Page 89 - JUSTICE Tackling Racial Injustice - Children and the Youth Justice System

suitability for bail, we consider that this requirement would act as a strong
procedural safeguard to such evidence. This would increase the level of care
and attention given to the relevance and accuracy of the information provided
to the court. The court would then be able to make a more fully informed
decision regarding bail.

4.26 We consider that such a certification could be modelled on the format required
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when the police make an application for a warrant under section 8 of PACE.
Checklists

4.27 As mentioned in Chapter 2, following the ‘Voice of the Child’ project, the
MPS is now introducing booking-in checklists for certain custody suites in
London. Similar checklists should be introduced for diversion, remand
and sentencing decisions. For example, we have been told of one instance
where a sentencer felt that the only option available to them was to sentence a
child to custody. However, there were further options, only the sentencer was
not made fully aware of them. After this was pointed out, the child was recalled
from custody and their sentence was changed, avoiding immediate custody.

4.28 A checklist would have helped to avoid this situation. It may have required the
sentencer to have sight of the pre-sentence report (PSRs) prior to making a
decision, or to go through each possible disposal option, requiring information
to be sought about the feasibility of each one and allowing the sentencer to
record their consideration, adoption or rejection of each option. In this way,
the right decision would have been made the first time, reducing the trauma

informant need not be disclosed, but the officer should be prepared to answer questions about the
accuracy of previous information or intelligence they have provided, as well as any related matters” –
‘Investigation: Search powers and obtaining and executing search warrants’.
243 See ‘Application for Search Warrant: Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, Schedule 1 – Second
Set of Access Conditions’ (April, 2016), question 8:
“(8) Declaration. See Criminal Procedure Rules r.47.25(4), (5). The Crown Court can punish for
contempt of court a person who knowingly makes a false declaration to the court.
To the best of my knowledge and belief:
(a) this application discloses all the information that is material to what the court must decide,
including anything that might reasonably be considered capable of undermining any of the grounds of
the application, and
(b) the content of this application is true.”

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