Comment by exiguus
6 days ago
Deep State makes kind of sense here, because the U.K. Post Office, had there own Law Enforcement. They can act like the state in several ways. I think the correct term is "Private prosecution". And as fare as I understand it, the U.K. Post Office was able to have there own judge.
No, the Post Office doesn't have its own "law enforcement" (if you mean something like a police force) or its own judges.
Any company has the right to bring a private prosecution under UK law, and this was the basis for the prosecutions in question. It just means that the company pays for some of the costs involved.
Whether or not private prosecutions should be allowed is certainly a legitimate topic of discussion. Let's not muddy the waters with misinformation about the Post Office having some kind of parallel police and courts system. It just doesn't.
> Any company has the right to bring a private prosecution under UK law
That's a simplification. The Post Office has a more privileged position due to its history; it has both formal access (e.g. to police computers) and informal deference from CPS that regular companies do not enjoy.
That’s true, but it’s unclear the extent to which any of that was a factor. For example, how was the Post Office’s access to the PNC relevant here?
It may be that the CPS would have taken over these prosecutions and dropped them if the company in question had been, say, Tesco. But I don’t see how we can be sure of this.
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Thanks for setting the record straight. For me, as a non-Brit, the movie and the term “prosecution” helped me to misunderstand.