Talk:Crown Prosecution Service

Role
Do Crown Prosecutors (is that their proper title?) prosecute at the Crown Court level? According to the article, they only pursue cases at the Magistrate level and hire private counsel to prosecute at higher levels. Also, is the office responsible for appeals? And what are the qualifications for becoming a prosecutor? --Whitenoise101 23:37, 4 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Crown Prosecutors (CP) is indeed the correct title for lawyers in the CPS. Some of them can prosecute in the Crown Court, if they have obtained Higher Rights of Audience by being a barrister, though the DPP can also confer HRA. All CP's may appear in the Magistrates' Court, and non-lawyer caseworkers can also appear if they have had the right training and have been designated by the DPP.


 * Of course, the Service also makes extensive use of the self-employed independent Bar. However, the CP remains responsible for the case and the barrister is required to act in accordance with the CP's instructions. Barristers are not allowed to "take over" the case, but is expected to work in collaboration with the CP.


 * The CPS is also responsible for responding to appeals if they prosecuted the original offence.


 * To be a CPS prosecutor, you have to be a qualified solicitor or barrister within the meaning of the Legal Services Act. They sometimes take people fresh out of law school on their own training course, but most are probably lawyers who have done their training elsewhere. I don't believe that there are any particular requirements in terms of post-qualification experience.


 * All of this information is available on the CPS website,, and from my own knowledge as I work for the sister department Revenue and Customs Prosecutions Office, set up along similar lines. Dmccormac 21:12, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Removed "controversy" section
Could the person who removed my 'Controversy' section please explain why they did so. I expected my additions to be soon edited, of course, and perhaps substantially so. But was I suprised to find them entirely erased with the note "unstructured polemic" attached.

Surely a lack of structure and even a polemical tone are failings of style alone, easily put right by an better-prosed editor; yet the controversy section touched upon some undeniable facts which I believe have a place in the CPS article; to remove the whole section then is a case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

It is true that there is a 'CPS Charging Standard Code' which differs from the legal definition of various offences (e.g. following Moriarty v Brookes (1834) any harm which breaks both layers of the skin amounts to wounding, whereas the Charging Standards limit the definition of wounding to more serious cuts). The CPS are using more internally-employed advocates, and sometimes advocates who are not qualified solicitors or barristers. And, as the many links to the Times Law Supplement showed, it is true that these have been the source of public criticism, public debate and official responses from the CPS itself.

If it were the case that all 'controversy' sections were deleted by Wikipedia as a rule I would understand this person's decision to remove mine, and I would learn from my mistake. However very many topics have a section on controversies and criticisms: the Barclays bank page, for example, blames them for involvement with apartheid and Mugabe and their part of the large-bonus culture. I do not understand why objectivity includes acknowledging the bad with the good when writing about our private enterprises, but not when writing about government departments. Would you erase from the DEFRA page a mention of how they handled the Foot & Mouth crisis a few years back, and all the criticism this led to? (though I note that there is no such mention, so perhaps someone has got to it already)

As a show of good faith I will not revert this person's own reversion and restore my 'controversy' section. But I would like a reasonable explanation as to why there is no place for mention of the above facts (even if in a setting other than I wrote for them) on the CPS page. Otherwise some might suggest there is a prima facie case of unpalatable facts about the English executive mysteriously and inexplicably disappearing... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.110.64.241 (talk) 16:55, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

New Charging Policy
The article is no longer accurate in terms of charging authority. A recent change in charging policy has meant a large bulk of 'volume crime' offences have had charging authorities and decisions reverted back to the police away from the CPS. The opening paragraphs are therefore wrong when describing charging authority. Dibble999 (talk) 15:42, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Barristers
The word "barrister" is not found in this article. It should include some information about the relationship between the Crown Prosecution Service and the Bar. 98.246.154.230 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 06:42, 24 December 2012 (UTC)
 * By now the word is in it, so I'll keep my explanation short: The CPS employs, among other professions, also barristers. The CPS itself is not a member of the bar, but the barristers who work for it are. SchnitteUK (talk) 12:30, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

History - Role of police in creating independent prosecutors
The history section is missing something. For its entire existence from 1974 until 1986, West Midlands County Council was responsible for prosecutions in the West Midlands. This was independent of the police but it wasn't set up by them. The article implies that the onus was entirely upon the police to solve the independent prosecutor problem, but there was clearly more going on. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.24.17.35 (talk) 02:08, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

Meaningless and ungrammatical 'sentence'
The "History" section of this article begins:


 * "Historically had no police forces and no dedicated prosecution service."

This has no subject, so it is not a sentence and actually tells the reader nothing.

What had no police forces and no prosecution services? My guess is that it was intended to say "the UK", but it would probably be better for the editor who wrote it to review and rewrite it than for me to interfere. Hedles (talk) 21:17, 23 March 2021 (UTC)