Police authorities

Each force has a police authority – a kind of governing body. The police authority of a county force is known as the Standing Joint Committee and is composed of representatives of the county council and the county justices of the peace, in equal numbers. The size of the Standing Joint Committee is not laid down by statute: the justices and the county councillors are to settle the number between them. The Committee is normally re-elected every third year after a new county council has been appointed.

In the boroughs, the police authority is a committee of the borough council, known as the Watch Committee. A Watch Committee may not be composed of more than one-third of the members of the council together with the mayor who is ex ’officio a member. Most Watch Committees are elected annually, though there is no statutory requirement to this effect.

The police authority for the Metropolitan police district is the Secretary of State for the Home Department – not the London County Council. In the City of London, which maintains its own force, the police authority is the Common Council of the City, that is the body corresponding most closely to the town council elsewhere.

Although the local police authority is responsible for the administration and maintenance of its force, the central govern­ment nevertheless plays an important part. The Home Secretary – the Minister primarily concerned with the maintenance of the peace – also makes regulations, with the approval of Parliament, governing the conditions of service (pay, discipline, promotion, etc.) of all police officers. And his department main­tains certain common services for the benefit of all police forces in such matters as training, radio-telephony and scien­tific investigation.

The Home Secretary thus exercises a general controlling and coordinating authority over the police of England and Wales. The responsibility for peace and order may be said to be shared between the local police authorities and the Home Secretary. And it is the Home Secretary who is generally responsible to Parliament for the maintenance of law and order throughout the country as a whole.

Дата добавления: 2015-09-01