Proven Guilty: Building Block In Our Adversarial System

Due process stands behind the words ‘innocent until proven guilty’ which is a building block in our adversarial system. Herbert Packer theorised the two models of ‘due process’ and ‘crime control’ to describe the competing values in our criminal justice system. Due process can be described as “at least as much to protect the factually innocent as it is to convict the factually guilty” (Henry, S. and Einstadter, W.J., 2006.,p.61) whereas crime control protects the victim with the insurance of justice being served. On the surface, our system claims to uphold the right to due process, however, when delving deeper into aspects such as pre-trial procedures and jury trials, holes arise.

There are many stages between arrest and trial, which are
If the defendant doesn’t meet the criteria required for bail and thus denied it, does this not challenge the standard of proof and consequently not adhere to due process values? It can be argued further that if bail is granted, are we taking away the due
Jeremy Wright told the House of Commons that 132,000 offences were committed by those when on bail in 2012 (Davies, M., Croall, H. and Tyrer, J., 2015) If bail isn’t granted, and the defendant is remanded in custody, they can experience certain privileges such as having a ‘taste’ for prison which can perhaps act as a mitigating factor in their trial. In general, bail and remands in custody are within due process.The Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (PACE) Code C is the Code of Practice for the detention, treatment and questioning of persons by police officers. In this code, due process is served in a variety of ways such the ‘appropriate adult’ for juvenile suspects where an adult is assigned to a child to essentially act as a substitute parent(1.7 a), mentally and physically vulnerable persons are taken into consideration(1.7 b), suspects are even entitled to a copy of the Code to review their rights (1.8 b) Another important aspect of pre-trial procedures would be the Plea and Trial Preparation Hearing (PTPH) which occurs for Crown Court trials and is aimed at reducing the need for multiple hearings. The indictment will be read to the defendant and they will hence be asked if they plead guilty or not guilty. If plead not guilty, further organisation will be set for the trial and if plead guilty, the sentence will decided there (Justice Gov, 2015) Guilty