The CPS, Policy-Making and Assisted Dying: Towards a ‘Freedom’ Approach

In 2016 I evaluated the CPS after its first 30 years of existence. I did this through the lens of the ‘freedom model’. This approach acknowledges that most people agree over the principal aims and values of criminal justice, at least at the level of rhetoric. Few people would argue against convicting the guilty, protecting the innocent, protecting everyone from arbitrary and oppressive treatment, treating victims with respect, and pursuing all this efficiently and proportionately. The problem is that these values and interests often clash. The goals are not controversial, but their prioritisation often is. ‘Freedom’ can be a kind of common currency that allows us to weigh up, in any situation, how to prioritise. Criminal justice practices reduce the freedom of suspects, but some reduce it more than others. Compare, for example, out-of court disposals by the CPS with prosecutions: the former usually reduce freedom less than the latter. And some crimes – eg sexual offences erode more freedom for victims and society at large than do others – eg driving offences. Convicting guilty careless drivers, then, while desirable, should not be as high a priority as convicting sexual offenders. It will be evident from these examples that current law and practice sometimes prioritise ‘freedom’, but frequently do not. In an attempt to see what the ‘freedom’ model would look like concretely, I examined how far the CPS operationalised the three core criminal justice values that are integral to it: ‘Justice’, ‘Democracy’ and the ‘Three Es’ (efficiency, effectiveness and economy). Again, these are not controversial in themselves, but prioritisation between and within them is. I looked at how a range of policies and powers were formulated, interpreted and exercised. I