Policy,Practicalities, and PACE s. 24: The Subsuming of the Necessity Criteria in Arrest Decision Making by Frontline Police Officers

PACE, as amended by the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005, establishes a complex framework of factors that police officers must consider during arrest decision making. Officers must possess a reason to arrest, it must be necessary to arrest for that reason, and they must give at least a ‘cursory consideration’ to alternatives. Based on a four‐year ethnographic study of frontline officers from two forces in Northern England, we argue that the 2005 reforms have not achieved their aims. The new regime tasks officers with undertaking a complex legal assessment prior to arrest, but officers are often confused about the necessity criteria which, moreover, is typically a minor consideration in contrast to demanding practical and policy pressures. This means that unlawful and non‐human‐rights‐compliant arrests continue to be regularly made and, equally significantly, many suspects are escaping the criminal justice system because officers are not considering arrest alternatives.     

Reviewer’s Comments to “The Measurement of Legitimacy: a Rush to Judgment?”

Asian Journal of Criminology -     

Reducing and preventing organised crime: An evidence-based critique

Theory and practice in crime prevention and crime reduction have developed and changed significantly, but attention has been focused largely upon conventional forms of crime (especially street crime) and upon situational approaches to their reduction. Drawing on research with a variety of relevant organisations across Europe, this article explores the possibilities of developing more effective crime reduction strategies in respect of organized crime, an area in which (despite important exceptions, particularly in relation to financial regulation), law enforcement rather than prevention has continued to dominate the thinking and the practical responses of the police and other relevant agencies. It illustrates the difficulties of evaluating prevention in the many areas in which data quality on crime levels and their organisation are poor, but also gives examples (mainly financial crime) where private sector data quality are good enough to demonstrate effectiveness. It differentiates impact on crime from impact on the organisation of crime, and between market crimes involving voluntary vice and predatory crimes involving direct harm to victims, concluding that current performance indicators for enforcement agencies may need substantial revision if the focus shifts to organised crime reduction.     

Law and criminal labels: The case of the French Métis in Western Canada

This paper examines the conflicts engaged in by the French Metis of Western Canada with the imperial state during the 19th century. More specifically, it is argued that the application of criminal labels corresponded to the level of struggle between the two parties. In the case of the conflict between the Metis and the H.B.C, “economic” forms of crime appeared at the top of the legal agenda. At a later conjuncture, when the legitimacy of imperial apparatuses was threatened, “political” crimes were paramount. Finally, with the ideological, institutional and economic hegemony of the Dominion state, the Metis were designated as “social” criminals. In each of these periods, legal struggles involving the Metis may be understood as surface manifestations of conflicts over political and economic power. This paper has benefited considerably from the comments and substantive work of Ron Bourgeault, from the critique of two anonymous reviewers and from the editorial work of Elizabeth Comack. Further, none of this work would have been undertaken but for the hospitality and comradeship of the faculty and graduate students at the Centre of Criminology, University of Toronto.