NCJ Number
104771
Journal
British Journal of Criminology Volume: 27 Issue: 1 Dated: (Winter 1987) Pages: 23-30
Date Published
1987
Length
9 pages
Annotation
Much oppressive police behavior in Great Britain is due to vague laws that give police broad interpretive enforcement powers, to 'victimless' morals offenses that require intrusive enforcement techniques, and to preventive public order laws that proscribe behaviors many steps removed from violent disorders.
Abstract
When criminal laws are ambiguous, the police are left to enforce them as they see fit. U.S. courts have precluded the possibility of such arbitrary enforcement powers by establishing a vagueness doctrine, which makes unconstitutional any law whose proscriptions are ambiguous. Britain should adopt such a test for the Home Office (the source of criminal legislative initiatives) and Parliament, such that laws which fail to specify the particular behaviors to be punished will be ruled invalid. Specific types of laws also occasion intrusive enforcement techniques. These include morals offenses that do not involve complaining victims. To enforce such laws, police must adopt intrusive surveillance and undercover methods to detect the crimes and obtain evidence. Other laws that occasion repressive police tactics are preventive public order offenses that involve police perceptions that certain citizen behaviors are sufficiently abusive and threatening to indicate the likelihood of a subsequent breach of the peace. This provides such broad discretion that police may arrest anyone whose attitudes and behaviors they do not like. Strategies to address oppressive police conduct must include the revision and abolition of those laws that make possible such police behavior. 5 footnotes.