Core Quality Standards
Preface
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) is the principal public prosecution service for England and Wales. In January 2010, it merged with the Revenue and Customs Prosecutions Office (RCPO). The service is headed by the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) who is also the Director of Revenue and Customs Prosecutions. The DPP exercises his functions independently, subject to the superintendence of the Attorney General who is accountable to Parliament for the work of the prosecution service.
In these standards, the term prosecutors is used to describe members of the prosecution service who are designated as Crown Prosecutors; prosecutors who are members of the RCPO; Associate Prosecutors who are designated under section 7A of the Prosecution of Offences Act 1985 and who exercise their powers in accordance with the instructions issued by the DPP; and other members of the RCPO who are designated by the DPP in his capacity as the Director of the Revenue and Customs Prosecutions under section 39 of the Commissioners for Revenue and Customs Act 2005. We use the term advocate to describe prosecutors and barristers or solicitors in private practice who conduct cases at court on our behalf.
Prosecutors are supported by paralegal staff who carry out much of the work required to implement their decisions, and by administrative staff who deal with tasks such as tracking the progress of cases, liaising with other agencies, matching incoming material to case files and copying and sending out documents.
In these standards, the expression police or other investigators is used to describe members of all those investigative agencies, including the Serious Organised Crime Agency and the UK Border Agency, who prepare and present cases to the prosecution service.
The police and other investigators are responsible for conducting enquiries into an allegation that a crime may have been committed. In more serious or complex cases, prosecutors decide whether a person should be charged with a criminal offence and, if so, what that offence should be. In other cases, the police may charge or summons a suspect, but prosecutors are responsible for deciding whether a case should continue. Although the prosecution service works closely with the police and other investigators, it is independent of them. The independence of prosecutors is of fundamental constitutional importance.
Members of the prosecution service must be fair, independent and objective. They must not let any personal views about the ethnic or national origin, gender, disability, age, religion or belief, political views, sexual orientation, or gender identity of the suspect, defendant, victim or any witness influence their decisions or actions. They must also have due regard to the legal obligation of public bodies to promote race, disability and gender equality when taking prosecution decisions.
In these standards, the term suspect is used to describe a person who is not yet the subject of formal criminal proceedings; the term defendant is used to describe a person who has been charged or summonsed; and the term offender is used to describe a person who has admitted his or her guilt to a police officer or other investigator or prosecutor, or who has been found guilty in a court of law.
The Core Quality Standards is one of two key published and publicly available documents that explain the purpose and work of the prosecution service. The second is the Code for Crown Prosecutors. Only the Code is issued by law. Together, they let the public know what prosecutors do; how they take their decisions; and the level of service that the prosecution service is committed to providing in every key aspect of its work.
Printed copies of the Core Quality Standards and the Code are available from the contact points listed on the index page of this section.
Introduction
The fundamental role and purpose of the CPS and the RCPO is to protect the public, support victims and witnesses and deliver justice.
Protect the public: as prosecutors, we have a critical role to play in reducing crime and protecting the public. We will be visible and accountable; representative and diverse. We will deal in an open and honest way with the communities we serve. Our decisions will be informed by the public's concerns.
Support victims and witnesses: we will enable, encourage and support the effective participation of victims and witnesses at all stages in the criminal justice process.
Deliver justice: we will ensure that the right people take the right decisions about prosecution at the right time. We will fairly, appropriately and firmly deal with criminal conduct in the most effective and efficient way and in a way that is transparent so that the public understand why decisions are taken. We will help to make the court system as effective and as efficient as possible. We will respect and protect the human rights of all those affected by our decisions, including victims, witnesses, suspects and defendants.
Core Quality Standards
As prosecutors, we exercise powers on behalf of the public. We deliver a public service in accordance with a set of publicly facing Core Quality Standards that lay down the quality of service that the public are entitled to expect from those who prosecute on their behalf. They apply to all those who deliver the prosecution service.
The standards are important to victims, witnesses, suspects and defendants who depend on prosecutors to carry out their duties to a high standard. The police, the courts and other criminal justice agencies will also want to understand the standards because they rely on prosecutors to deliver an efficient and effective service. The public and those who superintend, audit and inspect prosecutors will want reassurance that the standards represent demanding and efficient means of delivering an important public service and will want to hold prosecutors to account for their delivery.
The standards draw upon good practice and reflect our legal and professional obligations. They are designed to ensure that we comply with the Criminal Procedure Rules. [Note: These are rules approved by the Lord Chief Justice dealing with the way in which cases should be prepared by the prosecution and defence and how the court should manage cases. They are available on the Ministry of Justice website or from TSO Orders/Post Cash Department, The Stationery Office, PO Box 29, Norwich NR3 1GN.] We have consulted with other prosecutors and criminal justice practitioners. We have sought the views of our community involvement panels and are making the standards publicly available so we can draw on the experience of those who come into contact with us and the wider public, who need to have confidence in the performance of their prosecutors.
The standards cover key areas of our work that have the greatest impact on the public. They are not intended to be an exhaustive list of everything that we do in our casework. They set out the functions that prosecutors perform and a number of specific and concise statements of a quality service. They represent the central thread of quality that should run through everything that the prosecution service does. In complying with them, we should always communicate with our partner agencies and the public courteously, respectfully and professionally. We expect the public, particularly those who come into contact with the prosecution service, to use these standards, together with our published performance information, to assess how well we perform.
The standards are supported by more detailed documents covering all aspects of our work, including guidance on how to deal with specific types of offence. Most of these documents are available on the CPS website.
It is important to note that the prosecution service has a duty of confidentiality in respect of some documents referred to in the standards; for example, the records of charging decisions set out in standard 2.
The standards are also supported by a set of published service delivery measures that will set the performance expected in respect of each standard. These measures use performance data routinely collected by the prosecution service. Any new performance measures will be carefully assessed to ensure they provide an accurate and cost-effective means of assessing performance. We will regularly report our performance in respect of these measures to the public.
The standards are of fundamental importance to the prosecution service. They guide us in organising our operations and devising the systems and processes that support our work. We expect the public to hold us to account if we fail to provide the service described in them, and we will judge our success as prosecutors by our ability consistently to deliver these quality standards.
Each of the 12 standards in this document covers a particular area of our work. A list of the standards appears here. Their content is set out in the pages that follow.
We will regularly review the standards to make sure they continue to describe a core quality service. We will also add to them as we identify further areas where standards will be important.
