COMMENT


FEELING THE PRESSURE


Detective Kevin Maskell is a Fed Rep with 22 years of experience in the role, and is part of an investigatory squad which focuses on


safeguarding children. He joined Norfolk Constabulary in 1992 and has worked on major enquiries, including murders


I had one colleague in tears recently because the demands and stress of the role was simply too much. By my estimation, there is a requirement of roughly 12 months more work to get a case ready to go to the prosecutor than there was before the procedural changes. Detectives feel like they have hit a brick wall, and nothing makes logical sense. This feeling is not uncommon. Imagine interviewing someone for serious offences against a child and having them admit the crime. In the old days, that was a real result. Before the CPS guidelines


changed, they could plead guilty and a detective’s workload in taking them to court would involve a light-touch role. Now innocent or guilty plea – the preparation is the same – for each case, you are looking at detailing every salient bit of evidence, then reviewing and redacting it to make it trial-ready for the CPS. The subsequent workload is completely excessive. To make matters worse for investigators, the CPS computer system represents another hurdle in the path towards justice. This has a one-megabyte capacity per message, which resulted in a colleague


spending four days scanning material, so he could send this to the CPS in the right format. He sent 128 individual messages – can you imagine how painful and demoralising this was? Going back to 2010-12, when we had speedy summary justice, we would review a case solely on evidence. Basically, you would


“Being a detective who works within the current CPS guidelines is very stressful and deeply frustrating. Owing to the impossible task of having to constantly apply these guidelines, many officers would gladly stop being investigators tomorrow”


ask if you had enough evidence, then link in with a prosecutor or lawyer at local level, and mutually work up an action plan. If the case was a non-starter, we’d come


to that determination early on, and not waste time and hours. With ongoing cases, you might get an early charge and only then do work on it. Up to around 2013-14, our relationship with the CPS was common sense- and evidence-based. While detectives worked hard, the system prevented us doing hundreds and hundreds of hours on cases which were subsequently marked


‘no further action’. But this is no longer in place, and the workload of every investigator has massively increased due to the CPS wanting trial-ready files from us as routine. There used to be so many more conversations with the CPS about decisions, but these are now sadly limited. There are extra and frustrating administrative tasks to do, and far too many spinning plates for detectives to consider. The system is broken because we are spending many demoralising hours completing work for the CPS, with the prior knowledge a case is going


nowhere before we start. We must go back to having earlier, common sense discussions with the CPS around evidence – and not just about the administration of a case. Let’s see if we’ve enough evidence to take a case to a charging position, before spending hours and hours on it to make it trial-ready for a trial that has no chance of taking place for evidential reasons. This would be huge win for the police and CPS. Something urgently must change, as it is affecting recruitment, retention and mental health of colleagues.


23 | POLICE | APRIL 2022


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