Greater Manchester's Chief Constable Stephen Watson has said police should be given the power to charge suspects in most criminal cases. Mr Watson is one of three police chiefs calling for the controversial change, which they say would help fix the crisis in the criminal justice system.
They say police should be able to authorise charges in the majority of cases, including burglary, robbery, theft, domestic abuse, knife crime and violent crime. Currently the Crown Prosecution Service has sole power to authorise charges, except in some minor cases.
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If enacted the move would in effect see a return to the way the system operated before 1986, when the CPS was created. But the proposal has been criticised by one leading barrister, who described it as 'plain daft' and no substitute for a properly funded justice system.
Writing in Monday's Guardian, Mr Watson and the chief constables of West Midlands and West Yorkshire forces said the CPS should concentrate on the most serious cases as it is 'far too thinly spread'.
Delays in charging decisions have led to fewer cases being resolved as victims feel 'worn down... and unsupported by a seemingly faceless and insensitive system', they wrote, adding: "Where is the evidence to support our call? In March 2015, 16% of crimes were resolved with a charge and/or summons and now it is 5.6%."
In what's been described as a 'unprecedented intervention', the three police chiefs said: "The Crown Prosecution Service is no longer able to give timely charging advice (namely while the suspect is under arrest and in the cells); not because of anything the CPS has done, but because it does not have the resources or the people to do what it used to.
"We have tried to fix it together over the last two years, but the plasters are not sticking – and things are getting worse. So for the sake of victims, witnesses and all in the criminal justice system, we need to replace it now, by restoring to the police the ability to charge most offences while suspects are in the cells."
But with the police under scrutiny for a number of high profile scandals involving officers' wrongdoing and law-breaking the move has been criticised. Top human rights lawyer Peter Weatherby, who has represented the victims' families at the public inquiry into the Manchester Arena terror attack and the family of Hale stabbing victim Yousef Makki, described the proposal as 'plain daft'.
He said: "The Chief Constable's correctly identify that serious long term underfunding of the CPS has undermined the criminal justice system. They correctly note that this fails to deliver for victims and witnesses.
"I will be more forthright. The failure to provide even a minimum acceptable level of funding undermines the rule of law in this country. The Chief Constable's proposed 'fix'... does not help victims and witnesses.
"It helps the government continue its disastrous path of failure to provide sufficient funding to ensure communities are safe, victims are supported, and fundamental rights are upheld.
"There is a major backlogs of cases, and as the Chief Constables observe, there is an inability to function at the earliest stage: charging.
"Instead of sticking plasters, instead of coming up with ideas to muddle through, the Chief Constable's should be shouting from the rooftops that the police, the CPS, the courts and judges, and those representing suspects and defendants, are all integral parts required to make the rule of law work. Properly fund them, or abandon the pretence that the UK has a first world justice system, or upholds the rule of law."
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