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28 Prob. J. 1 (1981)

handle is hein.journals/probj28 and id is 1 raw text is: probation journal PUBLISHED BY THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF PROBATION OFFICERS HON. EDITOR: BRUCE HUGMAN EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD: LAURENCE V. COATES, JENNY KIRKPATRICK, (ex officio), DAVID REAICH, ANDY STELMAN, BILL WHITTAKER, ANGELA WIDOWSON, (ONE VACANCY). Price £1 (free to members) comment Royal Commission or Omission? Some of the proposals of the Royal Commission on Criminal Procedure are welcome: for example, that an accused's exercise of the right to silence should continue not to imply guilt; that there should be statutory control of tech- nological means of surveillance; that the responsibility for prosecutions should be exercised by local Crown Prosecutors and not by the police. Some, however, are not welcome: for example, that there should be new stop and search powers in the street; that there should be procedures for searching the property and papers of quite innocent people; that fingerprinting-including children of ten-should be removed from the jurisdiction of magistrates and left entirely to the police. Michael Zander has described the bargaining over t.i.c.s, the adverse criticisms of the report as the exploiting of the widespread ignorance left-wing knee-jerk reaction,1 but of rights. And they and their like are his confidence that suspects' rights will too high a price to pay for a few more be substantially and safely extended convictions, even of guilty persons. does not seem credible in the light of Implementation of the report's pro- what we know to be the experience of posals will widen the discretion and many who have had business with the powers of the police, reduce the rights police: they do not feel they have of suspects-and of the rest of us-and had, and sometimes have not had, a fail to open police procedure to fair deal. scrutiny and redress. To professors It is the small injustices and pres- and legislators the safe-guards may sures, the recurrent irritations and seem adequate, the integrity of public hostile encounters whlic iare as much servants unimpeachable, but, from an affront to human dignity and civil their lofty perches, they may know liberties as are grosser abuses, and little of what happens in the under- they are much less amenable to growth. remedy. The raising of such doubts is not It is that dimension - seen and to be explained in terms of blind pre- heard in the cells, on the streets, in judice against the police. They are as the office - with which probation much the victims of the moral and officers, and others in similar positions, political climate of the times as any- are not unfamiliar: the juvenile inter- one: they are under pressure to viewed without a parent or adult pre- achieve the inherently impossible goal sent, the holding of a suspect without of having a significant impact on rates charge or without access to a solicitor, of offending. Given the underlying 1

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