Critics of Lord Janner decision misunderstand justice system

I want to know why allegations were not put to Janner while he was still fit to stand trial but that is what a public inquiry should tell us - not a trial

The creation of the Crown Prosecution Service nearly 30 years ago was pretty traumatic for the police. I remember it well and wrote a book about it at the time. Overnight, detectives lost the power to decide what charges should be brought against people they had arrested. Instead, the director of public prosecutions — whose remit had been confined to cases of “importance or difficulty” for the previous 100 years — took responsibility in 1986 for most public prosecutions across England and Wales.

Some police forces still haven’t got over it. Last week, Leicestershire police said the CPS decision not to prosecute Lord Janner of Braunstone QC for alleged indecent assaults and buggery on nine individuals was the “wrong one”. This may have had something to do with the CPS’s allegation that mistakes had been made by Leicestershire police in 2002 (as well as by the CPS itself) and that Janner should have been prosecuted while he was still fit to stand trial. Leicestershire police responded by publishing an allegation that Janner was an “animal”.

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from Children | The Guardian http://ift.tt/1DNdzGH