Cautions to the wind

POLICE cautions get a bad rap. Many people—egged on by the tabloids—believe these warnings for minor offences allow criminals to walk away scot-free, leaving victims dissatisfied with an apparent lack of justice. Now, the government, keen to look tough ahead of next year’s election, wants to try scrapping them.

Currently the police can choose between six varieties of cautions if they prefer not to arrest and prosecute those accused of low-level crimes. They range from simple cautions—formal warnings that an offence has been committed—to conditional ones. Some result in a criminal record.

Chris Grayling, the justice secretary, reckons they are a confusing mess of soft options and wants a simpler, harsher approach. He announced on November 1st that over the coming year three regional police forces will try using two new options. First-time petty offenders will face community resolutions. A form of beefed-up police caution, these could involve offenders being made to apologise or pay for damage. For more serious infractions, suspended prosecutions will allow the police to attach reparative or punitive conditions which, if broken, will result in the case going to court.

Some think the new measures are unnecessary–and could be counterproductive. Police are already getting stricter. The number of cautions issued fell by 52% from a peak in 2008 to 2014, dropping faster than the crime rate, which declined 33%.

Mr Grayling is wrong to label cautions a soft option, argues John Graham of the Police Foundation, a think tank. Many do not realise that they can result in a criminal record. They are swift to administer and they give the police considerable discretion in dealing with low-level criminals. He worries that by reducing the number of options, police may either send to court people who could be better dealt with outside or may let off entirely those who might once have been cautioned.

One of the problems with the current caution system is that the efficacy of each element has never been properly tested, says Peter Neyroud, a former chief constable now at Cambridge University. But research does suggest that formal processing through the courts, especially for youths, often does little to prevent reoffending.

Mr Neyroud is the principle researcher on a trial with the West Midlands police. It compares the effectiveness and costs of sending minor criminals to court with using a “turning point contract”, which combines a deferred prosecution with a set of conditions intended to prevent future reoffending, not unlike Mr Grayling’s suspended prosecutions. Victims whose cases were dealt with outside the courts were more satisfied with the process and more confident that it would prevent people slipping back. Data on reoffending will take longer to collect. But whatever the evidence, politics will decide policy.