Police Accountability - towards international standards (POLARCS)

警察问责制 - 符合国际标准 (POLARCS)

• 批准号: ES/V013564/1
• 负责人: Anja Johansen
• 金额: $ 61.97万
• 依托单位: University of Dundee
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2021 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=ES%2FV013564%2F1
• 关键词: Police; Accountability; towards; international; standards

Against the backdrop of increased powers and resources granted to police agencies for combating terrorism and other newly perceived threats in many mature democracies, the POLACS project compares levels of empowerment for citizens through accountability mechanisms (independent external oversight bodies, police complaints procedures and similar schemes). Additional police powers, technologies and transnational police networks add to the already far-reaching powers that police agencies have, granting the police new and powerful ways of monitoring and interfering in citizens' lives and thus their fundamental rights. Yet, it has often proven to be very difficult to get the reform of police complaints procedures onto the political agenda. Today, with audio-video recording equipment becoming ubiquitous and with encounters between police and members of the public disseminated instantly via the internet, the issue has moved from the fringes to the mainstream as a live political issue.Researchers from Canada, France, Germany, the UK and Japan will be cooperating in the POLACS project. The research also covers other countries with well-established police oversight bodies, e.g. Australia, the US and the Netherlands. In the light of persistent public concerns in many democratic countries about effective police accountability, particularly in cases of death or serious injury to members of the public, there is an urgent need to improve the empirical basis for comparison of external independent police accountability schemes and to develop international standards for 'good practice'. The project also includes the accountability of transnational policing within institutional frameworks, such as Interpol or the European Union's Area of Freedom, Security and Justice, as well as in transnational police networks. For transnational policing, mostly situated outside national parliamentary oversight and access to justice, accountability can be perceived as particularly deficient.The academic investigators involved in the POLACS project, with their theoretical and empirical expertise on police accountability, will revise and adapt current accountability theories and standards to the empirical reality that has been rapidly developing since the 1990s. A comparative methodological approach is adopted as the most effective way to contextualise performance of national and sub-national schemes and a necessary basis for developing international standards for 'good practice'. Currently policy-makers, practitioners and activists involved in reforming external police accountability mechanisms face great difficulties in contextualising current schemes with other schemes, past and present, as the available qualitative insights and quantitative data are often not comparable. Only by bringing existing data and knowledge together will it be possible to contextualise national and sub-national police accountability schemes and identify what data and insights are missing. This will inform the empirical research undertaken by both this project and subsequent research.

在许多成熟的民主国家，警察机构在打击恐怖主义和其他新发现的威胁方面获得了更多的权力和资源，在此背景下，POLACS项目比较了通过问责机制（独立的外部监督机构、警察投诉程序和类似计划）赋予公民权力的水平。额外的警察权力、技术和跨国警察网络增加了警察机构已经拥有的广泛权力，赋予警察新的和强有力的方式来监测和干预公民的生活，从而干预他们的基本权利。然而，事实往往证明，将警察申诉程序的改革列入政治议程是非常困难的。如今，随着录音录像设备的普及，以及警方与市民之间的冲突通过互联网即时传播，这个问题已经从边缘变成了主流，成为一个活生生的政治问题。来自加拿大、法国、德国、英国和日本的研究人员将在POLACS项目中进行合作。这项研究还涵盖了其他拥有完善警察监督机构的国家，例如澳大利亚、美国和荷兰。鉴于许多民主国家的公众持续关注警察的有效问责制，特别是在公众死亡或严重受伤的情况下，迫切需要改进比较外部独立警察问责制的经验基础，并制定“良好做法”的国际标准。该项目还包括国际刑警组织或欧洲联盟的自由、安全和司法区等机构框架内以及跨国警察网络内的跨国警务问责制。对于跨国警务来说，大多处于国家议会监督和诉诸司法之外，问责制可能被认为特别缺乏。参与POLACS项目的学术调查人员将利用他们在警察问责制方面的理论和经验专门知识，修订和调整目前的问责制理论和标准，以适应1990年代以来迅速发展的经验现实。采用比较方法是将国家和次国家计划的绩效置于背景下的最有效方法，也是制定“良好做法”国际标准的必要基础。目前，参与改革外部警察问责机制的政策制定者、从业人员和活动家在将当前计划与过去和现在的其他计划进行背景分析时面临巨大困难，因为现有的定性见解和定量数据往往无法进行比较。只有将现有数据和知识结合起来，才有可能将国家和地方警察问责计划置于背景之下，并确定缺少哪些数据和见解。这将为本项目和后续研究进行的实证研究提供信息。