Consent and the Legal Regulation of Policing

The Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (PACE) provides a notable example of a trend in common law jurisdictions towards changing and controlling policing by using techniques of legal regulation. This involves extending (or formalizing), clarifying, and specifying police powers and suspects' rights by means of rules, including statutes, codes of practice, governmental circulars, and internal force orders. Their implementation is backed by record-keeping requirements, managerial supervision, and disciplinary sanctions. This article draws on research into the impact of PACE (and its codes of practice) on a police force in the north of England.' The relevant sections of PACE (which became operative in 1986) codified a wide range of police powers and suspects' rights. It is becoming clear from assessments of the initial effects of PACE that legal regulation has had a substantial, albeit variable, effect on policing in England and Wales.2 Legal regulation is a mode of accountability. It both facilitates and supplements judicial control, which in the past has generally been loose, as a result both of the discretionary breadth of much police law and of policy considerations.3 More specific rules and a political mandate to apply them has encouraged some judicial activity in this area.4 In England and Wales, legal regulation has been developed as part of an alternative to what is officially regarded as an outdated system of control by the local state. It takes its place in a new loose framework of accountability, constituted of various measures whose political origins and connections are diverse: there is, for example, the combination of budgetary/managerial reform and community liaison/crime prevention strategies. The specific origins of the move towards legal regulation