Criminal Justice and Public Order Act

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UK act of Parliament of November 1994, which created a broad range of new offences and made substantial changes to existing laws in an attempt to tackle those areas where the law was felt to be failing. The act caused considerable controversy, with civil liberties and legal reform groups protesting against the act's restrictions on a suspect's ‘right to silence’. Many young people also viewed the restrictions on protests and unlicensed ‘rave’ parties as an attack on their freedom.

The act was proposed by Conservative Home Secretary Michael Howard as a way of ‘getting tough’ with criminals, but was controversial from the start because of its perceived attacks on civil liberties. The act also attracted criticism for being too wide-ranging: it contains over 100 separate sections, dealing with a huge scope of matters from lowering the age of homosexual consent (lowered to 18 in 1994), to powers enabling the setting-up of a DNA database of offenders.

Red, white, and blue recall the French tricolour. Red, yellow, and green are the pan-African colours. Red represents the common blood of mankind which links African and European nations. Effective date: 1 December 1958. >>