Sums it up really CPS bone idle lazy!

The CoP are always coming up with innovative wheezes (according to one’s point of view) to improve policing, so let me get my idea in quick before someone from the Dream Factory pinches it. Abolish the CPS and let the police carry out the prosecutions. WHAT! Too outrageous? It could never work! Well, it did, prior to 1984. It worked perfectly well, in fact. The police saw the case from start to finish, knew what charges to prefer and how to behave in court. In the simplest of cases (and so many of them are), the criminal was glad to get his case dealt with immediately and witnesses didn’t spend fruitless hours at court. But then such a revelation would put so many lazy, ill-informed, lack-lustre, wannabe lawyers out of a job – and whatever would they do when they couldn’t spent hours shuffling paper about at home instead of making decisions? No, you’re right. Getting criminals off the street and streamlining the criminal justice system would be far too reactionary.

We are on the same page here. But sadly as members of the dinosaur club our vast experience gathered over decades of policing the length and breath of this country will be ignored whilst people who are barely capable of tying their shoelaces get listened to.

CPS were way ahead of their time and the subsequent pre-pandemic madness,in adopting part time,working from home practices. This is just token words from the DPP. I think I have said this before about CPS...its their ball, their game and their rules. It is not in their interests to change, so they wont.

The CPS is just part of the problem. A decade plus of massive under investment in the entire criminal justice has left it on its knees. I saw a crown court case listed for May 2025 the other day. There is a lack of Judge's, Barristers, court staff and CPS lawyers. Hundreds of courts have been closed. Until Chief Constables start speaking up about this with a united message, policing will get the blame as the only public facing part of the machinery.

I agree, however the fact is todays Chief Constables can speak out about 'alleged' institutional racism, diversity, inclusivity, 'alleged' misogyny and 'bad cops' excluding themselves naturally!

I am ex job and subsequently became a lawyer including doing some prosecution work (not CPS). The current issues around Disclosure redaction are overly onerous and need addressing. Fault lies both with the CPS and the police. I have seen obvious lines of enquiry missed and prosecution threshold not net with a desire for people to be charged. When I gate kept Police charging decisions in the job (not GMP). I found many faults, some cops do not even understand basic points to proves, rules of law and procedure. The CPS leaving police stations and in some cases being unable or unwilling to understand evidence especially when offenders are a risk to the public that need dealing with immediately in remand scenarios. The Police media machine scoring points against the CPS is both unprofessional and unnecessary.

Another charging model that hides reality? What was it with rape investigations? The concept that police receive early investigative advice (EIA) from CPS lawyers to “assistâ€쳌 the investigation. More often than not, advice was to discontinue the investigation. Clearly some times, extremely valid. However early discontinuance rates have rocketed. Note this is counted as a police decision on discontinuance. I then hear the DPP on radio defending the terrible outcome rates for rape investigations and claiming aghh. It isn’t the CPS, the problem is that the cases are not coming to the CPS to review in the first place…failing to mention that his good lawyers were giving unrecorded advice and effectively decisions as far as Home Office outcome codes are concerned and claiming “it ain’t us guvâ€쳌. I nearly choked on my advacado on toast! But now from the police end, we have the Violence Against Women Taskgroup which is effectively trying by the back, side and any other non visible door to try and have charging standards for such offences lowered/manipulated claiming special circumstances of the offence type. Much of which not public. It is in danger of becoming a witchunt that will once again , and history proves this result in miscarriages of justice.

I joined in 86 so I never experienced it, but 'all' of the officers who had lamented it's passing.

As a young inspector pre CPS, when on morning duty Tuesday and Thursday I acted as the police prosecutor in thenpolice courts. You would go in and be given a box of files for that days cases. Have a quick look through them to see what they consisted of. Then up on your feet and start with the first case, bit of plea bargaining with defence solicitor e.g., drop no MOT for guilty pleas on no insurance, no driving licence, careless driving case done and dusted in 20 minutes and on to the next one, maybe a shoplifter etc,. No need for lengthy periods of considering the cases, with a host of silly questions for the reporting or arresting officers trying to guess wild and wonderful defences that never come up. Tge whole thing worked very well with time served magistrates who had heard all the common excuses before and were not impressed with them, with savvy that the CPS cannot envisage them to have these days.

I have no idea still while we have to submit a file suitable for crown court for a charging decision for common assault. Why can't we go back to the days of not having to redact everything just to get a charging decision. You can get that later. You do not need a VPS to make a charging decision

As a police detective for 20 of my 22 yrs service and now running my own private detective agency, I regularly cross paths with serving officers and in a most recent case the CPS. I consider myself extremely experienced and expert in evidence gathering and proving a case for our clients, as are my ex police detective colleagues. However, I have been really disappointed with the lack of expertise in interrogation, evidence gathering and general police investigations and more than puzzled by the Jack of understanding in one of our cases (where we had to actually conduct the full investigation and present a full evidence file to a certain north west force) where our evidence package was 100% solid gold. The suspect just required charging. The CID D/Sgt was given the case to just tidy up, was disappointingly lacking in even basic understanding of criminal law and burden of proof and tried to pass this offence of theft of £60k worth of goods as a ‘civil case’!! We literally had to apply pressure for him to treat it as crime and eventually it went to CPS. It was returned as no case to answer - there was no proof of theft (even though the mass of evidence stated otherwise) and after three attempts to get them to review the file they continued to kick it back. We were all astounded. I wasn’t aware whether it but the CPS solicitors were sat watching daytime tv with their laptop on their knees when they decided on this case, but whoever it was made good bedfellows with the less than useless DS.

Can they play Blu Ray discs yet??