Within the act the local authority and chief police officers are made the responsible authorities for initiating and resolving crime reduction strategies with the co-operation of local probation and health services. The introduction of this act coming into force has caused the legislation to end the traditional police monopoly of responsibility for crime control within the local authority area. The Prosecution of Offences Act (1985) created the Crown Prosecution Service, which helped take away a lot of the responsibility, but giving them more accountability in the operation of cases. .
There are three main issues of accountability that appear within Police work. These are:.
Legal accountability, which is the need for effective redress for the public against illegalities that could be committed by individual officers in the course of their duties. The police have got responsibilities to respect citizens rights when carrying out their duties. Such as searches taken place on private property will need an authorised warrant. At any time the police cannot use undue force, make arrests or stop people without reasonable suspicion.
Accountability to the public - Here there is the need for the police to focus on the large variety of crimes that strike on the public, even though they have limited resources. The questions that need to be asked here are: Are the police acting in accordance with public priorities? Are the police, as an organisation, using their resources effectively? This has become a huge issue over the years and has remained a mystery of consensus policing' which involved high levels of local public support for the police based on police toleration of minor misdemeanours in return for public co-operation on the serious crimes.
In the 1960's the tripartite system was introduced by the Police Act. This was to help balance local political and operational concerns. .
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