The number of trials which are cancelled or delayed because either the Crown Prosecution Service or the police are "not ready" is far from acceptable. In West Yorkshire alone, 11 per cent of trials in the year to March 2005 had to be dropped. Across England and Wales as a whole 28 per cent of hearings, a total of 784,000, were either delayed or declared ineffective at an annual cost to the taxpayer of £173 million.
The report on this scandalous situation from the National Audit Office lists a series of failings, ranging from files being mislaid or incomplete to failure to give priority to urgent cases and a lack of preparation before hearings.
No organisation gets everything right all the time. Errors occur even in the best-regulated business, but surely seldom on this sort of scale. The percentage of failures is shocking, particular when it's considered what is at stake here.
Not only is there a serious risk that guilty people will get away with their crime because the case against them fails to proceed, but innocent people might suffer too by being kept waiting until their case comes to trial.
Delays can take a terrible toll on people's lives - as in the case of 43-year-old Philip Tidswell, from Queensbury, who last year hanged himself after being falsely accused of raping a mentally-ill man. It was shameful that the CPS took a full two months to decide there was no case to answer.
The CPS needs to take the National Audit Office's recommendations on board immediately to avoid any further tragedies of this sort.
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