Police have attended but no charge has been laid

Before a charge is laid

Police can attend a home, take statements and execute a search warrant without charging anyone. A matter may then go nowhere, end in a caution where one is available, or end in a Court Attendance Notice. What is said in the meantime often affects which way it goes.

The right to silence

A person who has not been charged is not obliged to give police an account of events. In New South Wales there is a narrow exception: where a special caution is given in the presence of an Australian legal practitioner, a court may in some circumstances draw an unfavourable inference from something the person failed to mention. That exception is the reason people attend interviews with a lawyer, and it is also the reason an interview can rarely be improved by going in unprepared.

An interview can usually be deferred to allow advice to be obtained. Police are not obliged to agree, but the request is ordinary and is frequently accommodated.

What happens to the statements

Statements taken during an investigation become the police brief if a charge follows. A magistrate reads the brief first, and the defence is built against it. Get advice before you give an account.

Preserving what supports your position

• A written account of events, prepared while recollection is fresh, kept for your own use.
• Messages, call records, photographs and anything else with a timestamp.
• The names of anyone present.

Devices get wiped, accounts get deleted and cloud backups roll over. Preserve this material now, because it cannot be recovered later.

What not to do

Discussing the matter with a complainant, or on any messaging application, creates evidence. Messages sent after police involvement begins are routinely obtained and are frequently the strongest material against a person who was otherwise defensible. That is true whether or not a charge is ever laid.

Why this stage is hard to advise on from a distance

What is likely to follow depends on what the statements say, and nobody outside the investigation has seen them.