Rendimientos y Costos en la Elaboración de Conservas en Envases Flexibles

Exceptional powers do not require suspicion and so their main procedural control emanates from the need for prior authorisation to bring them into legal effect. Use of the power without authorisation is illegal but can go unnoticed without the adequate front-line supervision found to be missing across forces (HMIC, 2013). Only street powers require prior authorisation (i.e. section 60 and section 47A) unlike schedule 7 which is permanently in effect across ports and airports.29 _{Authorisations are meant to ensure that}

the powers are granted only in the rare circumstances that the ordinary powers are insufficient to counteract serious violence or terrorism incidents. However, as this section discusses, once granted, there continues to be little procedural safeguards to ensure that only people genuinely suspected of serious violence or terrorism are searched, particularly as senior and chief officers have historically exploited legal loopholes to ensure the de- facto permanency of the power.

Unlike section 44, section 60 use remains firmly within the police's control because it does not require any external authority for its initial use nor for any subsequent extensions to the maximum legal period (Bridges, 2015). The Knives Act 1997 loosened this safeguard by reducing the level of authorising officer required to make such orders from superintendent down to inspector and also lengthened the maximum period authorisations could be

29 _{Recent legislative changes to schedule 7 introduced a different type of authority required. This relates to} the role of a 'review officer' in authorising a person's continued detention, as already discussed.

extended from six hours to twenty-four. Surprisingly, despite wide agreement on the power having been expanded and misused since (e.g. Sanders et al., 2000; Shiner, 2012; Delsol & Shiner, 2015), there is only sparing literature on the efficacy of prior authorisations as a safeguard.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC), the regulatory body that investigates and monitors complaints against the police, raised concerns over the misuse of section 60 in a complaint it upheld against the West Midlands Police. The IPCC (2007) concluded that the relevant authorisation was “unjustified” because it was used for routine crime problems rather than its legally intended purposes. It also highlighted that it had “raised similar concerns over the last 3 years” thus suggesting that authorisations had been frequently misapplied. An analysis by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC, 2012), the U.K.'s equalities watchdog, of section 60 orders across the country suggests that the issues raised by IPCC has been a wider systemic problem. The EHRC shows that, even between comparatively similar forces, there was considerable variation in the number of authorisations made, their average duration and that of any subsequent extensions, and the number of searches then conducted. Despite the varied quality of the raw data supplied from forces and reproduced in its report, it also shows considerable variation in the justifications given for authorisations. Many appear to have been made simply because large, public events were due to occur, namely football matches, rather than in anticipation of violence as the law requires. This all suggests that section 60 authorisations have provided little control against the routine use of the power and for unintended purposes, particularly given that a large number of orders were granted without a single search then having taken place to potentially justify its deployment.

Before its repeal, section 44 use represented the worst example of how weak regulatory controls operate in practice. Authorisations were made by chief officers, and subsequently granted by the Home Secretary, to cover vast urban areas and on a 'rolling basis' irrespective of the nature of the threat at the time, particularly across London and the country's railway network (HM Government, 2011; Lennon, 2013). This lasted for a number of years and even where requests to extend orders beyond the initial 48 hours were not granted by the Home Secretary, chief officers had circumvented this by making fresh authorisations before the end of the previous one, thus ensuring the de-facto permanency of the power. Ironically, it was a government review into the historic use of section 44 which exposed the scale of malpractice. The review was initiated soon after the Conservative- Liberal Democrat Coalition government assumed office and in fulfilment of both parties' electoral pledge to curtail some of the greatest restrictions upon civil liberties enacted by the previous Labour government (see HM Government, 2011). Astonishingly, it found a number of erroneous orders confirmed by successive Labour home secretaries lasting beyond the total maximum legal period of 28 days. In other words, police officers were engaged in government-sponsored law breaking and this is particularly revealing of the extent to which successive Labour home secretaries had produced an environment conducive to the flagrant disregard of regulatory controls.

Section 47A has since replaced section 44 and contains far tighter controls over the authorisation period, geographic limit, and requests for extensions. As the power has not yet been used in England and Wales, it remains unclear how well these processes safeguard against the historic failures, although the very fact that it has not been deployed for major public events that section 44 would have almost certainly been used shows that it may be having its intended inhibitory effect. However, this is highly dependent upon how

future home secretaries decide to exercise their right to extend, shorten or cancel a section 47A authorisation and whether they and any requesting chief constable(s) feel that the intense public scrutiny following the first ever deployment of the power is outweighed by any perceived gain from its use.

In sum, the literature shows that the requirement for prior authorisation has provided little safeguard against the routine use of exceptional street powers, particularly with regards to counter-terrorism searches for which it has had absolutely no historical restraint. As this research also indicates, there is huge variation in the scale of authorisations, subsequent use of exceptional powers and quality of recording even between comparatively similar forces. This suggests that the cultural attitudes instilled by chief and senior officers are far more important in shaping how exceptional powers are used rather than any regulatory controls. Further, the lack of external authorisation for section 60 hampers democratic accountability as it denies any external body, whether the Home Secretary or members of the public, a role in deciding whether any intelligence justifies its use. Although section 47A does require the Home Secretary's approval for longer durations, the nature of counter-terrorism policing precludes ethnic minorities or other social groups and PCCs from being consulted on its use or even from offering any kind of retrospective accountability.