Research Paper on:
Accountability of the Police

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
is decided upon by the legislature and enforced though the executive and the judiciary. In recent years there have been many Acts which have increased or amended the powers of  the police, the main acts are PACE (Criminal Evidence Act ) 1984, Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, Criminal Procedure and Investigations Act 1996, and most recently the Police  Reform Act 2002. It can be argued that in a changing world, where criminals are becoming harder to catch and evidence is increasingly important with technical breakthrough, then the increased  powers are a reflection of the needs to ensure that the right person is charged with a crime. However, it can also be argued that as these powers have increased  that the balancer has not been maintained resulting in an asymmetric relationship between the police and the population. The traditional appeach to police accountability has been through a tri-partite  system put in place by the 1964 Police Act (Home Office, 1993). This places a balance of responsibility and power between the Home Office, the Chief Constable and the Police  Authority (Home Office, 1993). The subsequent acts have been aimed at evolving as the needs of social have changed and law has developed, but the balances have been hard to  maintain (Zander, 1985). There are many cases that appear to indicate that there has been the granting of greater power, that appears only to be brought to accountability on  a minatory of cases where pertinent issues. Such as racisms are publicised in the media. Ironically, many of these are brought about due to the increased power and its  improper use, such as the increased power to stop and search under PACE or the failure to use the powers correctly in divergent circumstances. The need for discretion is of