Pre Charge Bail Management Principles
Pre-charge bail decisions have an impact on victims, witnesses, suspects and public confidence, in bringing offenders swiftly to justice. It is therefore imperative that Forces have robust management processes around bail.
This document outlines the10 key principles that should always be considered when seeking to improve bail management performance. The principles are aimed at ensuring bail is both necessary and proportionate and that the police service is performing well, in its management of bail, and can evidence such, set against the identified criteria below.
The principles are evidence based and have been derived from previous NPIA reports, a review of ‘what works and what doesn’t’ across better and weaker performing forces and on discussions between the Criminal Justice Business Area, the Policing Minister, HMIC, the Home Office, Forces and the College of Policing.
Forces need to ensure the principles are accounted for or implemented within their current structures in order to support or improve their management of bail. These principles will be used to underpin HMIC inspections on bail.
Principles.
1. Forces must strive to finalise investigations during the first period of detention. Any reason for initial bail (or subsequent re bail) should be noted explicitly on the Custody record. Every bail decision must be capable of withstanding scrutiny having considered proportionality, legality and necessity.
2. Unless seeking advice or a charging decision from the CPS, pre-charge bail should only be used as a means of facilitating a quality investigation. However Officers should consider what the ‘key evidence’ is at the earliest opportunity and make every effort to gather that evidence in the first period of detention.
3. Bail periods must be proportionate to the enquires that are necessary to finalise the investigation. In the first instance the bail period should be no more than 28 days unless there are exceptional circumstances, and in many instances less than that. Any time in excess of this should be justified and recorded on the custody record.
4. Bail for Crown Prosecution Service Direct (CPSD) charge decisions should be for no longer than 72 hours and only where necessary as routinely bail should not be necessary. Bail for serious offences (such as Sexual offences, etc) should be monitored regularly by Police and CPS staff, to ensure these are not excessive and are in accordance with any national guidance that may be available.
5. In the case of advice files, Forces should agree locally a reasonable time period for CPS decisions. These should be managed locally through the performance meetings, in order to avoid multiple re-bails or prolonged periods of bail. As a guideline 6 weeks is recommended as a maximum.
6. All instances where offenders are then re-bailed should be escalated and reviewed by a supervising Officer; justification for any re-bail should be recorded on the custody record. A second re-bail should be escalated further and so on. The reasons for re-bail should be articulated on the custody record and endorsed by the supervising officer.
7. All Forces should have a single point of contact with oversight responsibility and accountability for force wide issues relating to bail, in order to oversee the use of bail and ensure progress on enquiries that have lead to the need for bail.
8. All Forces should evidence, monitor and make transparent information and data surrounding bail. Such information may include but not exclusively;
a. Number of persons on bail;
b. Number of bail occasions not answered
c. Number of person re-bailed
d. Number of occasions re-bailed per case
e. Length of re bails.
Forces may also wish to review outcomes post bail in order to analyse the effect of bail on any outcomes. They may also wish to map or understand where their greatest risks are relation to bail, for example the use of bail for offences committed by foreign nationals. Finally, Forces may also wish to look at more qualitative information, for example re-bail by category of offence or data around the needs or vulnerabilities of a detainee.
9. Bail should be an area that is actively managed internally and managed in conjunction with partners, for example by raising any issues at relevant performance meetings or cross agency meetings to resolve any barriers or issues.
10. Forces should consider alternatives to custody, particularly in light of recent changes to PACE Code G regarding the necessity to arrest and the appropriate use of Out of Court Disposals.