ABSTRACT
On 2 October 2000, the Human Rights Act 1998 came into force. In effect, this Act incorporates the European Convention on Human Rights1 into our own domestic law and, for the first time, enables those rights to be directly enforceable in the courts of the UK. It is not the purpose of this chapter to provide a complete coverage of the entire issue of the Convention or every aspect of the 1998 Act. Instead, the ongoing effects of the Human Rights Act on some of the key policing issues covered in this book will be focused on. Comprehensive reading is already available on the broader aspects of the Convention and the 1998 Act, and some of these are referred to in the relevant footnotes where appropriate. Some of the contents of this chapter are speculative as only time will disclose the exact path that the 1998 Act will eventually take policing and, indeed, other criminal justice institutions into the future. In this context, it was rightly stated prior to the implementation of the Human Rights Act that: ‘... the effect of the Convention in domestic law after the Human Rights Act 1998 will depend on the inventiveness of lawyers and the attitude of the judiciary.’2 A number of cases concerning the effects of the 1998 Act have already been explained in previous chapters where appropriate. The purpose of this chapter is to provide a wider perspective on this increasingly important aspect of the law, and the way it has affected policing in this country, as well as how it may determine its future direction.
