Why was the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) created?

The history of the CPS began in the early centuries, it started off with private citizens employing lawyers of their own to prosecute a suspected criminal within this system of sorts the DPP would be responsible for a few of these cases. It wasn’t until the end of the 19th that new formed police force would take on and present cases.

Before 1985 the police would usually have the task of the prosecution of offenders, there was no other underlying prosecuting authority. The police would however employ prosecuting solicitors that would help advise them on prosecutions and to conduct the cases in the Magistrates courts. Many of the police forces set up internal departments for these prosecuting solicitors within their organisations, who were then given the responsibility of presenting the cases in court.

Criticism of the police’s control over the prosecutions had begun to rise on a many different occasion. One well known criticism was in 1970 when the law reform organisation called Justice published a report called ‘The Prosecution in England and Wales’ which critized the role of the police. There were three main criticisms in this report; firstly that there was confusion between the functions and responsibilities of the police, the investigators and the prosecution and that there was conflict of interest between the two and the prosecution buyers. Secondly the prosecution of offender should be independent, impartial and fair and most importantly been seen as being the last three points, along with this criticism they questioned how the police could be involved the investigation and prosecution when the prosecution should only be seeking out the truth and not just be concerned about winning or losing a case. Thirdly that there could be a potential infringement of a right to a fair trial, as the police were involved with the investigations they had been tampering with evidence to help win cases, this meant that there were several miscarriages of justice when it came to the prosecution.

The report only fuelled the criticisms on the police’s control over the prosecutions. In 1978 the Government decided that they wanted to address the problem so they set up a committee that was to investigate the prosecution process. The committee was called the Royal Commission on Criminal Procedure and was chaired by Sir Cyril Phillips. The committees Phillips report was  ytyyyyythen presented to the Government in 1981. One of the thing that committee had found out was that too many trials were being halted at the end of the prosecution presentations of the case in court. This was because the evidence for the prosecution wasn’t sufficient enough to prosecute which led to lots of judge directed acquittals. The commission then stated that they thought that the CPS should have seen beforehand that those cases were going to fail because of the lack of evidence, and then when they had chosen to proceed it was a waste of money and the police’s time.

This finding led to the commission recommending that there should be a locally independent system for the prosecution of the offenders, to be based in the local police force areas and to be under the supervision of the DPP. The Government listened to this however they wanted a national prosecution system, so with this the Crown prosecution service was divided into 31 areas so that each area covered one or two police areas under the control of the DPP.

By 1987 there was four regional directors that had been appointed to help with the running of the 31 areas, however two years later they were removed because they had been found to be an unnecessary layer of management. The was a structure of 13 areas by 1993, and because the areas were now larger they had more responsibilities for the performance and management of all the branches. Still there was criticism and this time most of the criticism came from the police, as each area had much more responsibilities some cases were being dropped because of it. It also becomes too centralized and bureaucratic according to some criticism.

The Government by 1997 they commissioned Sir Iain Glidwell to assess the CPS and to identify any problems that had obviously sparked criticisms. One year later Glidwell published his report, which had 70 recommendations. Most of his recommendation was mostly about the CPS internal workings however some recommendations were on the things that had an affect on the relationships between the police and CPS.

One of Glidwell proposals was to move to one administrative unit which would then permanently co-locate the CPS and the Police in one location, which in turn would help increase efficiency to its maximum, eliminate duplication, to improve mutual efficiency and co-ordination and to prevent any delays in the prosecution process.

Some of his recommendations that stood out included that the CPS should be in 42 areas instead of the 13 as it was at the time. Having the CPS in 42 areas would have each one corresponding to a police area. That the CPS should be under the control of a Chief Crown Prosecutor who would be given freedom and own budget from the central control. The CPS would take over the cases after police had charged the person, and then they would arrange the initial magistrates court hearings and the witnesses. The decision would be made by the CPS in deciding whether or not to prosecute or charge a suspect, however before this the police would make the decision. Another recommendation was that the Criminal Justice Units (CJU) would be established to deal with many of the cases in their entirety; these units would be made up of the police, administrative staff i.e. the caseworkers and the CPS lawyers. Another would be that the section called the Central Casework would deal with the more serious cases and they would be given any additional staff resources that they needed. Yet another recomendation was that a CPS lawyer should be allocated to each Crown court.

The report was soon accepted which led the Government to act swiftly on Glidewell recommendations. His recommendation on having the CPS in 42 areas was implemented and has been spilt into numerous branches with each branch headed by a Branch Crown Prosecutor. This system seemed to be working more efficiently as Sir Iain Glidewell had predicted as 70%-80% of criminal cases that were dealt by the CPS resulted in a conviction in 2008 to 2009