25 January 2021

Misguided changes to bail procedures resulted in widespread confusion

Misguided changes to how policing could use pre-charge bail restricted how officers could manage investigations and caused massive widespread confusion.

Stark warnings were issued by the Police Federation and policing leaders in 2017 after Theresa May introduced the cap on pre-charge bail as part of the Policing and Crime Act, meaning the period people could be placed on pre-charge bail was limited to 28 days.

Now initial pre-charge bail period is to increase from 28 days to three months (90 days), with further extensions requiring a sign-off from an inspector or above. This will cut red tape for police officers and prevent individuals being held under investigation for long periods.

James Dimmack, Conduct Lead for Dorset Police Federation, said the move would assist police offices and allow more scope to protect victims during the investigation process.

He lamented how previous Government’s had ignored the views of policing professionals.

James said: “This gives structure to an investigation and it also creates an audit trail so that investigations can withstand rigour scrutiny.

“It will help massively because three months gives you an amount of time to actually conduct enquires.”

However, James raised the point that “whilst three months feels like a significant amount of time, it actually goes by very quickly when you’re talking about it in working days”.

He went onto to say: “It’s also not a target, it’s the amount of time to get things completed and hopefully we can get it done within that time.

“But actually, what it does give is us a reasonable timeframe to complete enquiries into an investigation.”

Speaking about Theresa May’s changes, James said: “This was definitely a sledgehammer to crack a nut at the time.

“It was driven by political means rather than to actually make things better.

“It restricted how officers could manage their time, manage investigations, and caused a massive widespread of confusion.”

James explained how “people had to pay the price” for the 2017 cap.

He said: “From a policing perspective we were very confused by it… bail is a vital tool to protect people.”