Researchers claim that police officers find the Human Rights Act actually helps them in their work
Monday 31 October 2011
Researchers at the University of Surrey investigating the contentious Human Rights Act (HRA) 1998 have discovered that police officers and civilian staff feel that it helps them in their work.
Sociologists interviewed officers at all levels in a particular force to investigate whether, as many people argue, the HRA hinders police work and leads to flagrant abuses of natural justice.
The sociologists found that most officers felt that the HRA aided their day-to-day work in enforcing the law. Their paper, ‘The Impact of the Human Rights Act 1998 on Policing in England and Wales’, is to be published in the British Journal of Criminology in November.
Authors Dr Karen Bullock and Dr Paul Johnson found no evidence to suggest that operational police work has fundamentally changed or become compromised as a result of the HRA. The officers they interviewed could not think of any ways that police work had altered as a result of the HRA.
The HRA has become highly controversial because some politicians point to it as a key factor in frustrating criminal justice due process in diverse areas including the voting rights of prisoners, the police uses of samples and prints, and the deportation of illegal immigrants.
Dr Paul Johnson said: “The HRA has frequently been derided in the popular press as a mechanism that affords the guilty too much protection by inhibiting the activities of criminal justice agencies. Unsurprisingly, policing has often been at the centre of claims that the HRA hinders or prevents apprehension and control of criminals.
“Whilst the HRA has not changed the nature of police work it has been responsible for the development of new bureaucratic procedures through which officers justify, document and make auditable their work.
“We found that officers believe that these bureaucratic procedures provide some positive benefits for policing, because they can help clarify and mandate police decision-making and ultimately protect officers from potential criticism and blame. In this sense, the HRA has acted to enhance police powers and legitimate officers’ work on the ground.
“Officers expressed some frustration about processes and procedures that forced them to document their activities in ways that they did not do before. This slowed down their activities, making them ‘jump through hoops’ to demonstrate that they had acted within the rules.
“But officers’ perception that the HRA has slowed policing down can be a misleading one. Officers often blame the HRA when wider organisational processes, such as limited resources, influence what officers can achieve and how quickly.”
The study found that the HRA has not promoted a greater awareness of human rights in policing. This does not lead to the conclusion that police officers act contrary to the spirit of the rights contained in the Act, but that the HRA has been unsuccessful in creating new forms of reflection on human rights among officers.
Notes to Editors:
The name of the force is confidential, but 20 in-depth interviews were conducted with police personnel in March 2011.
The sample of participants comprised officers from a broad range of ranks—from police constables through to the ACPO ranks—who were engaged in diverse roles ranging from detective constables through to specialist surveillance officers. They were, on the whole, long-serving and many had experienced the implementation of the HRA.
Media Enquiries
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