How Effective are the Political and Legal Structures in Britain for Ensuring Police Accountability?: An Examination from Historical Perspectives

• Published in: 영미연구, 30(0) pp. 437 - 461
• Main Author: 이주락
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 영미연구소 01.02.2014
• Subjects: 학제간연구
• ISSN: 2508-4135; 2508-5417

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effectiveness of the political and legal systems in Britain for ensuring police accountability. The police reforms since the Police Act 1964 have served to increase the power of the Home Secretary as well as that of the central government at the expense of the local authorities and the chief constables. The Home Secretary now controls budgets and the funds, influences the policing priorities under the national policing plan, and has the ability to overrule the decisions made by local authorities. The decreasing power for the local authorities in the tripartite system has resulted in the police being held accountable to the national government rather than the local communities. Accountability to the national government is not the same as democratic accountability. To illustrate, democratic accountability stems from the ideal of “policing by consent” in which the police are non-bias and non-partisan independent upholders of the law. Although the creation of Independent Police Complaints Commission seems to be a step towards ensuring police accountability to the law and to the public, the effectiveness of this system needs to be confirmed over time. However, based on the ineffectual police complaints boards of the past, it would appear that any system in which it is the responsibility of the police to carry out the investigation themselves will lead to a biased outcome. If police accountability continues to be centralised and democratic accountability is lost, can the police still be considered an independent organisation that represents the people in local communities, or do they become another arm of the government that enforces government ideals over which the public have no control? If this becomes the case, “policing by consent” is no longer valid and the police are no longer accountable to the people they are employed to protect. KCI Citation Count: 0