NARRATIVE REPORT 2009 - The ICHRP

International Council on Human Rights Policy - Narrative Report 2009
Social control
c
and human
rights
3 (126)
Due for Publication in September/October 2010
A draft of this project became available at the end of 2009 and was edited and prepared for
consultation in January and February. It went out for consultation at the end of February 2010 and it is
hoped to publish the report early in the fourth Quarter of 2010. Five substantive research papers were
prepared in the course of 2009. These were discussed in August and completed be the authors in
October. Journals will publish abridged versions of most of these papers, and the Council is exploring
whether the papers might be put together in a book and published commercially. The Draft Report is
available for consultation on the Council’s website at www.ichrp.org.
This project highlights the impact of state policies that regulate behaviour and freedom, and seeks to
establish clear and adequate safeguards to protect the rights of individuals who are detained (or
whose liberty is otherwise curtailed) in the context of social control policies. It examines the impact on
human rights of a diverse range of new social control measures that states are imposing in areas that
are normally considered distinct, both professionally and in human rights policy and practice: security
and policing; custodial and non-custodial punishment; public health; immigration; homelessness and
urban poverty.
The research compares trends in these different sectors, to identify shared areas of policy as well as
threats to human rights. In doing so, it will give attention to the fact that social control policies and
practices have grown in range and scale in recent years - in response to increased anxiety about the
dangers of crime and terrorism, but also under the influence of new technologies that have permitted
electronic monitoring, tagging and other ‘preventive’ techniques, as well as privatisation programmes
which have greatly extended the activities of private security firms and the number of public spaces
that are privately policed.
Research began at the beginning of 2009 with a meeting of the advisers and some of the researchers
in London. A review meeting in August evaluated the research, discussed the arguments the final
report should develop, and planned the project’s completion schedule. In addition to a Framework
Paper prepared by the editorial team, the meeting considered five completed papers, namely:
• Human Rights Implications of New Developments in Policing by Stéphane Leman-Langlois and
Clifford Shearing with the assistance of Alenka Obal;
• Incarceration, Social Control and Human Rights, by Richard Sparks and Fergus McNeill;
• The Enemy at the Gates and the Enemy Within: Migrants, Social Control and Human Rights, by Pia
Oberoi;
• Public Health and Social Control: Implications for Human Rights, by Wendy Parmat; and
• Social Control and Human Rights: A Case Study of the Roma in Europe, by Claude Cahn.
A sixth paper, by Miloon Kothari (still incomplete) examines urban space and urban homelessness.
In addition to ICHRP staff, the meeting was attended by: Emma Blower (lead writer, former Amnesty
International researcher); Tim Cahill (Researcher on Brazil at Amnesty International); Stanley Cohen
(Professor Emeritus, LSE); Jamie fellner (Senior Counsel, US Program, Human Rights Watch); Stefanie
Grant (Senior Visiting Research Fellow, University of Sussex School of Law); Barbara Hudson (Professor
3
Project 126 was formerly titled Administrative Detention. Preparatory work started in mid-2006, under Susan
McCrory. Her initial consultations revealed that specific instances of administrative detention (of political suspects,
asylum claimants, etc.) had been studied but little research had compared grounds for detention, conditions of
treatment or legal safeguards. When Susan left at the end of 2006, Vijay Nagaraj took the project over in July 2007.
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