Attorney-General written question – answered at on 12 February 2013.
To ask the Attorney-General for which offences the Crown Prosecution Service records the number of referrals it receives from the police for a charging decision.
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) maintains no central record of the offences or category of offences on cases referred to the CPS for a charging decision. However, some limited records are held, by way of monitoring flags applied to the case record on the Case Management System (CMS), for the numbers of pre-charge decisions recorded against suspects considered for offences of rape or human trafficking. The figures reported by way of monitoring flags, are dependant upon lawyers and administrative staff identifying cases and flagging them on CMS.
A rape or human trafficking flag is applied at the onset of a case, and remains in place even if the charges are subsequently amended or dropped. If a case commences under a different offence but at a later date charges of rape or human trafficking are preferred, the flag will be applied at that point. Such charges may be considered at the time of the pre-charge decision but, following the charging decision, a defendant may be charged with another offence. Similarly, there may be cases where a person was proceeded against for offences of rape or human trafficking but convicted of a lesser offence.
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