Court Advocacy for Police Officers

Abstract

Police officers often find themselves as prosecuting advocates in courts of summary jurisdiction. Despite calls from the Law Society and others for all prosecuting to be carried out by solicitors, there is little doubt much court work will continue to be done by police officers — in fact with recent economy cuts, we have seen some police authorities cutting the number of solicitors employed by them and not employing solicitors in areas where there is a real need. Also more forces are setting up process units to carry out their accident and process enquiries and where Sergeants and above are acting as prosecutors.

I hope that the information contained in the following pages will be of some help to police officers charged with the important task of representing their police force in court.