Human Rights Concerns
High policing has an extremely high potential for abuse. There is a tendency, even in democratic countries, for high policing organizations to abuse their powers or even to operate outside the law because many organizations involved in high policing are granted extensive legal powers, including immunity from prosecution for acts that are criminal under normal circumstances. In some countries, for example, high-policing organizations regularly engage in actions of dubious legality, such as arbitrarily arresting and detaining people without charge, without legal representation, and without means of communication; some high-policing forces also engage in torture. In the worst cases, high policing becomes a substitute for the whole criminal justice system: suspects are arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced entirely by a national security agency, usually very expeditiously and in complete secrecy, as is the case in police states.
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Famous quotes containing the words human, rights and/or concerns:
“It is due to justice; due to humanity; due to truth; to the sympathies of our nature; in fine, to our character as a people, both abroad and at home, that they should be considered, as much as possible, in the light of human beings, and not as mere property.”
—James Madison (1751–1836)
“Let woman share the rights and she will emulate the virtues of man; for she must grow more perfect when emancipated ...”
—Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797)
“For some years now, there has been proof that the devastating effects of the traumatization of children take their inevitable toll on society—a fact that we are still forbidden to recognize. This knowledge concerns every single one of us, and—if disseminated widely enough—should lead to fundamental changes in society; above all, to a halt in the blind escalation of violence.”
—Alice Miller (20th century)