Dear reader,
Reporting on the crime happening in your neighbourhood, from police cordon to Crown Court sentence, is a huge part of what we do here at Nottinghamshire Live.
Transparency in the justice system and in what the police do day in, day out is vitally important to enable us to tell you what’s going and for society as a whole to have faith in the systems that are put in place to keep us safe.
I’m writing to you today to let you know about a concerning proposed change to the guidelines police use when letting us know about information that may affect your lives.
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For many years, police have always released the names of people charged with crimes, in accordance with guidance from the College of Policing. We often report on those , or choose to wait until that person makes their first court appearance, making a note of the name on our diary and watching out for it in the court lists we are sent every day.
Now the College is proposing that forces “can” name the charged person if they wish to, and is recommending that charging information is only released “where the crime is of a serious nature such as rape or murder” or where the incident has already been reported in the media or on social media sites. Current guidelines say they “should” name people charged.
The driving force behind the proposed changes is understood to be ensuring the guidance is in line with data protection law. Forces have been told that they “must consider their data protection obligations as well as the need for open justice and transparency”.
So why is this important to you, the reader?
Let me highlight a recent case where the name of a charged man was withheld by Nottinghamshire Police.
The man was charged following reports of a sexual assault in the Bramcote area, but police would not initially tell us his name.
We were eventually given the name with a specific instruction that this was “not for publication”.
This made the process of tracking this suspect through the courts lengthier and more difficult than it should be.
If this happens with more and more cases, it is ultimately the public who will suffer. We won’t be able to track people through the courts as easily, and with finite resources available to us it’s possible that some may slip through the cracks.
Like most editors, I am a huge advocate for transparency in policing and the justice system. I spent time working as a reporter in the Royal Courts of Justice and saw how slow the wheels can turn there. I deal with complaints most days of the week from convicted criminals who think we should remove their stories from our sites “due to GDPR” or not having permission to report on their crimes. I know how low public knowledge is of the justice system and efforts to close ranks even further will only make this worse.
We need cooperation from police forces on matters like this because policing can only continue to exist if the public give their consent for it to do so - and transparency is of the utmost importance here.
Dawn Alford, Executive Director of the Society of Editors has been leading the campaign against the guidelines. She said: “The Society is deeply concerned that proposals contained within the revised guidance look set to place unprecedented restrictions upon the flow of information provided by the police to journalists.
“Misplaced concerns around data protection and defendants’ privacy rights are being used as a basis to allow forces to choose which criminal charges they confirm to the media and non-custodial penalties such as fines, out of court disposals and cautions, could become non-verifiable with press officers.
“A successful working relationship between the police and the media remains essential to policing legitimacy in the UK and the Society remains in dialogue with the College of Policing to reverse these draconian proposals and strengthen, rather than restrict, the public’s right to know.”
Let me know what you think by leaving a comment below or emailing me: natalie.fahy@reachplc.com.
