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40 Law Tchr. 203 (2006)
Reform of Police Powers: The Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005

handle is hein.journals/lwtch40 and id is 213 raw text is: RECENT LEGAL DEVELOPMENTS Editors: Edwina Higgins and Laura Tatham CRIME/POLICE POWERS: REFORM OF POLICE POWERS: THE SERIOUS ORGANISED CRIME AND POLICE ACT 2005 THE SERIOUS Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 (SOCPA) may not sound like a statute that will introduce general reform of police powers but that is what it has done. The main focus of this note is on powers of arrest, with search and detention also considered; other issues such as photographing suspects and the more specialist material on serious organised crime are not considered. The provisions described below, in relation to arrest and search, came into force on 1st January 2006. The police will now be able to arrest for any offence, whilst citizens will only be able to arrest for indictable offences (it is important to note that this includes offences triable either way). It is the powers of the police that receive attention here as citizen's arrest is of limited practical importance. The new powers of arrest Section 110 of SOCPA provides for a new section 24 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (PACE) and section 25 of PACE is repealed. The concepts that were in section 25 are now contained within the new section 24. This is really only a simplification of the existing police powers of arrest and is not, as some commentators have suggested, an extension of them. Indeed, the powers of arrest could be said to have been more tightly controlled. Necessity criteria are provided in section 24 in relation to the new section 24 powers and these will have to be adhered to in relation to all offences. However, some old concepts have disappeared including the notions of an arrestable offence and a serious arrestable offence. Matters are different, however, as we shall see, in relation to powers of search and detention. In these cases, there is no doubt that police powers have been extended, in what can be seen as a general move in recent years from due process to crime control in relation to the criminal justice system. Earlier manifestations of this include attempts to restrict access to jury trial, the eroding of the presumption in favour of bail, double jeopardy and allowing previous convictions to be introduced where the offence is of the same category or description. The new system of arrest powers involves the abolition of many of the statutory powers of arrest, such as that in the Public Order Act 1986 (and with it the requirement for the police to be in uniform in order to arrest). We are left with only the following statutory powers: for being over the 203

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