Chief prosecutor seeks curb on police cautions

The Director of Public Prosecutions has demanded an end to the use of cautions to chastise offenders for serious assaults, amid concern that the justice system is failing to rein in violent offenders.

Keir Starmer, QC is now seeking a review of the ‘instant justice’ policy, which has seen up to 40,000 assaults each year dealt with through police cautions.

These include a 15-year-old boy who was cautioned for rape and a man who was cautioned for smashing a beer glass into a landlady’s face at a pub, according to reports in The Times.

On the spot cautions were introduced to reduce the cost of justice and relive the courts from having to deal with minor offences. However, one senior circuit judge warned that it was only a matter of time before a domestic assault was dealt with by a caution and the victim was subsequently murdered.

In an interview with The Times, Mr Starmer said that no offence above the level of common assault should be dealt with “out of court”.

There was now a case, he added, for a new scheme covering all “out of court” penalties that would specify what offences can be dealt with at what level.

Mr Starmer said that there was a “proper place” for trivial offences to be dealt with outside the courts through fixed penalty notices, cautions and conditional cautions.

But the system had developed in a piecemeal and “incoherent way” and there now needed to be a single coherent scheme.

“There is now a case to be made for a review,” he said. “My view is that there should be a structured tiered approach which specifies what case will be dealt with at what level — and will be transparent.”

Mr Starmer has already issued new guidelines to prosecutors to the effect that “violent offences — that is, all those above common assault — should go before the courts”.

He added: “I have also personally asked for monthly returns from each prosecuting area in England and Wales on cautions handed out, so I can see what they are being given for.”

The aim was to put the figures on the Crown Prosecution Service website “so the public can see” and to create greater accountability.

Nearly 20,000 cautions have been handed out since their introduction in 2005 and are normally accompanied with an £80 fine. Despite concerns, ministers have signalled that they would like to see the system expanded to cover a greater variety of offences.