Police Force Cautioning: Policy and Practice¹

Abstract

Abstract: In June 1984 the Home Office published a Consultative Document entitled Cautioning by the Police. This followed the deliberations of a working group set up to ‘recommend a basis for more consistent and effective police cautioning practice’. The research described in this article was commissioned by the Working Group on Cautioning to consider the discrepancy in police force cautioning rates and the extent to which it resulted from differences in force policy and practice.