The Crown Prosecution Service isn’t ‘cherrypicking’. It’s making the right calls

I have read with interest the views expressed by Sir Mark Rowley about the Crown Prosecution Service “cherrypicking” cases (CPS ‘cherrypicking’ cases to prosecute, say senior police chiefs, 18 May). However, evidence from my organisation, His Majesty’s Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate, suggests a different set of conclusions.

Between 2021 and 2022 my inspectors inspected a sample of 1,260 cases across all 14 CPS areas. We found that the CPS made the correct charging decision in 94% of those cases. In our recent inspection of the CPS’s handling of domestic abuse cases, we found 97.3% of the cases complied with the Code for Crown Prosecutors. In all of those cases where the CPS did not take further action, it had made the right decision.

Sir Mark clearly does appreciate the need for us to identify and examine the best ways for the police and the CPS to collaborate to bring about fair and just outcomes in the courts. Together with the chief inspector of His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary, Fire & Rescue Services, I have commissioned an inspection to examine communication and collaboration between the CPS and police service.

The future of our criminal justice system demands we come together now and find the solutions to those challenges we have expressed dissatisfaction with for many years.
Andrew T Cayley
His Majesty’s chief inspector of the Crown Prosecution Service

• The FDA, the union for managers and professionals in public service, echoes the statement from the director of public prosecutions – included in your article – in which he rejected the claims by the commissioner of the Metropolitan police that the Crown Prosecution Service “cherrypicks” cases.

Hard-working FDA members and their colleagues in the CPS are often working through the night from home to provide charging advice and decisions, fulfilling their obligations under the Code for Crown Prosecutors to assess whether there is a reasonable prospect of conviction for each case sent to them by the police. Poor file quality, including a paucity of evidence, means that some of the cases presented to the CPS simply cannot be successfully prosecuted, and police should be working with prosecutors to avoid this. If evidence becomes available later, the police can also seek to have the case reviewed.

It is a waste of taxpayers’ money, and justice is not served, if we are prosecuting cases where the evidence is not there – raising the expectations of victims and witnesses, and holding defendants in custody who are subsequently acquitted. Or worse still, a judge throws out a case before it’s put before a jury due to a lack of evidence, with the defendant having spent months on remand, and victims and witnesses having prepared themselves for a trial that doesn’t take place.
Duncan Woodhead
National officer for the CPS, FDA

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