ABSTRACT
A hard but cool new look at the legal powers of the police is long overdue. The Anglo-Saxon preference has always been to keep these too weak rather than to have them too great. The institution of the police cannot be looked at or reformed in isolation from the whole crimino-legal system, or from society’s attitude to deviancy itself. The professional burglar or robber in Britain is estimated to have a better than two out of five chance of escaping arrest, and if he is caught probably an approximately two out of five chance of acquittal. In July 1978, Sir David McNee, the present Metropolitan Commissioner, returned more bluntly to the need for more and better-defined powers for the police. It is wrong that a politician, the Attorney General, should have anything to do with prosecutions, just as it is wrong that the Lord Chancellor should be both a politician and a judge.
