THE REPORT by former judge Sir Iain Glidewell into the Crown Prosecution Service could hardly be more damning - for as crime rose relentlessly during the 12 years since it was set up, convictions fell considerably.

In short, many criminals, caught and charged by the police, were either getting off scot free as, in one in eight cases, the CPS dropped charges or prosecuted them for lesser offences.

But there was no such respite for the easy-target motorists. Only one per cent of motoring cases were discontinued by the CPS.

The baleful effects of this were manifold.

A frustrated police service came to refer to the CPS as the Criminals Protection Service.

Victims of crime were angered - and some provoked into launching successful private prosecutions that mocked the CPS's unwillingness to take offenders to court.

Worse, the public's relationship with the police was harmed. Motorists, prominent among the minor, easy-to-prosecute cases on which the CPS focused, felt persecuted as they saw serious offenders getting away with it as the judicial system seeming to favour the villains.

It was all shabby justice - the product of a bogged-down bureaucracy that replaced the old system and removed the responsibility for many prosecutions from the police.

Yet grim as Sir Iain's findings are, they come as no real surprise as they only confirm the already widely-held view of a criminal justice system that, at the prosecuting end, was seen as selective and inefficient.

Quite rightly, the government is responding immediately to the report's call for urgent, top-to-bottom reform, with a system that will improve management and make the service work more closely with the police forces whose judgment and experience had become too far removed from the decision to prosecute.

Action at last, then. But long overdue - for the sickness in the CPS was manifest long ago.

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