Criminology & Criminal Justice: (Qs) What capacity do the police have to reduce crime? The police forces in the United Kingdom exist for the protection of members of the public from dangerous situations and persons. The police are answerable, ultimately, to Parliament, and their powers are therefore limited. As will be seen, police action may now find itself the subject of judicial review. The Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (PACE) overhauled the nature of police powers to reduce crime, and various other statutes and cases have amended these powers incrementally. When assessing the powers of the police to reduce crime, it should always be qualified by the fact that the police are themselves a statutory body, deriving their authority from powers conferred upon them by Parliament. What are these powers, and how have they come about? The Home Secretary in 1984, Leon Brittan, who was responsible for introducing PACE 1984, identified several reasons why the new statute was necessary. ‘First’, he stated in Parliament, ‘the present state of the law is unclear and contains many indefensible anomalies. Secondly, the police need to have adequate and clear powers to conduct the fight against crime on our behalf and the public need to have proper safeguards against any abuse of such powers if they are to have any confidence in the police.’ Such was the significance of the Bill, however, that Parliament was not prepared simply to accept what Brittan and Thatcher’s Government offered them. Much Parliamentary time was spent debating the bill, and it was a second version that actually passed. As Parpworth points out, however, the Actis not a codification of police powers. It does, however, ‘form the basis of many of the powers exercised by the police on a daily basis.’ PACE 1984, then, is a highly significant Act in that it provides the basis for many of the police’s powers. As well as the Act itself, sections 60 and 66 require the Secretary of State to issue codes of...