Research on impact of bad character evidence published

The Office for Criminal Justice Reform published its report, Research into the Impact of Bad Character Provisions on the Courts, on March 9, 2009. 

This report provides evidence from six court centres over eight months in 2006 on the use of applications to admit bad character evidence in criminal cases. This provision was introduced as part of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 and was designed to allow evidence of a defendant’s bad character to play a greater part in the prosecution of cases.

The overall finding was that the new law represented a major codification of behaviour relating to admitting bad character evidence and had a beneficial impact on criminal trials. The report sets out the key implications for Her Majesty’s Courts Services, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and the police which include:

When the CPS makes a bad character application, the police provide evidence for the prosecution file using a printout from the Police National Computer, which details a person’s previous offending history. When the printout is not available or up to date, the convictions or further convictions are copied out onto an MG16 form. The key points for the police identify how this service could be improved to the benefit of both agencies:

• What constitutes appropriate evidence of ‘bad character’ is not well understood by some police respondents. Clarification would lead to better collection of evidence.
• Respondents found the MG16 form overly time consuming to complete. Simplifying the MG16 form and eliminating the requirement to copy the previous convictions from the PNC printout to the MG form, by simply attaching the printout to the form, would speed up the process.
• Respondents from the police found it discouraging when the CPS did not use the bad character evidence without explanation. Feedback from the CPS on the use of this evidence would inform and support the police’s contribution.

The full report, Research into the Impact of Bad Character Provisions on the Courts, can be found at http://www.justice.gov.uk/ docs/bad-character-provisions-in-court2.pdf