Pubwatch welcomes cautions review
National Pubwatch has urged the Government to ensure its review of the use of cautions for violence will mean proper justice for licensees who are attacked.
Justice Secretary Jack Straw has announced a review into the use of police cautions for criminal offences after concerns that serious offences are being dealt with too lightly.
Nearly 40,000 assaults resulted in cautions last year, the BBC's Panorama show reported last night.
Calls for a review of have come from powerful figures including Keir Starmer, the director of public prosecutions, and Metropolitan Police chief Paul Stephenson.
The issue has been raised in the pub trade and National Pubwatch wants anyone who attacks hosts or pub staff to face court through its Court Not Caution campaign.
National Pubwatch chairman Steve Baker, who has written to Starmer and is to write again to Jack Straw, said: "I welcome the review but hope that they do not draw a line above what they consider to be a minor offence.
"Our research has shown that many of the inconsistencies in how police deal with offenders and the disquiet felt by victims stems from the use of cautions for incidents that they categorise as Common Assault.
"We have been in close contact with the Home Office about the issue of assaults on licensees for many months and have constantly raised this as an issue.
"We understand why cautions are so attractive because they allow police to deal quickly with the offence but its our view that if officers took a little more time over their investigation, perhaps revisited the victim a few days after the assault to see how they had been affected by the incident and discussed their finding with the Crown Prosecution Service then I feel that many more cases would end up in court."
• Sign the Court Not Caution petition to the Prime Minister.
