day, I make damned sure I am certain of what I find out. To the extend of putting my own liberty behind what I present. This sort of thing should be required reading in our field...
I don't think the correct takeaway is that we're OK with law enforcement looking the other way. Clearly that is the best route to solve this issue, and we need more oversight into why certain cases are handled in this way and why. What is the priority of law enforcement, and where is the time allocation for case follow-up.
The problem is that because the front line reports and trusts the back line to investigate, and then the back line jumps to conclusions by assuming the front line only reports serious problems. Same problem when cops arrest and trust the lawyers, lawyers prosecute because they trust the cops, and juries convict because they trust the lawyers, and no one actually engages in critical thinking.
I wonder if achieving that balance is somehow surprisingly hard. I'm sure the police could do better, but prosecuting a crime is a big deal with lots of steps involved. Its seems not quite natural to apply that process to something like the crime of pooping on the sidewalk, but yet we don't want people doing that.
The result is that the police are still opening investigations they are asked to, and the CPS is still examining them; it’s a lot of energy spent on no outcome.
That is the actual problem, not the prosecutions, which remain unusual from what I can see.
There needs to be better guidance on the relevant legal standards. Separately we need to do something about (civil) libel laws, but that is a parallel and not criminal law issue.
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