The United Kingdom and Human Rights - College of Social ...

220 People and Education for Human Rights
Clubs, there may then be changes in police behaviour.
Even if such changes are primarily designed to create a
more favourable public opinion of police forces, they
should be welcomed: such a public opinion will not be
created unless there are genuine changes in police
conduct. One specific method of speeding up such
changes—apart from training in human rights generally,
which is not yet happening in any depth, training only
being given in areas considered to be relevant to the
exercise of specific police powers—would be the stationing
in every police station of an officer, expert in human
rights general thinking as well as about human legal
rights in criminal procedure and in public order matters.
Such an officer should be charged with the duty of
informing his colleagues of the need for conformity to
human rights standards. Another difficulty about universalising
standards throughout the country is traditional
decentralisation. Paradoxically, the arguments against
centralisation of police forces, with retention of regional
forces as a bar to absolutism, have in effect been barriers
to consistent reform, whereas they have proven not to
be barriers to firm public order action when inter-county
co-operation and large-scale maintenance of order exercises
have been needed.
Other professionals, whether in central or local
government like social workers and Social Security
Officers, or in the private sector, including union leaders
and journalists, let alone lawyers, are equally in need of
specialised human rights training. Lawyers are the
skilled technicians who are instrumental, together with
the judiciary, in a co-operative enterprise—for that is
what the civil and criminal procedure systems together
constitute—for translating values into legal human
rights. The profession and the judiciary together have
the responsibility of bringing about a just community
and of protecting individuals and their rights. Some will