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Nov 223 min read

40 years of PACE: Defending Suspects at Police Stations

Patrick Dunne and Niall Shiels, of Imran Khan and Partners, attended an event this week to mark the 40th anniversary of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (PACE), the statute which transformed the practice of police station representation in the UK.






The event was hosted by Sandra Paul and Matthew Hardcastle, Partners in the Criminal Litigation department at Kingsley Napley LLP, and Ed Cape, Emeritus Professor of Criminal Law and Practice at the University of the West of England. The hosts recently co-authored the 8th edition of “Defending Suspects in Police Station”, the essential practitioners’ guide to police station representation.


The handbook was first authored by Cape after PACE came into force in January 1985. Cape was practicing criminal defence law at the time in a small, legal aid firm in Bristol. He explained to the audience the realities of police station representation, and criminal defence litigation more broadly, in the pre-PACE world. The audience, largely made up of young legal aid practitioners at the start of their career, were surprised to hear that in the 1970s, police officers were simply not required to record police interviews or make detailed custody records. Instead, judges permitted officers to give evidence at trial largely from memory, trusting them to have remembered the key admissions made by a suspect in interview. Cape also explained, shockingly, that before PACE was enacted, only 6% of those arrested had a lawyer present to represent them at their police station interview.


Cape went onto explain the immediate transformative effect PACE’s enactment had, both in terms of practice, but also on the rights imbued to suspects.


Perhaps most significantly, the Act required suspects to be informed of their right to free and independent legal advice as soon as they arrived at the police station. It also mandated the electronic recording of police interviews, which helped eradicate the scandal of routine acceptance by the courts of clearly fabricated police accounts.


PACE ensured that both the suspect and their lawyer were entitled to a copy of the recorded police station interview. It enshrined a wide range of protections for suspects, including improved conditions of detention, and creating a clear procedure police must follow when taking intimate samples from suspects or collecting identification evidence.


Crucially, from a practice perspective, PACE ensured that the lawyer who attended the police station got paid for their work, through legal aid.


The hosts went on to discuss the faults of the legislation, and the broader challenges facing criminal defence litigation today. They recognised that the Act expanded police power, for example to stop and search suspects, and noted that such powers were not likely to be curbed anytime soon, given the lack of political will for change.


The hosts were damning in their criticism of the lack of government funding provided, both for the criminal justice system, but also for police forces, to ensure that crimes can be investigated in a timely manner, for the benefit of both suspects and victims. Matthew Hardcastle noted, wryly, that since the appointment of Chris Grayling as Lord Chancellor in 2012, the average time in post for a Secretary of State for Justice was shorter than the average time it took for a rape investigation to proceed to trial.


The panel pointed out that the benefits created by PACE in 1984 were becoming increasingly difficult to enforce in the context of austerity and its devastation of the criminal justice system. In respect of bail and authorising continued detention, for example, the panel noted that 12 custody officers, in one UK police force, are responsible for approximately 2000 cases in which ongoing detention is required to be reviewed. They argued that this was unsustainable, and led to custody officers, under the stress of large caseloads alongside their busy day jobs, uncritically accepting the demands of investigating officers, preventing suspects from having their right to bail independently reviewed.


In the context of cuts to legal aid and limited funding for police station work, the panellists noted that the current average age of a criminal duty solicitor is forty-nine. Only 4% of criminal duty solicitors are under the age of thirty-five. They argued that there exists a dearth of young criminal defence lawyers qualifying and practising, which puts the long term viability of the system at risk.


The hope is that young practitioners, including those who attended the event, can carry the torch that the panellists have done so expertly throughout their careers, to ensure that suspects can continue to access justice in police stations.


The event took place at the offices of Kingsley Napley LLP, on 19 November 2024.


For more information, please contact Niall Shiels at NiallS@ikpsolicitors.com.

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