Law Enforcement Agency Powers - Direction

Direction

The power of direction allows a LEA to direct a subject to either carry out some act or provide information with the subject having no right to refuse, even if the outcome is to incriminate the subject, that is, any explicit, implied, or de facto right to silence is overridden.

This power when provided to an LEA in a civil society or democratic society is typically counter balanced by the subject not being able to be prosecuted as a result of them complying with the direction, but they can be prosecuted if they do not comply. They can be prosecuted if other law enforcement outcomes have the otherwise same effect. A subject can be prosecuted using information obtained from another subject under direction.

An example of this power of direction is held by the Australian Crime Commission. The Australian Federal Police (AFP) also has a power of direction, but this is limited to being applied to AFP appointees.

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Famous quotes containing the word direction:

    The young ... look into visages dull-eyed, long-toothed, wattle-necked, and chop-fallen, something they have never been and which they cannot imagine ever being.... If it occurs to a young person, looking at us, that this is the direction in which he himself travels, how can he forgive, let alone bear the sight of, us, who constantly bring him the bad news of our own faces, bitter signposts pointing to his own destination?
    Jessamyn West (1902–1984)

    The mountainous region of the State of Maine stretches from near the White Mountains, northeasterly one hundred and sixty miles, to the head of the Aroostook River, and is about sixty miles wide. The wild or unsettled portion is far more extensive. So that some hours only of travel in this direction will carry the curious to the verge of a primitive forest, more interesting, perhaps, on all accounts, than they would reach by going a thousand miles westward.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    From cradle to grave this problem of running order through chaos, direction through space, discipline through freedom, unity through multiplicity, has always been, and must always be, the task of education, as it is the moral of religion, philosophy, science, art, politics and economy; but a boy’s will is his life, and he dies when it is broken, as the colt dies in harness, taking a new nature in becoming tame.
    Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)