ACT prosecutors revolting

Ps – the idea of payment on results is (in my view) terrible. There’s a whole lot of reasons prosecutions fail or fall over, and some of them are not capable of being affected by the prosecutor. Plus, it would create an artificial incentive to prosecute easy matters, rather than those that needed to be run. And that would leave the paid staff who would be left to run the hard, tedious stufff even more demoralised.

Using external practitioners is not the worst idea around, provided their independence from anyone except the DPP could be sewn up. The Commonwealth may let some agencies do or arrange their own prosecutions.

I would have thought they’d brief out to the bar where necessary and financially possible – for example, in something requiring specialist skills. (In fact, page 48 of last Year’s Annual Report lists the external practitioners and the matters for which they were engaged).

As to the idea of RiotActers being used, I feel this would be the equivalent of sending an enthusiastic but thick Pomeranian out to beat up a Rottweiler. There’s a reason doing legal work requires a bit of study.

VYBerlinaV8_the_one_they_all_copy said :

Why don’t they outsource the prosecution function to private legal firms, with payment contingent on outcome? Yep, it’ll cost a bit, but I bet we’d see some results.

Are you a Kiwi? I understand that is how the system works in New Zuland with more serious cases being run by the silks…

Imagine how he would have felt if he was the one who took the initial report of a crime at 3.30am, investigated and chased down the offenders, put them before the Court, prepared a full brief of evidence in an extraordinarily short space of time to suit the defence, subpoenaed all the witnesses and THEN handed the brief to a prosecutor who read it for 5 mins before losing in Court the next day or seeing a ridiculous sentence.

Imagine how demoralising that would be

So you’d have lawyers on one side, only paid on a successful outcome. Lawyers on the other side, paid regardless. Both drawn from the same small community.

No prospect of corruption there at all!

VYBerlinaV8_the_one_they_all_copy said :

Why don’t they outsource the prosecution function to private legal firms, with payment contingent on outcome? Yep, it’ll cost a bit, but I bet we’d see some results.

It’s where the public prosecutors end up going, it’d save them a step. Good thinking.

People would shoot themselves rather than face trial.

; )

I reckon a panel of RA regulars could prosecute anyone who has done anything, anytime !

Why don’t they outsource the prosecution function to private legal firms, with payment contingent on outcome? Yep, it’ll cost a bit, but I bet we’d see some results.

Oh!