One in five women and one in ten men suffer from the obsessive attention of a stalker at some point in their life. British Crime Survey figures show that up to five million people experience stalking or harassment every year, but only around 8,000 people are convicted of harassment-related offences each year.

According to the national charity Protection Against Stalking, “Stalking and harassment is life changing. It causes intimidation, loss of jobs and relationships, the victim to move home, fear and sometimes death to the victim. The behavioural characteristics of the stalker are easily recognised but yet practitioners in the Criminal Justice System time and time again have failed to identify, assess and manage the risk due to a lack of understanding and inadequate training.” Laura Richards, a psychologist with Protection Against Stalking, said: “Victims are rarely taken seriously and most of the time they are told that the police cannot do anything and ‘their hands are tied by the law’. Too often we hear that perpetrators have rights, while victims only have codes and charters.”

The ‘Call to End Violence Against Women and Girls – Action Plan’ was published earlier this year. Key actions from the plan include making data on regional levels of violence against women – including domestic abuse, sexual assault and stalking – more accessible to ensure resources are targeted to where they are most needed. A new national stalking group was promised to support the work of the Association of Chief Police Officers and the Crown Prosecution Service in improving the police response to stalking.

Now it looks as if stalking could become a new criminal offence following an online consultation announced on Monday. Views are sought on how best to tackle this crime and provide protection for victims, on whether specific offences of ‘stalking’ and ‘cyber stalking’ should be added to existing harassment laws, and what training and guidance is needed for police and prosecutors. Home Secretary Theresa May said: “I am determined to ensure that victims of stalking have the protection and support they need. We are particularly interested in hearing from those with direct experience – victims, police and the courts.”

Speaking in Manchester, at the first of four regional events taking place on stalking, the minister for equalities and criminal information, Lynne Featherstone, said: “Stalking is an issue which profoundly affects many lives, often in devastating ways…There are campaigners and police I have talked to who believe the actual words of ‘stalking’ and ‘cyber stalking’ need to be in the act.” She promised that the Government would give more help to victims of stalking following the consultation. “It is quite clear that they are being let down but this government’s ambition is nothing less than ending violence against women and girls,” she said.

Closing date for contributions to the consultation is 5 February 2012. Provision for online submissions can be found at:

http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/publications/about-us/consultations/stalking-consultation/

Dangerous drivers who seriously injure others could spend longer in jail thanks to a new criminal offence.

For the vast majority of dangerous driving cases the maximum penalty of two years’ imprisonment provides the courts with sufficient and proportionate powers to punish offenders. The new offence of ‘causing serious injury by dangerous driving’ will carry a maximum sentence of five years in prison and allow the courts to impose tougher punishments on dangerous drivers.

Announcing the new offence, justice secretary Kenneth Clarke said: “Dangerous driving can destroy lives and have a devastating effect on victims and their families and friends. We have listened to the victims of dangerous drivers, their families, MPs, judges and road safety groups and their experiences have directly informed these changes. Making our roads safer is a priority – five people died on our roads each day last year, so we need to do everything we can to further improve safety.”

Road safety minister Mike Penning said: “The vast majority of motorists are safe and responsible but the wilfully reckless minority who put lives in danger must face serious penalties. We are taking action to help the police tackle drink and drug driving, as well as to crack down on uninsured and dangerous drivers, and this new offence will mean the courts can properly punish those who inflict serious injuries.” The change was welcomed by Andrew Howard, Head of Road Safety at the AA, who said: “These law changes should make sentences more proportionate to the devastation dangerous driving causes and should also deter people from driving badly.”

The changes will be taken forward as part of the Government’s Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill, which is rapidly becoming a grab bag of last minute proposals. The bill comes before the House of Commons again this week at Report stage. So far the bill, including plans to cut legal aid and curb payouts, which could benefit the insurance industry to the tune of £1bn a year, has been piloted through the Commons by justice minister Jonathan Djanogly. Djanogly has investments worth at least £250,000 in companies with insurance arms. His brother in law, in whose companies Djanogly’s children were shareholders, also stands to gain. Labour’s justice spokesman Andy Slaughter recently wrote to cabinet secretary Gus O’Donnell calling for an investigation into Djanogly. Slaughter pointed to conflict of interest claims, given that the minister had neither resigned nor removed himself from discussions from which he could personally profit.

The outcome was that Djanogly has been stripped of his responsibility to regulate firms that ‘ambulance chase’ the public. According to the ‘Guardian’, in reply to Slaughter, O’Donnell said that while there is “no suggestion of any impropriety in relation” to Djanogly’s brother-in-law’s firms that “for the avoidance of doubt decisions about the regulation of individual (claims management companies) should henceforth be handled by another minister.”

The justice secretary will now be in charge of the industry, but this still leaves Djanogly in charge of legal aid and civil litigation, which means he will be able to identify growth areas for claims management companies. It will be interesting to see what role he plays in the Commons this week.

Schools are out, and the long summer break is the time when many girls – the estimate is 500 to 2000 – will fly, unsuspecting, to Africa, the Middle East and parts of the Far East, ostensibly for a holiday, but in fact to be circumcised.

Female genital mutilation (FGM) includes procedures that intentionally alter or injure female genital organs for non-medical reasons. It has no health benefits for girls and women and is internationally recognised as a violation of the human rights of girls and women. An estimated 100 to 140 million girls and women worldwide are currently living with the consequences of FGM. It is mostly carried out on young girls at some time between infancy and age 15 years. In Africa an estimated 92 million girls from 10 years of age and above have undergone FGM. Procedures can cause severe bleeding and problems urinating, and later potential childbirth complications and newborn deaths. Speaking in a Commons debate last Tuesday, Tory MP Jane Ellison said: “In every case, the health of the girl or woman is damaged, often irreparably. What is most shocking of all is that a great many of these criminal acts are perpetrated against girls aged 10 and under, right down to infants. It is “the unkindest cut of all”, as FGM is carried out in the full knowledge of those who are supposed to protect their children – their families.”

FGM’s prevalence in the UK is difficult to estimate because of the hidden nature of the crime. A recent study based on census data suggested that over 20,000 girls under the age of 15 could be at high risk of FGM in England and Wales each year, and nearly 66,000 women in England and Wales are living with the consequences of FGM. Asha-Kin Duale, a community partnership adviser in Camden, is quoted in the ‘Observer’as saying: “”FGM has a social function and until this is understood by social services and other bodies they will never stop it. It is a power negotiation mechanism, that women use to ensure respect from men. It prevents rape of daughters and is a social tool to allow women to regain some power in patriarchal societies.”

The Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003 makes it illegal to practice FGM in the UK. It also makes it illegal to take girls who are British nationals or permanent residents of the UK abroad for FGM, whether or not it is lawful in that country, and to aid, abet, counsel or procure the carrying out of FGM abroad. It provides for a penalty of up to 14 years in prison. In the Commons, however, Jane Ellison lamented that: “Since 2008, there have been more than 100 Met investigations into cases of FGM, but despite that, and even though FGM has been illegal since 1985, there have been no convictions to date. France has made more than 100 successful prosecutions.”

The government has launched new guidelines to support front-line professionals such as teachers, health professionals, police officers and social workers to prevent and tackle FGM. Replying to the Commons debate, Home Office minister Jeremy Wright said: “We need to broaden awareness more generally and we have sent out some 40,000 leaflets and 40,000 posters…because wider society needs to understand what is happening. We also need to assist victims, which we are doing with 15 specialist NHS clinics offering a range of services, including so-called reversal surgery. Finally, this is a cross-government issue. It is not simply the Home Office that must act but the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Department for Education and the Department of Health.”

The full text of ‘Multi-Agency guidelines: Female Genital Mutilation’ can be found at:

http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/publications/crime/FGM?view=Binary

ASBOs were brought in by Tony Blair as part of his Respect agenda in 1999, but since 2005 their issue has fallen by almost half. Now the Home Secretary has confirmed that the term ASBO is to be dropped. In what is described as “a radical streamlining exercise”, the battery of 19 different powers, including ASBOs, developed by the Labour government to tackle antisocial behaviour, is to be replaced by five orders containing similar powers.

In launching a consultation exercise on these proposals, Theresa May said: “Despite more than a decade of targets, government initiatives and seemingly endless legislation, the police receive over 3.5 million reports of antisocial behaviour a year, and many more incidents are reported to councils or social landlords, or not reported at all.” The buzzword is ‘toolkit’. The Under-Secretary of State for Crime Prevention, James Brokenshire, said: “Instead of providing a specific tool to deal with every problem, we aim to introduce a handful of faster, more flexible and more effective tools that allow practitioners to protect victims and communities and get to the root of the problem…an effective toolkit to deal with anti-social behaviour – one that is quick, practical, easy to use and provides a real deterrent to perpetrators”.

The key proposals are to replace the ASBO and a range of other court orders targeted at anti-social individuals with new tools:
• Criminal Behaviour Orders – civil preventative orders that could be attached to a conviction, to protect the public from behaviour that causes or is likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress.
• Crime Prevention Injunctions – designed to stop anti-social behaviour before it escalates. The injunction would carry a civil burden of proof, making it quicker and easier to obtain than the ASBO.
• Community protection orders (level one) – to replace litter clearing, graffiti removal and noise abatement notices.
• Community protection orders (level two) – to replace crackhouse and brothel closure orders, designated public place orders, special interim management orders, gating orders and dog control orders.
• Police “direction” power – to replace dispersal orders and direction to leave powers, giving the police and community support officers the power to tell any individual causing or likely to cause crime or disorder to leave a particular place, and to confiscate related items, such as alcoholic drinks.
• Community trigger – similar to the “community call to action” on the statute book since April 2009, police action can be triggered by five individuals from different households.

Bob Reitemeier, Chief Executive of The Children’s Society, said: “This appears to be more of a rebranding exercise than anything else and is a missed opportunity to adopt a more effective approach for dealing with children and young people who are deemed to be anti-social.” He added: “From our experience strategies that seek to tackle issues through mediation and conflict resolution can be much more effective than using criminal or civil sanctions.”

Your views on the proposals are sought, and you have until 3 May. The full text of  the consultation paper ‘More effective responses to anti-social behaviour’ is at:

http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/publications/consultations/cons-2010-antisocial-behaviour/asb-consultation-document?view=Binary

There are two main sources of official statistics on crime: the police recorded series and the British Crime Survey (BCS). The BCS is a nationally representative sample survey of the population resident in households in England and Wales, now based on more than 45,000 respondents.
 
As a household based survey, the BCS does not cover all offences or all population groups. While police recorded crime has a wider coverage of offences, including crimes such as drug and sexual offences, and covers the entire population, it does not include those crimes not reported to the police. Both sources have their strengths and weaknesses but together provide a more comprehensive picture than either on its own. Home Secretary Theresa May has announced a review by the national statistician, with the publication of crime statistics transferred from the Home Office to an independent body to improve “public trust and confidence in crime statistics.”

The most striking new finding within the latest report is that both the 2009/10 BCS and police recorded crime are consistent in showing falls in overall crime compared with 2008/09. Overall BCS crime decreased by nine per cent (from 10.5 million crimes to 9.6 million crimes), and police recorded crime by eight per cent (from 4.7 million to 4.3 million crimes). Both sources are consistent in showing marked falls in vehicle crime (BCS vehicle-related theft down 17% and police recorded vehicle crime down 16%). In addition, the 9% fall in domestic burglary from the BCS is broadly in line with the 6% reduction recorded by the police. The 2009/10 BCS shows there were an estimated 659,000 domestic burglary incidents in England and Wales. The number of incidents of theft from the person fell by 28 per cent. Overall police recorded property crime fell by ten per cent between 2008/09 and 2009/10, from 3,352,989 offences to 3,032,182. There were falls in all main recorded property crime categories.

Over recent years there has been an overall reduction in violent crime estimated by the BCS, consistent with trends in police recorded crime. The murder rate in England and Wales has fallen from 644 to 619 over the last year to its lowest level for 12 years. Police recorded violence against the person fell by four per cent between 2008/09 and 2009/10. Longer term trends from the BCS show violent crime down by 50 per cent from its peak in 1995. Sexual offences recorded by the police increased between 2008/09 and 2009/10 by six per cent. Within this category, there was a seven per cent increase in ‘Most serious sexual crime’ and a two per cent increase in ‘Other sexual offences’ over the same period. This increase coincides with steps the police have been taking to improve the recording of serious sexual offences. Police recorded drug offences fell by four per cent between 2008/09 and 2009/10, this being the first year-on-year fall since the police were given greater powers to issue warnings for cannabis possession in 2004/05, which account for over two-thirds of drug offences.

There is a clear pattern from the BCS of crime reaching a peak in 1995 with a subsequent decline, with overall crime down by 50 per cent since 1995. The full 200 page text of the ‘Crime in England and Wales 2009/10’ report, full of fascinating details, charts and diagrams, can be found at:

http://rds.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs10/hosb1210.pdf

One of the more surprising pledges in the Coalition programme for government was to extend anonymity in rape cases to defendants. Such a move would turn the clock back to 1976, when the Sexual Offences Act introduced anonymity for those accused of rape. That provision was repealed in 1988. Shortly after the Coalition pledge, which provoked a storm of adverse publicity, deputy prime minister Nick Clegg signalled a willingness to drop the government’s plans when he told Parliament: “I want to make it clear that, although the Government have proposed the idea, we want to listen to everybody who has a stake or expertise in or insight into the matter. If our idea does not withstand sincere scrutiny, we will of course be prepared to change it.”

Now it would seem that the government has abandoned these plans. When asked in the Commons last week if he will conduct a public consultation on whether to grant anonymity to defendants in rape cases, justice minister Crispin Blunt said: “The Government are minded to strengthen anonymity before charge. We want to hear the views of those who may have any new evidence to assist our deliberations, and we will bring our conclusions to Parliament in the autumn.” However, he went on to say: “Since the principal points of judgment around the issue are clear and very narrow…the Government do not propose to manage a full, formal public consultation.” Crucially he added: “We want in the first instance to try to find a non-statutory solution, and given that we had 21 Criminal Justice Acts passed over the 13 years of the last Administration, I am sure that Labour Members will understand why we are loath to find even more statutes to put on the statute book.”

Instead the government will negotiate with the Press Complaints Commission to persuade newspapers and websites to grant anonymity to suspects. “It was agreed on both sides of the House when the Sexual Offences Act 2003 went through Parliament that all people charged with offences ought to have their identity protected until the point of charge. That is the guidance that the Press Complaints Commission put into effect in 2004.” He added that there is an issue around the strength of that guidance which required attention. According to the ‘Guardian’, Government sources said the minister had not performed a U-turn because ministers had not committed themselves to changing the law. Ministers are still committed to granting anonymity to suspects between arrest and charge and believe that a change in the PCC code is the best way of achieving this.

That was the question posed by the Ministry of Justice. Even though juries decide less than 1% of all criminal cases in England and Wales, defendants in these cases are charged with the most serious criminal offences and face the greatest possible loss of liberty. The fairness of jury decision-making is of fundamental importance to the criminal justice system. The MoJ  therefore commissioned research from a University College London team led by Professor Cheryl Thomas, who presented their report last week. And the broad conclusion is that juries are indeed fair and efficient.

 The scope of  the UCL research is impressive. It involved case simulation with real juries at Crown Courts (involving 797 jurors on 68 juries), large-scale analysis of all actual jury verdicts in 2006–08 (over 68,000 verdicts) and post-verdict survey of jurors (668 jurors in 62 cases). As to efficiency, once a jury is sworn it reaches a verdict by deliberation on 89% of all charges (judges direct jury verdicts on 11% of charges) and they reach verdicts on virtually all charges (only 0.6% of all verdicts are hung juries). Juries convict on almost two-thirds (64%) of all charges presented to them and are rarely discharged (less than 1% of sworn juries).

 The research examined how fair the jury decision-making process is, specifically whether all- white juries discriminate against BME defendants, who are three and half times more likely to face a jury verdict in the Crown Court relative to their representation in the general population, and whether jurors racially stereotype defendants. The key finding was that verdicts of all-white juries do not discriminate against BME defendants. Jury verdicts showed only small differences based on defendant ethnicity. White and Asian defendants both had a 63% jury conviction rate; Black defendants had a 67% jury conviction rate.

 On specific offences, the category of homicide-related offences has some of the lowest jury conviction rates (threatening to kill 36%, manslaughter 48%, attempted murder 47%) but also some of the highest jury conviction rates (death by dangerous driving 85%, murder 77%). Offences where the strongest direct evidence is likely to exist against a defendant appear to have the highest conviction rates (making indecent photographs of a child 89%, drugs possession with intent to supply 84%, death by dangerous driving 85%). Contrary to popular belief and previous government reports, juries actually convict more often than they acquit in rape cases (55% jury conviction rate). Other serious offences (attempted murder, manslaughter, GBH) have lower jury conviction rates than rape.

 The team also looked at whether or not jurors understood judge’s legal advice. Most jurors at Blackfriars (69%) and Winchester (68%) felt they were able to understand the directions, while most jurors at Nottingham (51%) felt the directions were difficult to understand. While over half of the jurors perceived the judge’s directions as easy to understand, only a minority (31%) actually understood the directions fully in the legal terms used by the judge. Younger jurors were better able than older jurors to comprehend the legal instructions, with comprehension of directions on the law declining as the age of the juror increased. The review also found that in high profile cases almost three-quarters of jurors will be aware of media coverage of their case, and 20% of jurors said they found it difficult to put these reports out of their mind while serving as a juror. All jurors who looked for information about their case during the trial looked on the internet, thereby admitting to something they should have been told by the judge not to do.  

The full text of this fascinating report ‘Are Juries Fair?’ can be found at:

http://www.justice.gov.uk/about/docs/are-juries-fair-research.pdf

The Coroners and Justice Act 2009 has cropped up in these blogs several times before. This grab-bag of an Act covers a wide range of subjects. Apart from coroners and inquests, it deals with murder, indecent photographs, anonymity of witnesses, live links to court, confiscation orders, legal aid, criminal memoirs, and many other matters.

The latest section to be implemented is s.59, which deals with encouraging or assisting suicide. Previously, s.2 of the Suicide Act 1961 comprised two offences. This amendment replaces the substantive offence of aiding, abetting, counselling or procuring suicide, and the separate offence of attempting to commit the section 2 offence, with a single offence. The purpose of these changes is to “improve public understanding of the law in this area; and make clear that the law applies to online actions in exactly the same way as it does offline”. In line with the Law Commission’s recommendation, s.59 also replaces the “old-fashioned language” with what the Ministry of Justice considers “the more modern – and equivalent – terms of encouraging or assisting which should make it easier for people to understand the sort of behaviour that the law prohibits”. The scope of the law remains the same, so these changes, which came into effect on 1 February, do not make liable to prosecution anyone who was not liable before.

The subject of assisted suicide is rarely out of the headlines. In recent weeks one devoted mother who helped her sick daughter to end her life with tablets and morphine walked free from court with a suspended sentence. Another was jailed for murder, to serve a minimum of nine years, after injecting her brain-damaged son with a lethal dose of heroin. Both involved a loving parent who could not bear to see a child suffer. But there were key differences. Frances Inglis’s son had never indicated an intention to die. His mother believed him to be in pain and could not accept an encouraging medical prognosis. Kay Gilderdale’s daughter had contemplated going to the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland. When a first attempt at suicide failed, her mother helped her to end her life. These cases highlight the acute difficulties for prosecutors, judges and juries alike, and add to the pressure for greater clarity in the law.

In his moving and funny Richard Dimbleby lecture the other week, author Terry Pratchett, who has Alzheimer’s disease, made a plea for a common-sense solution. He proposed “some kind of strictly non-­aggressive tribunal that would establish the facts of the case well before the assisted death takes place. The members of the tribunal would be acting for the good of society as well as that of the applicant – horrible word – to ensure they are of sound and informed mind, firm in their purpose, suffering from a life-threatening and incurable disease and not under the ­influence of a third party”. Death, as a character, ­appeared in the first of his splendid Discworld novels, and he said that “he has evolved in the series to be one of its most popular characters; implacable, because that is his job, he appears to have some sneaking regard and compassion for a race of creatures which are to him as ephemeral as mayflies, but which nevertheless spend their brief lives making rules for the universe and counting the stars”. But death always has the last word.

The full text of  MoJ Circular 2010/03, implementing s.59, can be found at: http://www.justice.gov.uk/publications/docs/circular-03-2010-assisting-encouraging-suicide.pdf

This week John Twomey, for the fourth time, is on trial on charges in connection with a robbery at Heathrow airport in 2004. The particular significance of this trial, involving three other defendents at the Royal Courts of Justice, is that, for the first time in some 400 years, a trial on very serious criminal charges is being held without a jury.

The bungled armed robbery of a Menzies World Cargo warehouse in February 2004, in which the four men are alleged to have taken part, has already given rise to three trials at a cost of over £20 million, which is more than ten times the amount stolen. The third trial collapsed after what the judge called a “serious attempt at jury tampering” and led to the application for a judge-only trial. Last March Mr Justice Calvert-Smith concluded that a package of measures to provide jury protection would be sufficient to reduce the risk to an acceptable level. The Court of Appeal disagreed. Even if such steps were taken, the likelihood of tampering was so substantial, the judges said, as to make it necessary for a trial without a jury. The decision that there should be a judge-only trial was made by the Lord Chief Justice and two other judges in an historic ruling which was the subject of blog ‘Trial without Jury’, posted last November. In summary, they held that the two conditions required by s. 44 Criminal Justice Act 2003 were met:-

“…
(4) The first condition is that there is evidence of a real and present danger that jury tampering would take place.

(5) The second condition is that, notwithstanding any steps (including the provision of police protection) which might reasonably be taken to prevent jury tampering, the likelihood that it would take place would be so substantial as to make it necessary in the interests of justice for the trial to be conducted without a jury.”

Writing in ‘The Times’, Frances Gibb says that a series of special arrangements and procedures have been devised for the trial because of the absence of a jury. The trial is expected to be far shorter and is listed for three months, whereas the last trial to collapse had already run for six months and reached only the end of the prosecution case. “Mr Justice Treacy will be both judge and jury: he will resolve matters of law and have to do ‘mental gymnastics’, as one barrister put it, if he excludes evidence as inadmissable — trying to put it out of his mind and to pretend he has never seen it”. He will have available before him all the witness statements, whereas juries have no such access. The four defendants are expected to be cross-examined in the usual way but barristers are preparing to adapt their style to take account of the absence of a jury. They will be briefer and less painstaking. At the end, the verdict will be pronounced not by a foreman of the jury but by one judge of the High Court.

In his decision last June Lord Judge took into account the cost of protection for jurors, concluding that “it would be unreasonable to impose that package with its drain on financial resources and police manpower”. Writing in the ‘Guardian’, Marcel Berlins expresses his concerns about “money being a factor in a case in which an accused’s liberty is at stake…the suspicion exists that the right to jury trial will, in future, be increasingly affected by the cost of justice and not its content”.

Following widespread concern about the use of cautions to deal with violent offenders, justice secretary Jack Straw has this week announced a review into the way in which cautions, formal warnings and on the spot fines are used, and their impact on the courts in England and Wales. The review will also look at the use of fixed penalty notices. It will be carried out by the Office for Criminal Justice Reform, a cross-departmental team supporting all criminal justice agencies, and involve HM Inspectorate of Constabulary and the Crown Prosecution Service.  

 

According to ‘The Times’, half of all criminal cases in England and Wales are punished out of court. Last year up to 40,000 cases of assault were dealt with by a caution despite guidelines that say they should not normally be used for violent or sexual offences. Jack Straw told BBC Radio 4’s The World at One programme that “the guidance about cautioning is actually very clear. It says a simple caution should be used for low-level offending. Only in exceptional circumstances should it be used to deal with more serious offences…What we are going to look at is how that guidance is properly applied.” Asked if no violent offence more serious than common assault would in future be dealt with out of court, he said “that is basically the way the system is supposed to operate at the moment and we will certainly be looking very clearly at that.” The justice secretary went on to deny that the Government had encouraged the use of cautions and fixed-penalty notices to ease the pressure on overcrowded jails. He said that in most cases the offences being dealt with by the penalties would not previously have led to any police action.

The justice secretary’s concerns are shared by the DPP and by Britain’s leading policeman, as reported respectively in ‘The Times’ and the ‘Sunday Times’. Keir Starmer said that while there was a proper place for trivial offences to be dealt with outside the courts, the system had developed in an incoherent way and needed to be looked at again. “My view is there should be a structured, tiered approach which specifies what case will be dealt with at what level — and will be transparent.” Sir Paul Stephenson said that attempts to reduce pressure on courts and prisons meant that the police are expected to assume a criminal justice role. “The outcome of that 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”, and should not be used for “theft and thuggery”.

According to statistics published in the ‘Guardian’, a total of 2.2 million people were cautioned between 2000 and 2008, including more than 550,000 who were given repeat cautions. And as Marcel Berlins points out in the same newspaper, the police are issuing more cautions and fixed penalties “to offenders who, two or three years ago, would have had to stand trial and be legally represented”.