ABSTRACT
On 2 October 2000, the Human Rights Act 1998 comes into force. In effect, this Act incorporates the European Convention on Human Rights1 into our own domestic law and, for the first time, will enable 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, nor every aspect of the 1998 Act. Instead, the possible 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. It must be stressed that the contents of this chapter are largely speculative. Only time will disclose the exact path that the 1998 Act will take policing and, indeed, other criminal justice institutions into in the future. In this context, it has been rightly stated 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
