The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) was established in 1986, because under the previous system the police decided if people they had arrested would be prosecuted as well. The Prosecution of Offenders Act (1985) was supposed to remedy that as the CPS was supposed to ensure that decisions on whether to prosecute or not were independent of the police. Its first Code for Crown Prosecutors included criteria on sufficiency of evidence and whether it was in the public interest to prosecute, but how effective was the CPS as a safeguard? The Code offered a mechanism to prevent inappropriate prosecutions from coming to trial, but it was entirely dependent on the police for its information, so how independent could it be in practice? It had the power to demand that police conduct further investigations and it could decide not to prosecute, yet the CPS struggled to establish its independence. It didn't always decide to prosecute and undoubtedly some cases that should have come to trial didn't, because Crown Prosecutors were encouraged to look for other options to save money. Somewhat unfairly, the CPS was dubbed the 'Criminal Protection Service' by some police officers outraged by the failure to prosecute cases they thought worthy, and on the side defence lawyers in particular pointed to cases that were prosecuted even though the evidence strongly suggested that the charges were unjustified. There are even examples of both occurring in the same case.