Under the Communist regime in Hungary, police were authorized to detain a person up to 8 hours without bringing any charges. The first democratically formed government following the free elections of 1990 postponed any reforms in the law enforcement structure into the indefinite future. Innovation within the police was in the beginning limited to a focus on the democratic environment of policing and to improving police- community relations. Thus, police functioned under old regulations for several years after the first free elections, although many elements of the legal environment changed during this period. The 1994 Police Act defined police responsibilities under the new elected democratic regime. Regarding public security detention under this act, human rights guarantees have been weakened in the interest of perceived police efficiency. Most of the grounds for short-term detention have been taken from the previous legislation, without any attempt to adapt them to the framework of the changed constitutional and international legal environment. Some new provisions clearly violate universally accepted standards of basic rights. The 1994 act continues the 8-hour detention maximum, but this may be extended once by 4 hours if deemed advisable by the head of the police agency. A survey shows that police are using detention largely in the interest of public order rather than law enforcement. Prostitutes and gypsies, for example, are being detained, not for breaking specific laws, but because the majority of the public may object to their presence in the community.
Continuity and Change in Hungarian Policing in the Mirror of Public Security Detention (From Policing in Central and Eastern Europe: Comparing Firsthand Knowledge With Experience From the West, P 253-263, 1996, Milan Pagon, ed. -- See NCJ-170291)
NCJ Number
170315
Date Published
1996
Length
11 pages
Annotation
Following a historical review of policing traditions in Hungary, this paper examines continuity and change in the law governing policing as reflected in the 1994 Police Act, with attention to parameters for pretrial detention by police, followed by a presentation of the preliminary findings of a survey on the actual use of detention by police.
Abstract