Balancing public safety and individual rights in street policing

Balancing public safety and individual rights in street policing.

Whether viewed from the desk of a police chief, a city mayor, or a citizen in a deprived, high-crime community, maintaining the balance between police effectiveness and fair policing is complicated and difficult to achieve, let alone to sustain over the long term. However, it is at the heart of good policing, for when policing goes out of that balance—as happened in Brixton, London in the 1970s...

[Tuberculosis and public health: ¿individual rights or collective rights?].

Tuberculosis (TB) persists as a major public health problem in our country. The appearance of resistant strains has complicated its control and questioned the appropriateness of the current measures towards prevention and control. An analysis from social determinants related to TB, converge on irregular treatment that generates disease persistence and appearance of resistance to TB drugs. The o...

Prophylactic interventions on children: balancing human rights with public health.

Bioethics committees have issued guidelines that medical interventions should be permissible only in cases of clinically verifiable disease, deformity, or injury. Furthermore, once the existence of one or more of these requirements has been proven, the proposed therapeutic procedure must reasonably be expected to result in a net benefit to the patient. As an exception to this rule, some prophyl...

Public Policy Versus Individual Rights and Responsibility: An Economist’s Perspective

Interventions to reduce childhood obesity entail ethical considerations. Although a rationale exists for government to intervene in a way that limits individual rights while protecting the public's health, a clear economic rationale also exists. The markets for goods and services that contribute to obesity are characterized by multiple failures that create an economic rationale for government t...

Driving and dementia: balancing personal independence and public safety.