ABSTRACT
The language of ‘threats’ pervades policing to an extent that reveals its primacy in the police logic. This was made abundantly clear in an open letter issued in the immediate wake of the police killing of Deng Manyoun on 13 June 2015. The potential for the rejection and abuse of human rights, as explored in more detail below, is present at each step of the justice system, from the initial moment of contact with the police power, through to the moments where the central powers of police – the power to hunt, seize, arrest, detain, try and punish the subjects of police power – are exercised. The intersection of human rights and policing has received a substantial amount of academic attention. Police, then, is a power that takes up the violent purposes of law – the production of order and security – at the borders of law’s efficacy, deploying the material violence of the state in ways that law cannot.
