Deferred Prosecution Agreement

Schedule 17 to the Crime and Courts Act 2013 defines a deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) as 'an agreement between a designated prosecutor and a person ("P") whom the prosecutor is considering prosecuting for an offence specified in Part 2 (the "alleged offence")'. Under the agreement, P agrees to comply with requirements imposed by it, and in return the prosecutor agrees that, once the DPA is approved by the court, the prosecution of P for the alleged offence is suspended. The designated prosecutors are limited to the Director of Public Prosecutions, the Director of the Serious Fraud Office, and any prosecutor designated by order of the Secretary of State, and the power to enter into a DPA must be exercised personally by the designated prosecutor (or, if unavailable, someone they have personally authorised in writing).

A DPA can only be made with an organisation, not a person: paragraph 4(1) of Schedule 17 provides that 'P may be a body corporate, a partnership or an unincorporated association, but may not be an individual.' Proceedings are formally instituted by preferring a bill of indictment, which is then automatically suspended; the suspension can only be lifted by the prosecutor applying to the Crown Court, and no such application can be made while the DPA remains in force. The requirements a DPA can impose on the organisation include, among others, an obligation 'to pay to the prosecutor a financial penalty', to compensate victims, to disgorge profits made from the alleged offence, and to implement or amend a compliance programme; any agreed financial penalty must be 'broadly comparable to the fine that a court would have imposed on P on conviction for the alleged offence following a guilty plea.'