The Europeanization of Human Rights

Abstract

There is a widespread conviction that contemporary criminal justice developments can best be analysed in terms of their capacity to reassure an anxious public rather than to reduce crime in any straightforward way. Construing current changes as primarily driven by efforts to placate public insecurity downplays several crucial factors of contemporary political rule. States, especially those within Europe, are increasingly integrated around human rights values that circumscribe their actions. These norms provide a resource for national citizens to make claims against states for interests that have been downgraded. This article analyses how this process of the Europeanization of human rights, coupled with crucial domestic factors, has tempered the shift toward a repressive model of criminal justice by introducing greater regulation and oversight of policing by the Irish state. This may presage a splintering of state sovereignty as some of its organizations are inspired by adherence to transnational values, an allegiance that may impede any move towards authoritarian state rule.