Police cautions for arson, burglary, fraud and child abuse

[Workingman]

..... including rape!

Over 1,000 of them in the East of England alone; these are on top of the 10,000 cautions handed out for ABH/GBH. You couldn't make it up.

The discretion allowed to police to offer cautions for such offences should be done away with: NOW!

We might as well do away with the Justice system and have a free-for-all, it's what we have already done with bankers and expenses fiddling MPs.

[pederito1]

Perhaps some of them involve a fraternal handshake?

[TheOstrich]

You couldn't blame aggrieved parties taking the law into their own hands .....

[Suff]

We might as well do away with the Justice system and have a free-for-all, it's what we have already done with bankers and expenses fiddling MPs.

To lump this in with private business affairs (bankers) and theft from the public purse, is to demean the whole system. Corrupting the justice system, which is the set of rules and restrictions which separate us from mob rule, is significantly more serious than any money/financial issues.

If the justice system and the rule of laws which it oversees were to be removed, you can forget banking or MP's, because there would be no way to control the former at all (forget bonuses, think "why give the money back at all") and no need for the latter.

In failing to do their duty to society the police and the cps are criminally negligent and should be charged for it and jailed. Far more serious than contempt of court, this is contempt of the entire justice system.

[Aggers]

In failing to do their duty to society the police and the cps are criminally negligent and should be charged for it and jailed. Far more serious than contempt of court, this is contempt of the entire justice system.

I couldn't agree more.

We pay the police to enforce the law and that is what they should be doing. Police should have no discretioary powers at all, but should enforce all laws. The only thing they seem to be good at is attending football matches and trying to be friends with everyone.

[cromwell]

The people at the very top in the police are essentially politicians. If you don't believe this just close your eyes the next time a Chief Constable is on the TV, and see if you can tell the difference between how he sounds and how an MP sounds. They all go through the Bramshill sausage machine - sorry, senior officer's training courses - and so we have identikit Chiefs. And this is before we get to the Police Commisioners, many of whom are ex-MP's or councillors.
So the police are subject to, and respond to, political pressure - and so do the CPS.
Offences which should be murder are reduced to manslaughter, attempted murder to GBH, GBH to assault, attempted burglary to criminal damage under £20 (which doesn't appear on the crime stats, btw).
Vera Baird, PCC for somewhere in the North East, has already told the local police that they shouldn't be concentrating on "low level" drug offences (just the ones she considers "appropriate" to investigate, I suppose).
There has always been pressure on the police to reduce crime, with today's political pressure and politicised upper ranks that pressure sometimes results in behaviour that is incomprehensible and unsatisfactory to the man and woman in the street.

[KateLMead]

We are living in a sick society, we see the mediocre sentences handed out for rape, murder, violence, terrorism, fraud where serious fraudsters have made millions, and then when caught out go to jail for 4 years after a nice break being fed and watered they are "Out in two" There is no area that is not coloured with the filth of corruption, from the police force, government, tax evasion, big business, you name them they are all in the same league.. Burglars protected if they suffer injury while breaking in or are given a good smacking by the occupants.. Bloody mad house we are living in, "As I have said so many times" We are living in an asylum run by lunatics.

[Workingman]

Just to be clear, neither the article I read, nor my post, were having a go at rank and file police officers more at the way the police service ooperates.

If what was found by a freedom of information request is true then cases are not even getting to the CPS stage never mind the courts. And God knows the CPS flies in the face of British justice just as much as police cautions for serious offences do.

We have laws, and those laws are supposed to be applied without fear or favour, not on the whim of a Chief Constable, a PCC or a review board of unelected lawyers, as is currently the case. If a criminal law is broken it should be up to the Courts to decide the outcome. And yes, Cromwell, you are spot-on, the downgrading of offences is also a very murky practice.

[Workingman]

Kate, fraud used to be one of our most serious crimes, with fraud against the State only a hop and a skip away from Treason. Yet when a National newspaper provided clear evidence that members of the "650 Club" were acting fraudulently with State assets the police were nowhere to be seen - except in a very few cases. The law was very clearly being broken, but someone somewhere took a deliberate decision to not get involved.

[KateLMead]

Like suff Cromwell Ost and yourself you are so well read and regularly reveal dependable interesting facts.. I cannot believe how these fraudster's get away with their crimes Frank, foreigners as well as British who in my opinion get miniscule sentences and their off shore accounts remain intact , properties in Romania, Africa and elsewhere, and the crook who has just been found selling bogus detectors, still being used by the military in Afghanistan and Iraq.. I would hang him. Law.. Judicial system? what judicial system? lawyers lie through their teeth to get the results they want and a massive pay out, there are decent lawyers and one is lucky if one finds one..
I know two, three infact whom I would trust