ABSTRACT
The exercise of police powers such as arrest and detention represents an invasion of personal liberty which is tolerated in the interests of the prevention and detection of crime. However, the interest in personal liberty requires that such powers should be strictly regulated. One way of putting this is to say that due process requirements inevitably place curbs on police powers. Thus, the rights-based due process model seeks to recognise the ‘primacy of the individual and the complementary concept of limitation of official power’.2 It calls for the police to be subject to tightly defined and rigorous control and for clear, legally guaranteed safeguards for suspects, with clear remedies for abuse through the courts.3 In contrast, the crime control model values a ‘quick, accurate and efficient administrative fact-finding role…over slow, inefficient, and less accurate judicial trials’ in order to achieve ‘the dominant goal of repressing crime’.4
