The UK's Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (PACE) was an innovative and controversial attempt to regulate the investigation of crime. Two decades on, it now operates in a very different context than in the mid-1980s. While legal advice has become established as a basic right of those arrested and detained by the police, the police service has become both increasingly professionalized but also increasingly driven by government objectives and targets. The Crown Prosecution Service, originally established to separate prosecution from investigation, is now becoming involved in the investigative process with the power to make charge decisions. Although the basic structure of PACE has survived, almost continual revision and amendment has resulted in a markedly different creature than that which was originally enacted.

Notes on Contributors

1. Introduction

 Ed Cape and Richard Young

2. Authorise and Regulate: A Comparative Perspective

 on the Rise and Fall of a Regulatory Strategy

 David Dixon

3. Can Coercive Powers be Effectively Controlled or Regulated？: The Case for Anchored Pluralism

 Andrew Sanders

4. PACE: A View from the Custody Suite

 John Coppen

5. Keeping PACE? Some Front Line Policing Perspectives

 John Long

6. Tipping the Scales of Justice?: A Review of the Impact of PACE on the Police, Due Process and the Search for Truth 1984-2006

 Barbara Wilding

7. Street Policing after PACE: The Drift to Summary Justice

 Richard Young

8. PACE Then and Now: Twenty-one Years of "Re-balancing"

 Ed Cape

9. The Role of Defence Lawyers in a "Re-balanced" System

 Anthony Edwards

10. Police and Prosecutors after PACE: The Road from Case Construction to Case Disposal

 John Jackson

Index