NCJ Number
178728
Date Published
1998
Length
72 pages
Annotation
This report examines the ways in which provisions of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act (CJPOA) 1994 have been used by the police in England and Wales to deal with public disorder involving private land, alternative lifestyles, and contemporary forms of protest.
Abstract
Information was collected from interviews with 64 police officers in 14 police agencies and from police and court statistics. The research focused on trespassing on land by groups such as New Age Travelers and gypsies, unlicensed parties called raves, and aggravated trespass associated with animal rights and environmental protestors. Under the law's provisions, the police now have the power to direct people to leave open land, seize vehicles and sound equipment, and direct people not to proceed toward a particular event. In addition, the CJPOA created a new set of criminal offenses relating to specific forms of behavior by trespassers and to noncompliance with directions given by police officers. Half the police agencies used the new CJPOA provisions during 1995. However, formal action through a police caution or a prosecution was relatively infrequent, because instructions or the threat of their use usually resolved situations without the need for arrest. The use of powers varied from agency to agency, division to division, and incident to incident. Overall, the introduction of the CJPOA did not appear to have produced a significant change in police officers' handling of disorder or an expansion of the types of situations they addressed. However, the use of the CJPOA provisions rather than pre-existing powers placed police officers in a stronger legal position when dealing with cases of disorder. Tables, footnotes, appended legal definition of a gypsy, list of other publications from the same organization, and 19 references