Here’’s how the prosecution system worked in England and Wales until at least 1994. (This applied to sexual offence cases and also to other kinds of offence based on a complaint.)

After a complaint a police inquiry would be initiated. The complainant was an important part of that process, but the police and CPS would be agnostic, for the moment, about whether s/he was reliable or telling the truth. After all, there could be any number of reasons for a complaint, some of them positive, others less so; and recall of events exists on a sliding scale of accuracy [1]. Of course, the whole point of the police inquiry was to test whether the complaint had any basis in fact and was evidence of a crime committed.

The police would follow up any number of relevant leads, and not just those supporting a prosecution. The aim was, in part, to assess the veracity and reliability of the evidence as the inquiry developed.

At a suitable juncture, a file would be sent to the CPS, and an assessment would be made on various criteria. On the evidence gathered, was a conviction more likely than not? Was it in the public interest to proceed to trial? At this point, instructions could be given to the police to make further inquiries to gather more evidence or to finesse that which they had already collected.

The key point here is this. The police and the CPS would together be acting independently. They were not agents of the complainant. They did not represent him or her in any way. Any trial would, importantly, be R [2] v John or Jane Doe, not Complainant A v John or Jane Doe. The complainant was a witness: a vital one, but nothing more. His or her evidence was to be evaluated like the evidence of any witness, for veracity and reliability.

Yes, this system could come over as a little aloof. Mostly because care would have been taken to treat the complainant as a witness and his or her evidence as just that: evidence, like any other. The task of police and CPS was to keep at arm’s length from the complainant and not to get sucked in to any agenda being worked out by him or her.

And then it all changed……

Luke Gittos sets out usefully what then happened.

In 1999, the New Labour government decided that [the] focus on objectivity and impartial judgement failed to do justice to the victims of crime. Jack Straw… said [3]: ‘”For too long, victims of crime have not been given a proper support and protection they deserve. This must change. I am determined to ensure that their needs are placed at the very heart of the criminal-justice system” [4].’….. The Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999 allowed evidence from vulnerable witnesses to be given behind a screen or via a video link…. The Criminal Justice Act 2003 then extended these protection to all witnesses, whether considered vulnerable or not, as long as certain statutory criteria were met……

The intentions were no doubt commendable. There is every reason why complainants should be treated kindly and respectfully and their allegations should be taken seriously. The exercise of sensitivity towards a complainant is right and proper in itself. Apart from anything else, such care also helps ensure that complainants feel able to come forward in the first place.

But this should never be – and should never have been – at the expense of objectivity and impartiality……

[continued in the next post]