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Norway's new crime gambit: 'receipts' for frisked suspects




Andrew Osborn, Europe correspondent

Wednesday July 3, 2002

The Guardian




In a landmark vote Norway has agreed to force police to issue an automatic on-the-spot receipt to anyone who has been frisked or asked for ID, in an attempt to combat racism.



The initiative, which was approved by parliament, will make Norway the first country in Europe to boost civil liberties in such a fashion.



Under the plan, anyone who has been stopped and searched or merely asked to show their ID card, which must be carried in Norway, will be issued with a receipt detailing the time, place and nature of the check. The receipt will also include details of the police officer's service number.



The scheme was supported by the Labour party, the Socialist Left and the far-right libertarian Progress party. There is no deadline for its implementation but the justice ministry is legally obliged to draw up legislation. Supporters are confident that the new regime will be in place within a year.



It has been accepted by a majority in parliament and the government must now do something, Inga Matha, the Socialist Left MP who tabled the proposal, said yesterday.



I hope the data collected from the receipts can be used for research to see if ethnic minorities are stopped and searched more often than others, she added.



Racism has been high on the political agenda in non-EU member Norway since 2001 when the country suffered its first overtly racist killing: two neo-Nazis were found guilty earlier this year of stabbing a mixed-race teenager to death.



Earlier this week the government unveiled a package of 47 anti-racism measures, including a new law to prosecute people for the use of racist and Nazi symbols.



Ms Matha said that the country's centre-right administration and the police might try to water down the plan, but stressed that she would do her utmost to ensure the scheme was implemented in the libertarian spirit envisaged by parliamentarians. Campaigners now hope that the initiative could be taken up in other European countries.



In Britain, anyone who has been frisked by police has the right to demand to go to a police station and be issued with a report. But the scheme is little publicised and few people are aware of it.



Elsewhere in Europe someone who has been searched or asked for ID has no comeback. In France and Spain it is an open secret that people from ethnic minority backgrounds are often unfairly targeted.



Akhenaton de Leon, the director of Norway's institution against public discrimination, has lobbied for the new law for eight years.



We are now going to work for this system to be implemented at EU level. The problem of racial profiling has existed in Europe for decades.



The receipt will allow the police to identify officers who have a tendency to control people of a specific origin.



In one well publicised incident a young boy of African origin who owned an expensive bicycle had, he claimed, been stopped 17 times in three weeks and asked to prove that the bike was his.



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