ABSTRACT
The importance of the pre-trial stage in criminal justice proceedings can hardly be overestimated. Baldwin emphasises the caveats involved in pre-trial justice. In 1985 the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) was created and it came into operation in 1986. Arguably, the CPS was inspired by considerations to do with the quality of justice: investigation and prosecution should be separated in order to reduce the probability of overzealous police prosecutions. Prosecution is about filtering out cases that should not go to court. That requires rules and guidelines to decide how cases should be processed once they have reached the stage of prosecution. Use of pre-trial custody is almost inevitably controversial. While no one disputes that those suspected of serious offences who are likely to re-offend should be held, pre-trial custody remains by definition, the deprivation of liberty of the innocent, or at least the not yet proven guilty.
