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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