Issues of The Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 - Essay Example

Each code established goes into detail on how to conduct the practices mentioned above and to what extent the police are supposed to use their powers. What this code does is to therefore try and safeguard the law and prevent any miscarriages of the law (Ozin, Norton, and Spivey, 2006, pg. 125).

A miscarriage of justice, in this case, refers to any punishment or even conviction of an individual for a crime that he or she did not commit (Samuels, 2014, pg. 1790). Eyewitness evidence is a very helpful source of evidence in the determination of any case. However, it is also a very fragile form of evidence as it is subjected to a psychological evaluation by both the prosecution and defense team and this may test the credibility. The eyewitnesses are usually shaken by the different approaches taken by the two legal teams some of which are unexpected and this leads to them making mistakes or omitting important facts that lead to many juries discounting the eyewitness testimonies (Bromby, MacMilla, and McKellar, 2007, pg. 340).

The testimony of eyewitnesses is first of all collected by police officers once the crime is committed and recorded according to Code D of PACE. The code provides specific methods of collecting the testimony and identifying suspects which must be followed to the letter. This however is not exactly the case (Samuels, 2007, pg. 3). There are rogue police officers and others who are not so keen to follow to the letter the code according to the Act. Lack of following these specified methods and procedures is what leads to miscarriages of justice as the wrong suspects are identified and convicted of a crime they did not commit (Garrett, 2011, pg. 287).

What usually happens is that the police officers lead the eyewitness to a suspect by providing several descriptions which confuse the eyewitness and him or she agrees. This especially happens in cases where there is no suspect in custody already where facial identification can be made by the eye witness or even in cases where the eye witness did not see the face of the suspect but can remember other descriptions. Police in other cases show the eyewitness computer-generated images or artists' drawings and eyewitnesses who are not sure of themselves or feel intimidated just agree. In cases where there are numerous eyewitnesses, some lazy officers combine all of them in the identification of the suspect and this is not the stipulated procedure according to PACE (Curtler, 1995, pg. 65).

What all this means is that the PACE Act has been well safeguarded and has covered all the necessary grounds to prevent miscarriages of justice. These miscarriages however are purely the fault of police officers as has been mentioned above and as seen in various cases such as provided in (Samuels, 2014). It is the police that should be corrected and monitored to ensure they follow the action procedures and codes to the letter to avoid a miscarriage of justice (Dwyer, 2003, pg. 86).