Per the story, obviously they’re not just telling him to be “cautious” (I think) what does this really mean?
A police caution is handed down sometimes when you plead guilty to a minor offence. Common recipients are normally prostitutes or people with a small amount of hash or something on them. Essentially its an official warning that goes on a record, and should you be caught again may be taken into consideration by the courts.
A couple of years ago, conditional cautions were also implemented which, as the name suggests, specify certain things that can’t be done without risking arrest (eg. a prostitute might be told that they cannot loiter in a certain area).
Vaguely related, but perhaps interesting to the OP, the way criminal courts work here is quite different to the US version. (From memory so feel free to correct me.)
When the police arrest a suspect, and they feel they have enough evidence to convict, they refer the case to the Director of Public Prosecution (DPP), who assesses the case against the suspect, and then declares whether or not the suspect may be charged.
Once charged, the accused is then bailed/remanded in custody. When they are brought into court as a defendant, their prior history is not allowed to be taken into account by the court or the prosecution (though this is to be changed, or has changed, can’t remember). The jury is not meant to know anything about prior offenses. The case is meant to be assessed purely on its own merits.
The jury’s job is only to decide on the guilt of the accused, and nothing else. The judge chairs the court hearings, and can “instruct” the jury on his opinion, but they are not obliged to follow his instruction.
If guilt has been decided, it is the judge’s job to decide sentence. It is at this point that the prisoner’s prior history taken into account.
It’s an interesting point jjimm and useful context that I didn’t include. The prior history has now been amended, as evidenced by the case of the rape in Glasgow of that 6 year old girl taken from her bathtub.
Like so many of these things, the socialist (humanist?) in me thinks that the system was just fine the way it was - just because you’ve done bad stuff doesn’t mean you have done the particular crime you’re charged with. On the other hand, modus operandi, where similar, are clearly important clues.
Mind you, I don’t think it’s any coincidence that the first case to be tried under the new regulations concerned a particularly horrific child rape. I only hope that the guy found guilty did actually commit the crime…
Wasn’t that Newcastle? (Not a nitpick, because Scottish law is separate)
You’re absolutely right. Worst thing is, I even thought about the Scottish law aspect when I wrote it!
Must have something inherent about the Scots at the moment!
The Welsh police in particular use a system of street cautions and fixed penalty guilty pleas to avoid cluttering the courts. Even for things like drug possession you can receive a street caution. It is an actual arrest and results in a criminal record (for instance applicants for the Welsh police cannot have a street caution within the last 5 years). Fixed penalty guilty pleas allow people to admit guilt, accept a fine and go home. Some of these matters are dealt with in half an hour and then it’s all over.
I’m a little puzzled as to how this is “quite different” from the “US version” (I put “U.S. version” in quotation marks since, as we all know I’m sure, there is no one U.S. criminal justice system). The one clear distinction I see is that judges in the U.S. (or at least the parts of it where I practice, tho I suspect this is universal), are strictly prohibited from “instructing” the jury on their own opinion of the case.
Regarding prior history – the situation is the same in the United States as in the UK – the defendant’s guilt is meant to be determined solely on the facts of the given case, and not based on his record. There are instances in which evidence regarding past crimes will be admissible – for example, to establish motive or to establish identity where the M.O. is extremely distinctive – but those are strictly regulated, and the jury is required to be informed of that they cannot infer the defendant’s guilt from the fact of a prior conviction or crime. I would imagine that such evidence would be admissible under similar circumstances and with similar restrictions in the U.K. as well, even absent whatever recent changes have been made in the law.
In my admittedly less comprehensive knowledge of US procedure, I was under the impression that prior history was widely used. I didn’t realise it was regulated.
The jury not deciding sentence is “quite different” from the US version, though, in my opinion. I think that’s a major consideration, in fact.
In US courts, the judge decides sentence, not the jury. The only case in which a jury has any role in sentencing is in the case of capital crimes, in which case, a second jury, distinct from the first one who found the accused guilty, has to vote on whether or not the judge is allowed to sentence the conficted felon to death.
This sounds a lot like the US traffic ticket system. If you chose to just pay it, you are pleading guilty, and you don’t have to go to court. You may also contest it, but you must appear in front of a judge then.
Not sure about South of the border but in Scotland previous offending is typically only used when determining sentencing rather than in determination of guilt. There are some circumstances where it can but not usually. Jury trials are only used in Scotland for more serious cases, there’s no general right to trial by jury so accidental disclore of previous convictions is less harmful.
In a lot of rural courts where there’s only one Sheriff (Judge) who will typically know the accused anyway if he’s a local regular offender making the ‘prior convictions not considered when determining guilt’ a intellectual exercise rather than practical one.
In most states (& the federal system?) it’s the same jury that decided whether someone’s guilty and whether they’ll be put to death.
While this is true for jury trials, is it true for non-jury (e.g. magistrate) trials? And while I know that a jury can refuse to find an accused guilty, I don’t know if they can refuse to follow a judge’s instruction to return a verdict of Not Guilty and actually convict.
In the US a trial judge can overule a jury guilty vote and enter a verdict of not guilty, but it’s very very rare. A not guilty vote cannot be overidden.
I apologise: they refer the case to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), of which the DPP is the head.
I believe we in the UK are far more likely to keep DNA records too.
I can only go by US tv shows, which is likely to be inaccurate, but to get a DNA sample from a suspect entails getting a warrant, which in turn means there has to be enough evidence for legal suspicion for a particular crime.
In the UK, you can be DNA sampled upon arrest, form which there has to be sufficient cause (which can be very wide ranging indeed). The sample is routinely compared on the National DNA database against unsolved crimes.The database incudes far more individuals than just those unknown crime samples.
If you are arrested, and released without charge or caution, the sample and its record are destroyed.
Naturally far more individuals are cautioned than are charged with a specific offence, so cautioned individuals make up a large part of the DNA database record.
Whenever samples are recovered from a new crime scene, these are compared to those on the DNA database.
There have been a number of fairly spectacular crimes solved this way, some going back several decades, including serial rapists and murders.
In these crimes, the suspect is detained for some other minor matter, like speeding, drunk driving or whatever, and its only later, when the database check is made that the extent of the offenders crimes are revealed.
A very good reason to not be bullied into accepting a caution.
Well, on the privacyinternational website we have an item from Genewatch. I can’t link to it but loading ‘police dna retention’ into google gives the site as the ninth entry on page 1:
And from here:
In any event, I wouldn’t trust the police to destroy these records irrespective of whether or not they can legally retain them.
This post does not express an opinion as to whether DNA retention is desirable or not.
I’ve no doubt that someone, somewhere keeps a record, wether it has been ‘destroyed’ or not.
One of my work colleagues upon applying to join the Prison Service made his ‘Declaration of Everything Ever’ on the Job Application.
He had been nicked for riding pillion on an uninsured motorcycle some 30 years previously, fined something like a couple of quid.
The offence was written off decades ago, and anyway it was a juvenile offence so it should not have been on any part of an adult record.
He still declared it, and got the job, he was informed that during background checks it had been picked up. This would not have been picked up in any other background check, but to get into the Prison Service or certain other lines of work they go into the political backgrounds of your family through to your grandparents.
(its possible that you can be called upon to work with convicted political terrorists)
So, somewhere, someone keeps some sort of record, but not for use on the criminal database.
You have to wonder about DNA samples, I suppose if they have your sample on record on a differant database, used for a differant purpose, it would not be picked up in a criminal investigation, but given the way information technology works these days, it looks like fine hair splitting to me. I would think there has to be an enormous temptation to use it to target an individual, even if it wasn’t admissable as evidence in court.