NACRO submission to Royal Commission
01 January 1991
NACRO submission to Royal Commission
bacdoc March=1992
Submission by the National Association for the Care and
Resettlement of Offenders to the Royal Commission on Criminal
Justice, December 1991
Introduction
1. NACRO welcomes the establishment of the Royal Commission
and is pleased to have the opportunity to submit evidence.
Our evidence is confined to Chose matters of which we have
experience and which fall within our fields of concern.
2. NACRO shares the growing and widespread concern about
miscarriages of justice. The adverse impact of wrongful
convictions on the credibility and moral authority of the
criminal justice system as a whole is clear to us from our
day to day contact with offenders. Most of the ex--
offenders with whom we deal acknowledge their
responsibility for their past offences. However, the
minority of cases in which individuals consider that they
were wrongly convicted - and the larger number of instances
where people feel that this was true of others with whom
they served sentences - cause deep feelings of injustice
and resentment which have repercussions far beyond the
individual case. We therefore wish to associate ourselves
strongly with proposals to reduce the likelihood of
wrongful convictions and to provide more satisfactory
procedures for the later rectification of miscarriages of
justice.
The conduct of police investigations
3. Stronger safeguards are needed against false confessions,
whether induced by pressure on the suspect, invented by
dishonest police officers, or resulting from
misunderstanding or faulty recording of conversations. It
is particularly important that the rules governing the
admissibility of evidence should provide an adequate
deterrent to practices in the course of interviewing
suspects which increase the likelihood of false
confessions. Innocent people in police custody may be
frightened, worried, disoriented and at a low physical and
mental ebb. Their vulnerability can lead, and has led, to
false confessions even to very serious offences.
4. These pressures can be particularly strong for certain
groups of people. The work of NACRO's Race Issues Advisory
Committee has drawn attention to the particular fear and
suspicion of criminal justice agencies which exists among
some racial minority groups. Proper and fully observed
safeguards for suspects are of particular importance to
protect racial minorities and to promote confidence in the
fairness of the criminal justice system.
5. It is important that suspects understand fully what is
happening to them and what is being asked of them.
Interpreters who have an adequate understanding of
suspects' rights and police procedures should always be
available for non-English speaking suspects.
6. Sections 76 and 78 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act
(PACE) give the courts power to exclude a confession which
has been obtained by oppression or is considered to be
unreliable or
whose admission would "have an adverse affect on the
fairness of the proceedings". Judges frequently refuse to
admit in evidence statements obtained in breach of the PACE
Code of Practice; but, while the courts retain a discretion
to admit such evidence, the rules will continue to provide
only a partial deterrent to malpractice. There should be
a statutory rule mandatorily excluding evidence obtained
following a substantial breach of the PACE Codes of
Practice.
7. The most important safeguard against unfair or oppressive
questioning is the right to consult a solicitor and to have
one present during interrogation. This is so important and
fundamental a right that exclusi