The Right to Privacy
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No specific right to privacy is formulated in the U. S. Constitution. Yet, various aspects of privacy are touched on in the provisions of the first, fourth, fifth, and other amendments. Privacy issues related to law enforcement would, ordinarily, be worked out over time. But, in the present climate, with an enormous crime rate and the always-current politicizing of drug-related crime, the privacy rights of suspected criminals have become a major issue. Criminal justice approaches to drug crime are preemptive, proactive, and generally guided by the paradigm of a "War on Drugs." In this war, the rights of suspects and defendants are, increasingly, abrogated by law enforcement officials, courts, and legislators who believe that the crime problem is significant enough to warrant setting aside a few personal freedoms. Unfortunately, though this feels intuitively, instinctively, right, it is entirely the wrong approach to take. Despite the undeniable magnitude of drug-related crime, the basic goal of all law enforcement activities is to uphold the law. Setting aside a few rights is a seductive strategy, given the current situation, but to do so is to put into practice a disregard for Constitutional freedoms that is a greater evil than the crimes the strategy is designed to curb. Over the last few decades, privacy issues have been at the base of some of the most complex law enforcement questions. Search and seizure issues, for example, are all related to the fourth amend
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ed with technologies and sanctions employed against drug-related crime.
The choice of the word "war," in the Reagan administration's anti-drug initiative was carefully made. During wars, civil liberties are sometimes partially suspended in pursuit of larger goals. Freedom of the press and freedom of speech are often curtailed in war time, largely with the consent of the people. Thus, the idea of a "war" on drugs set the tone for one of the broadest assaults on the rights of the criminally accused in American history. As Wisotsky notes, "war fever brought a rare measure of unity to the three branches of government," as a large number of laws that set aside traditional rights were proposed, passed, and upheld by the courts.
At present, law enforcement officials, at several levels, are attempting to lower the standard for seizure of illegal drugs, belonging to suspected or accused drug dealers, from probable cause to "reasonable suspicion." It would not even be necessary for law officers to believe they had a chance of arresting suspected individuals in such cases. Nor would there need to be any belief that the drugs could be used as evidence in a court case. They would merely need to believe they had a reasonable chance
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Approximate Word count = 1702
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)
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