Part of Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill – in a Public Bill Committee at 4:30 pm on 16 October 2007.
Beyond the point about the growing appearance of the police acting as the court, as opposed to merely gathering the evidence and giving it to the prosecuting authorities for the courts to assess, is there a feeling among your organisations that this informalisation, even among youngsters, is leading to the response, “Well the criminal justice system clearly isn’t all that important and we don’t really need to take the laws all that seriously, if all we get is a caution.”? I appreciate that the modern cautions bring with them additional sanctions if you fail to comply with them, but do you have those sorts of concerns or am I misunderstanding you?