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Cautioned By Police
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What does this actually mean?
Is life going to be any different for the person who is cautioned? Do cautions actually make a difference and do they work?
Is life going to be any different for the person who is cautioned? Do cautions actually make a difference and do they work?
Answers
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They don't necessarily show up on CRB checks and can be dispensed with after a period of time, unlike a conviction.
They don't necessarily show up on CRB checks and can be dispensed with after a period of time, unlike a conviction.
The original idea of police cautions was a good one - first time offenders committing less serious offences would be spared prosecution if they accepted their guilt. (This also spared the CPS the trouble and expense of prosecuting some low-level crime). Simple cautions such as these are unconditional and become “spent” (under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act) immediately they are issued meaning they need never be declared when applying for most jobs or positions.
In 2003”Conditional” cautions were introduced. These are similar except that they have one or more conditions attached, usually something like a requirement for the offender to complete, say, a drug rehabilitation course. These become spent after three months. Both types of caution should be removed from police records after five years, though there is no statutory requirement for this.
On the face of it, not a bad idea. The life of the offender should not be unduly affected (which was one of the aims). The idea was that low-level crime should be diverted from the courts in the hope that a sharp reminder would nudge those with a previously clean record back on to the straight and narrow.
However, as with many such laudable aims, they soon became abused. Police quickly realise that far less effort was needed to dispose of matters by way of a caution than by prosecution and they were soon being issued to those with lengthy records and for quite serious offences. To demonstrate this a glance at the figures reveals that in 2012 some 2,000 offenders received cautions for a second or subsequent similar offence within two years. Some of them had received more than twelve cautions. As well as this there were 962 cautions for possession of knives, 1,543 for possession of weapons, seven for child pornography and prostitution, 1,560 for cruelty to or neglect of children, 268 for possessing indecent photographs of children and 54 for supplying or offering to supply Class A drugs.
It is clear that the use of cautions had got completely out of hand and far removed from the original intention. Thankfully, mainly due to pressure from the Magistrates’ Association, in the autumn the Justice Secretary, Chris Grayling, issued much tighter guidelines. But this, of course, did not help the thousands of victims who had been denied justice by the unwillingness of police to attempt to prosecute matters which were quite clearly totally unsuitable for disposal by way of cautions.
In 2003”Conditional” cautions were introduced. These are similar except that they have one or more conditions attached, usually something like a requirement for the offender to complete, say, a drug rehabilitation course. These become spent after three months. Both types of caution should be removed from police records after five years, though there is no statutory requirement for this.
On the face of it, not a bad idea. The life of the offender should not be unduly affected (which was one of the aims). The idea was that low-level crime should be diverted from the courts in the hope that a sharp reminder would nudge those with a previously clean record back on to the straight and narrow.
However, as with many such laudable aims, they soon became abused. Police quickly realise that far less effort was needed to dispose of matters by way of a caution than by prosecution and they were soon being issued to those with lengthy records and for quite serious offences. To demonstrate this a glance at the figures reveals that in 2012 some 2,000 offenders received cautions for a second or subsequent similar offence within two years. Some of them had received more than twelve cautions. As well as this there were 962 cautions for possession of knives, 1,543 for possession of weapons, seven for child pornography and prostitution, 1,560 for cruelty to or neglect of children, 268 for possessing indecent photographs of children and 54 for supplying or offering to supply Class A drugs.
It is clear that the use of cautions had got completely out of hand and far removed from the original intention. Thankfully, mainly due to pressure from the Magistrates’ Association, in the autumn the Justice Secretary, Chris Grayling, issued much tighter guidelines. But this, of course, did not help the thousands of victims who had been denied justice by the unwillingness of police to attempt to prosecute matters which were quite clearly totally unsuitable for disposal by way of cautions.
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