ABSTRACT
Chapters 11 and 12 were concerned with the question of the balance to be struck between the exercise of powers by the police in conducting an investigation on the one hand and safeguards for the suspect against abuse of power on the other. As we have seen, the statutory rules, including in particular those under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (PACE), the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 (CJPOA), the Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001 (CJP) and the Terrorism Act 2000 (TA) contain, on the one hand, provisions intended to secure suspects’ rights, such as s 58 of PACE and Sched 8, para 7 to the TA, while on the other they create or extend a statutory basis for the exercise of police powers, which frequently enhances those powers.2 Thus, the rules can be viewed as refl ecting the two different models of crime control and due process, and since the approach and aims of those models is confl icting, the statutes in question and their application in practice refl ect the resulting inevitable tension. This may be said even of provisions which appear to be intended, fairly obviously, to enhance police powers, such as ss 50 and 51 of the CJP. These provisions provide, as Chapters 11 and 12 indicated, new powers of seizure during searches of people or of premises. But they are ‘balanced’ by the provisions of ss 52-61 which, while affording the extended powers of retention of the property seized a clear statutory basis, also provide for notice to persons whose property has been seized, and safeguard its use by various provisions.3 It is not suggested that the balance struck is satisfactory, but it is clear that, although
these CJP provisions are very much orientated towards crime control, they are limited by provisions refl ecting due process concerns. This could also be said to an extent of s 110 of the Serious and Organised Crime and Police Act 2005, which extended the PACE arrest power: it created a safeguard for potential arrestees of a sort in requiring police offi cers to be satisfi ed as to the fulfi lment of a further requirement (based on the ‘arrest conditions’ from old s 25 but extending them as discussed below), apart from reasonable suspicion relating to the offence in question, a requirement that was not present under the old s 24 PACE. The PACE Codes, as revised and extended in 2006, contain a wide range of safeguards for suspects.
