We Say

Across the Commonwealth, we open our newspapers each morning and read about policing. Sometimes we read about reform and bringing police organisations into line with the promises of modern democracy, other days we are regaled with stories of officer misconduct that violates the basic human rights of people in the community, tainting police and governments and alienating police organisations from the communities they serve. This edition of Commonwealth PoliceWatch plays this out; we bring stories of reform and misconduct, hope and brutality, government inaction and judicial efforts to bring about police accountability.

In this, the eighth edition of Commonwealth PoliceWatch, we start with a look at the changing face of police oversight in South Africa. South Africa's police went through a total transformation at the end of the apartheid era, and the reform process and its oversight mechanisms are often held up as good practice examples for the rest of the Commonwealth. Things are changing, says Open Society Foundation's Sean Tait, and the space for lobbying and advocacy around civilian oversight is shrinking.

Over in South Asia, there are mixed reports. In India the police reform process is really taking off, after the Supreme Court laid down a decision requiring India's central and state governments to implement police accountability - in Introspection we look at the process of reform and what it means for both the police and the community in India. Meanwhile, just south of India, we report on policing developments in the Maldives, highlighting a concerning incident regarding a man who was found dead in a Male Harbour following a period of police detention, and the government and oversight bodies' response to the incident. We also discuss a recent regional conference on police accountability, An exchange of experiences: Police accountability in South Asia, that brought together participants from Bangladesh, India, the Maldives, Pakistan and Sri Lanka (as well as experts from the UK) to talk over policing issues in the region.

We also have all our regular features - in Innovations and Practices, we look at the role the right to information can play in ensuring good policing, we profile the Fiji police force and we take a quick trip through the policing news and developments across the Commonwealth.

Feature

Impacting on Internal Oversight - a challenge facing policing oversight in South Africa

Support for police oversight and accountability in South Africa no longer enjoys the political and public prominence it had in the years immediately following the country's first democratic election in 1994. There have been a number of disconcerting developments that lead one to draw such conclusions. The first and most significant casualty was the downscaling of the National Secretariat for Safety and Security. Recently there have been worrying signs for the Independent Complaints Directorate (ICD). In his 2005 budget vote , the Minister for Safety and Security Charles Nqakula, stated his intention to "consolidate" the role of the ICD and the Secretariat for Safety and Security. A few months later, the South African parliament's, National Assembly Portfolio Committee on Safety and Security, highlighted a number of structural issues that required consideration, to address what they have billed as a failure by the ICD . The executive director of the ICDs contract was not renewed and a year later a new director is yet to be appointed. This trend is concerning, not only because of its evident impact on the quality of civilian oversight but because it marks an ever narrowing space for lobbying and advocacy around one of the most pressing challenges of police reform in South Africa - the need to strengthen and improve the internal systems of discipline and control.

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