APPENDIX 1
Memorandum by a worker in the criminal
justice system
I wish my personal details to remain confidential
and am therefore writing this Memorandum to the Committee anonymously.
I work in the Criminal Justice system in England and have a keen
interest in environmental, and in particular, wildlife crime.
I very much welcome the Committees inquiry into
Wildlife Crime. However, I am concerned that the inquiry does
not seem to have been widely publicised by the committee. Enquiries
I have made with local Police Wildlife Crime Officers (WCO's),
the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), English Nature and Defra
official has shown a complete lack of knowledge of the Inquiry.
I will now respond to each of the four points
specifically raised in your press release and then add further
points at the end.
1. WHAT IS
THE SCALE
AND IMPACT
OF WILDLIFE
CRIME?
The Police are primarily the responsible agency
for investigating wildlife crime and its Wildlife Crime Officers
would be best able to answer the first part of this question.
However, I am aware that most wildlife crime is not recorded in
Home Office figures and is therefore not seen by many Police forces
as a priority for investigation.
As a result of this lack of central record keeping,
I suspect that the Home Office and Ministers would not be able
to answer this question.
One of the main impacts of wildlife crime is
that we are losing unreplaceable habitats and species of the more
uncommon and rarer types.
Another is that wild birds and mammals suffer
cruel and agonising deaths as people continue to misuse legitimate
killing/trapping/poisoning techniques and continue to use illegal
ones.
2. IS THE
FRAMEWORK OF
NATIONAL AND
EUROPEAN LAW
AND OF
INTERNATIONAL REGULATION
ROBUST ENOUGH
TO DEAL
WITH WILDLIFE
CRIME EFFECTIVELY?
I believe not. One of the most frustrating points
I encounter with the current law is the apparent lack of thought
put in to the drafting of enforcement provisions of the various
Acts, SIs, etc. For example, for a number of wildlife offences
there is no power of arrest. As such, suspects can refuse to be
interviewed. This results in the investigation of cases being
much more difficult, time consuming and thus more costly to the
taxpayer.
There are also a number of Acts that give no
powers to the Police or other investigating agencies to enter
land or property (including dwelling house) if they suspect a
crime has been committed.
There is sometimes not even the power to obtain
search warrants through the Magistrates court. As a result, vital
evidence an often not be gained. The powers to take photographs,
samples, documents, etc are also often lacking.
There are also limited powers for prosecutions
to be taken against the managers and employers (be it family firms,
limited or public limited companies, or partnerships) of offenders
even when it can be proven that they knew, encouraged, caused,
or permitted etc the offence(s). Where there is provision for
this to be done, there are often difficulties in proving management
structure and responsibility.
A number of offences are subject to time limits
which mean that the defendant has to be tried within three (for
example, in the case of the Game Acts) or six months (for example,
in the case of the Protection of Badgers Act 1992) of the offence
or detection of the offence. With the difficulties in obtaining
evidence (mentioned above) a number of cases never proceed because
they effectively run out of time. Indeed, some cases seem to run
out of time because the investigating/prosecuting authorities
do not know how to proceed in such cases and effectively "let
them" run out of time so they do not have to prosecute them.
Central Government urgently needs to draw up Public Interest Criteria,
which should be subject to consultation and then published, setting
out how cases should be dealt with (fixed penalty, caution, warning,
prosecution etc) and when it is in the public interest to do each
of these.
Nature Watch and the National Federation of
Badger Groups have interesting material on their web pages on
the above weaknesses in the legislation.
There is often too little interpretation of
key terms in the Acts, SI's etc which then means investigations
are not started or prosecutions are not taken as no one knows
whether the case will succeed or not. Good examples are to be
found in the Protection of Badgers Act 1992. For example, what
is meant by: "serious damage", "Current use",
"the incidental result of an otherwise lawful operation that
could not have been reasonably avoided"? In my experience,
government policy divisions are not willing to provide guidance
on how to interpret these uninterpreted phases stating "it
can only be tested in the courts", which is far from helpful.
3. DO RESPONSIBLE
BODIES WHO
DEAL WITH
THIS TYPE
OF CRIME
HAVE SUFFICIENT
RESOURCES AND
POWERS TO
DO SO?
DO THEY
TREAT WILDLIFE
CRIME WITH
PROPER AND
DUE GRAVITY?
The majority of Police Forces do not have full
time or even part-time Wildlife Crime Officers. Most forces rely
on dedicated and interested officers to fulfil these roles in
addition to their normal policing roles and/or in the officer's
own time. This is completely unrealistic in today's world. Officers
cannot undertake these roles effectively when they have time away
from other duties, as they never get such time. The result is
poorly investigated or worse still not investigated crime, which
fails to get past the initial investigation stage.
This situation is, I believe, as a result of
two factors. The first being that as there are no national targets
etc for wildlife crime, Chief Police Officers, do not in the main,
give wildlife crime sufficient priority or resources. Secondly,
a majority of officers do not see wildlife crime as important
when compared to violent/drug/sex crime. This means that every
time, wildlife crime takes a lesser priority.
The CPS to my knowledge has no dedicated wildlife
crime prosecutors, which hampers the efforts of the Police to
bring cases to trial.
It is my experience that outside the Police,
other statutory organisations do not generally have the necessary
in-team dedicated legal training or legal team to effectively
deal with wildlife crime. They are often engaged to some degree
with wildlife crime, but this makes up a small part of their overall
job and with increasing workloads in the public sector, means
that it does not get the attention it deserves.
Most prosecutors—with the exception of
those in the Environment Agency and at least one Crown Prosecutor,
have little knowledge of wildlife crime. This is particularly
so in the CPS. As a result, a number of cases fail to get past
the Prosecutor for prosecution. This I feel to be largely as a
result of the lack of knowledge and reluctance to seek out expert
help from non-lawyers by prosecutors. They either do not have
the time to carry out the research (because of unrealistic caseloads)
or simply do not believe that wildlife crime cases are worth bothering
about.
There is also a persuasive argument for a special
wildlife and environmental court.
I believe an answer to the whole questions could
be the establishment of specialist wildlife and environmental
crime prosecutors and courts, coupled with a new national environmental,
wildlife and crime agency (or NEWCA). This would be along the
lines of the Unites States Fish & Wildlife service. It could
combine the roles currently carried out by the Environment Agency
enforcement teams, Police Wildlife Crime Officers, English Nature's
wildlife licensing and enforcement functions, the licensing and
pesticide poisoning investigation functions of Defra's Rural Development
Service National Wildlife Management Team, along with some of
the functions of local authority Environmental Health and Trading
Standards teams and some HSE functions.
4. IS THERE
SUFFICIENT DIALOGUE
AND CO-OPERATION
ACROSS GOVERNMENT
AND AMONGST
THE VARIOUS
BODIES RESPONSIBLE
FOR DEALING
WITH THIS
TYPE OF
CRIME?
No. The current wildlife enforcement bodies
are not joined up in their current working. There has been an
attempt to seek increased co-operation between enforcement bodies
by the creation of the Partnership against Wildlife Crime (PAW),
whose secretariat is within Defra.
There has also been the creation of the National
Wildlife Crime Unit in NCIS. However, PAW is limited in that it
is mainly an information exchange network. NCIS tends to deal
(quite rightly with the more serious, organised and international
wildlife crime).
A number of enforcement bodies fail to take
prosecutions even when there is clear evidence of offences. This
I see mainly as a result of them having to work with landowners/managers
and do not want to get a bad name by those bodies for prosecuting
the same (English Nature is often criticised for this).
The lack of proper training of civilian enforcement
bodies in evidence gathering, Police and Criminal Evidence Act
procedure etc is one of the main reasons why cases are not properly
investigated. It is no use parliament giving the powers to these
bodies if they are untrained and unprepared to use them when necessary.
Another major obstacle is the fear by enforcement
bodies of breaching data protection legislation when sharing intelligence
and information.
April 2004
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