2. The police
2. The police
- Michael Rowe
Abstract
This chapter, which examines the organisation and delivery of policing, begins considering the ‘crisis’ of policing and suggests that some current concerns have a lengthy pedigree of their own. It then explores the breadth of the police mandate and distinguishes the activities of ‘the police’ from broader aspects of social regulation that might be thought of more widely as ‘policing’. The chapter discusses: the history and development of the police in England and Wales; an organisational map of policing; police accountability and governance; diverse policing and the policing of diversity; and policing strategies.
Introduction
The organisation, funding, governance and role of the police service have all been subject to intensive debate in recent years. From 2010 the government reduced police funding, reversing an extended period of increasing investment. Police numbers have begun to decrease after 15 years of sustained expansion. The outsourcing of police activities to the private sector and reforms to employment terms and conditions of police staff have been among measures subject to review in recent years. This chapter seeks to explore these, and other debates surrounding contemporary policing and to place current developments in their historical context. To this end the chapter begins by considering the ‘crisis’ of policing and suggests that some current concerns have a lengthy pedigree of their own. The chapter moves on to explore the breadth of the police mandate and to distinguish the activities of ‘the police’ from broader aspects of social regulation that might be thought of more widely as ‘policing’. The importance of recognising that police perform many functions beyond their crime control remit is noted and used to illustrate the difficulty of defining the police role.
A review of the development of the police in England and Wales follows to demonstrate that many contemporary debates have recurred over a long period. For example, tension between local and national organisation and governance has featured since the establishment of the police service in the nineteenth century. The most recent effort to promote local accountability—in the guise of Police and Crime Commissioners—is reviewed and a number of likely challenges to this new model are identified. Similar analysis is offered in respect of another key aspect of accountability: the investigation of complaints against police. Emerging from this is the issue of diversity within policing, which relates to a large extent to the failure of the police service to reflect the principle of policing by consent and that the police service ought to mirror the population that it serves.
The chapter finishes by critically outlining strengths and weaknesses of contemporary policing strategies that seek to use intelligence and scientific methods to respond more effectively to crime and disorder. Some operational and conceptual limitations of these approaches are identified. In conclusion it is argued that future challenges for police are likely to relate to concerns about the increasing demand for security and the need to balance this agenda with civil liberties and human rights concerns. These in turn will raise the need for further debate about the balance between local, national and transnational policing arrangements and about the fundamental mandate of police services.
Background
Historical and contemporary perspectives on policing in crisis
It is not much of an exaggeration to say that the police service of England and Wales has often been regarded as a near-sacred institution of public life and the uniformed embodiment of national character. So dominant has been the traditional and ‘palpably conservative’ (Reiner, 2010) representation of much police history that problems that have occasionally been acknowledged have been cast as aberrant exceptions rather than a deeper institutional malaise. Periodic cases of corruption, racism or the excessive use of force, for example have been tended to be understood as the actions of a few bad apples rather than a rotten institution. This characterisation reinforces a predominant view of a beneficent service highly valued by the majority of law-abiding citizens. A decade ago Loader and Mulcahy’s (2003: 3) analysis of public perceptions of the police began by reviewing arguments that the public had lost faith in the English police and that there was an ‘attenuation of the quasi-religious aura that once enveloped the police, its officers and its practices’. At what point and for what reasons the police of England and Wales began to lose public trust and confidence is difficult to determine. As with other dimensions of crime and justice, claims that all is not as rosy as once it was, is a recurring theme through the ages. Almost 50 years ago, public reactions to disturbances between mods and rockers at seaside towns in the south of England included expressions of concern that police services were no longer effective in the face of youth violence (Cohen, 1972). It was claimed that officers were prevented from meting out informal physical punishments of the type that had proven an effective sanction and deterrent in previous eras.
In August 2011, similar analysis was applied to incidents of urban unrest in London and elsewhere. Media and political reaction suggested that disorder had flourished because of the failure of the police service to respond quickly and firmly to initial outbreaks of violence and looting (Gorringe and Rosie, 2011). The failure of police to intervene was cast in terms of wider restrictions on strategy and tactics that is often attributed to a preoccupation with a politically correct human rights agenda and a general liberal tolerance that is seen to pervade the criminal justice system. Central to this simplistic and flawed analysis is the notion that the police service has lost touch with the public mood, is no longer effective in tackling lawlessness, and is mired in politically driven bureaucracy. Implicitly and explicitly such analysis often contrasts the contemporary state of policing with earlier times, although identifying the exact period of the ‘golden age’ is difficult since most eras seem to be characterised by concerns about the declining status of the police service.
The persistence of concerns about policing might be one reason for caution in evaluating specific problems identified in any particular period. Current debates about corruption, for example, might be considered differently when contrasted with problems that dogged the service in previous decades. Racism or instances in which officers have used excessive violence might also be re-assessed in relation to the long and problematic history of such behaviour. Perhaps analysis of the contemporary shortcomings and limitations of the police service might be reconsidered in the comparative context of earlier eras or in relation to other societies. Equally, political and media concern about policing does not necessarily reflect public attitudes toward the police service, which tend to remain largely positive. Although opinion data suggests that there has been a decline in public support for the police service this nonetheless remains high in absolute terms and is strong relative to other institutions in society. The 2008/09 British Crime Survey found, for example, that 67 per cent of respondents ‘strongly agreed’ or ‘tended to agree’ that they had overall confidence in their local police and 84 per cent that the police would treat them with respect. (Walker, et al., 2009: 126)
Although concerns about policing have many historical parallels, and notwithstanding that public support for the service remains relatively strong, there is a widespread political and policy consensus that the service currently faces a range of challenges that might lead to significant reconfiguration. Some of the pressure points have been mentioned above. Incidents of urban unrest and public disorder associated with political protest have led to debate about tactics, such as the potential for the use of water cannons, and strategic questions about the proper role of the police in balancing democratic freedom with the protection of property and the maintenance of order. Revelations that undercover police officers have given evidence in court under false names and the quashing of a series of convictions associated with covert police investigations have raised concerns that political surveillance has not been properly managed by the service. Investigations of phone, email and computer hacking have revived fears that inappropriate relationships between police officers and journalists have led to the invasion of privacy and may have hampered criminal investigations.
The collective impact of these incidents is significant, even though taken individually they might be no more serious than similar controversies from the past. What makes them more compelling in terms of the fundamental status and organisation of contemporary policing is that they expose problems and concerns during a period in which considerable pressures are faced by police services in terms of budgets, organisation, and systems of governance. As is described further below, government spending cuts announced in 2010 included significant reductions in police funding. A report by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC, 2011a) reviewed police service plans in the light of reductions in the overall police budget. The 43 police services of England and Wales have modelled future plans on the anticipation that gross revenue expenditure will decline by 14 per cent over the period from 2010–11 to 2014–15. In terms of human resources (which account for 80 per cent of expenditure), forces estimate across the board reductions affecting officers, civilian support staff, and Police Community Support Officers. Overall, it was estimated that the number employed across these categories would reduce by 34,100 over the period March 2010 to March 2015. To some extent this reduction will be off-set by a revival of the role of voluntary Special Constables, estimated to increase by 17 per cent to 22,600 over the same period. In overall terms, notwithstanding considerable differences between forces, the HMIC (2011a) study suggests that the planned cuts will mean that by 2014–15 police officer levels will be back to the position of 2001–02 and the total workforce will return to where it was in 2003–04.
The impact of the cutbacks remains difficult to ascertain, especially if crime rates increase as a result of recession, but the reduction in resources is especially stark given that police resources have increased significantly during the recent past. In keeping with the public sector more generally, the pay and conditions of police officers have also come under considerable scrutiny. Proposals outlined in the Winsor report (Home Office, 2011), threaten the relatively well-protected status of officers that has been a political imperative for successive governments. Furthermore, the replacement of local police authorities by directly elected Police and Crime Commissioners (PCC) in 2012 represented the most significant change in governance and accountability of policing in half a century. While it remains unclear precisely what impact this change will be in practice it is widely anticipated that the PCC will increase local oversight of policing in ways that might hamper the operational independence of Chief Constables. One concern about local oversight is that it might be difficult to reconcile with an increase in cross-force collaboration at the regional and national level that is occasioned by a need to improve efficiency. If forces provide joint services, in ‘backroom’ procurement or the provision of air support services, for example, then it is unclear how the local population in one particular area can hold the service to account. These debates are considered more fully in the discussion that follows.
Taken together, recent controversies have created an environment in which the future organisation and delivery of policing in England and Wales might be significantly reconfigured. These specific debates cannot be properly understood without consideration of the role and mandate of the police service. This requires an historical perspective on the development of the police service. While it is inevitable that changes and reform are at the forefront of debate about contemporary policing the service is also characterised by considerable continuity and future directions will be shaped by the legacy of earlier periods. In order to contextualise current and future developments the chapter explores policing in terms of different approaches to the role and mandate of the service. This is linked to the historical development of the police in England and Wales, which is characterised, in part, by tensions between local and national dimensions of accountability: issues that continue to be central to current debates. The chapter then moves on to outline the institutional arrangement of policing, different strategies and models, governance and accountability, and key challenges that the police will face in the future.
Review questions
Critically assess recent controversies that have suggested the police have lost touch with the mood of the public?
What impact will reductions in police expenditure have on staff numbers?
What are the key features of the role of Police and Crime Commissioners?
Policing: the role and mandate
Although the police service is one of the most familiar aspects of contemporary social life, embedded as it is in popular culture and the everyday routines of citizens, defining the role and mandate of the police is particularly difficult. Echoing Bittner’s (1974) observation that the police service is one of the best known but least understood of institutions, the more consideration that is given to defining the role and mandate of the service the more complex and difficult they appear. Any society requires some degree of policing, in the sense that a combination of formal and informal mechanisms of social control regulate individual and collective behaviour. This social regulation can be performed by a host of public, private or civil society organisations and combines the formal establishment and endorsement of laws and rules as well as the less formal, sometimes ‘invisible’, processes that influence individuals’ interactions. Families, schools and religious, social and cultural groups, and the media, influence the socialisation of children and adults in ways that inculcate collective normative values and so ‘police’ individual behaviour.
In this broad sense, ‘policing’ is a ‘big society’ activity, incorporating a plethora of public, private and voluntary sector agencies. Deference to authority and obedience are ingrained in a host of organisational and cultural settings. Often rules and regulations are codified in handbooks and codes of practice, are overseen by individuals and committees charged with their enforcement, and are reinforced by sanctions applied to those who contravene them. Although much of this has little or nothing to do with the law or the operation of criminal justice it amounts to forms of policing in general terms and might be thought of as parallel to the activities of the particular institution discharged with dealing with a subset of these broad activities: the police service.
Increasingly academic analysis of policing tends to be cast in wide terms. In recent years there has been a significant focus on configurations of national and transnational networks of policing that incorporate the activities of government law enforcement agencies and other state agencies (such as housing and education authorities), transnational organisations, and multinational corporations that collectively regulate contemporary global society (Wood and Shearing, 2007). Academic analysis of plural and networked policing—the complex web of agencies and personnel that collectively provide for the enforcement of the law and social regulation—foregrounds an approach to policing that recognises that is a process that emerges from a wide-range of interactions between diverse actors and agencies. Loader (2000) acknowledged the importance of recognising the need for an expanded conceptualisation of contemporary plural policing landscape. He identified five dimensions within plural networked policing and recognised that these categories are porous and inter-connected:
Policing by government: the traditional publicly-funded police;
Policing through government: activities co-ordinated and funded by the government but delivered by agencies other than the police service;
Policing above government: transnational policing activities coordinated by international agencies;
Policing beyond government: activities funded and delivered privately by citizens and corporations;
Policing below government: voluntary and community activities, self-policing, and vigilantism.
A more conventional approach to understanding policing focuses upon the activities mandated to the public police service, the first of Loader’s categories listed above. Rather than seeking to understand policing in terms of the agencies and networks of relationships that enforce regulations of various kinds, analysis is concentrated on the activities of public police services. Policing, to simplify this approach, is the range of roles and responsibilities carried out by transnational, national, regional and local police services. In some respects this is a helpful approach since it provides a relatively clear boundary for discussion and analysis. In other respects, though, questions remain since the range of roles and functions tasked to the police service is far from straightforward. In 2005 the then Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Ian Blair, gave the annual BBC Dimbleby Lecture and posed a series of questions about the future orientation of the police service in a society characterised by insecurity and fear about crime and terrorism. Emerging challenges meant, Blair argued, that the public should engage in debate about the role of the police service. Blair’s call was met with considerable derision in sections of the press who suggested that he was a commissioner who appeared not to know what the role of the police was and that, moreover, the answer to his question was straightforward: the role of the police was to enforce the law and to prevent and detect crime (McLaughlin, 2007; Rowe, 2008).
Since political debate and media representation so strongly focus on the law enforcement role of the police it is perhaps unsurprising that this should feature so centrally in common-sense definitions of policing. Clearly, the police do have a particular role to play in law enforcement but much police work relates to a range of service roles that have little or anything to do with crime control. If policing is defined in terms of what officers actually do in practical operational terms then enforcing the law would not feature especially strongly. Studies of police patrol work, for example, suggest that routine activities of officers are directed towards a plethora of problems such as traffic issues, searching for missing persons, dealing with lost property, and all manner of engagements with the public that are unrelated to crime control (PA Consulting, 2001; Reiner, 2010). Bayley’s (1994) study of routine police patrol work in Australia, Canada, England and Wales, Japan, and the United States found that officer activity was primarily dictated by control room dispatchers in response to public calls for assistance. His analysis of these calls found that only between seven and 10 per cent of requests for assistance were related to crime, and much of that small proportion was of a non-serious nature.
If law enforcement is not the central defining characteristic of policing then other features can be identified that provide some further clarity. Key among these are the police having recourse to the legitimate use of force against citizens, and have powers of stop and search, arrest, and to enter premises, characteristics shared with very few other agencies. Commentators have noted that police service powers to use force against citizens represent the embodiment of sovereignty of the state, which is widely understood in Weberian terms as the operation of legitimate force over a given territory. In abstract terms, use of force does help define policing although, as with the law enforcement definition, this feature is complicated in practice since much police work involves no use of force, although the potential use of force may shape many routine interactions. What is more, the use of force is not restricted to the police service since other state officials, such as customs or environmental health officers, also have legal powers to detain people and enter property. Another feature of police work much noted in research literature is the extensive bureaucratic and administrative function that officers fulfil (Erikson and Haggarty, 1997; Manning, 2008). Analysis of police activity in Britain found that 43 per cent of officer time was spent in police stations, either in processing suspects through the custody process or completing administrative work (PA Consulting, 2001). Some of these functions, such as ensuring continuity of evidence, are important to the administration of justice and so are not unrelated to law enforcement but such responsibilities led Ericson and Haggerty (1997) to conceptualise police officers as ‘knowledge workers’ whose role is to identify and communicate risk to other agencies and to society in general terms.
The breadth of police activity makes it difficult to arrive at a succinct definition of the police role and mandate. While law enforcement and order maintenance are clearly significant, so too is the diverse category of service functions that the police fulfil. Although the crime fighting mandate figures more centrally in popular conceptualisation of policing, and is often seen as central in terms of the occupational sub-culture of police officers, it accounts for only a minority of police time (Bayley, 1994; PA Consulting, 2001; Reiner, 2010). Conversely, the routine activities of officers and police staff consist largely of an eclectic range of duties that might be considered in the general public interest but which make little sense in terms of the crime control model. Emphasising that the police role and mandate incorporates a significant generic service role is important during a period of financial constraint and debates about priorities and where resources should be targeted. The service role of the police was emphasised when the Metropolitan Police Service was introduced in the face of widespread public opposition in 1829. In an effort to overcome concerns that the ‘new police’ were an oppressive organ of central government, the Home Secretary and the Commissioners conceptualised the police as servants of the law-abiding general public. They were presented as ‘citizens in uniform’ who would treat ordinary men and women with courtesy and respect.
Performing a range of auxiliary functions, assisting the citizen in need and broadly acting as the service of last-resort in the response to personal and public crises has continued to be an important bedrock of police legitimacy. In these terms, the law enforcement and service delivery roles of the police service are complementary: the provision of the latter does not detract from crime fighting but helps to maintain public support for the police and for the rule of law in more general terms (Hough et al., 2010). Indeed, contemporary calls for the police service to focus more centrally on their core task of tackling crime run the risk of failing to learn lessons from recent history. Many academic and police commentators have suggested that the ‘professionalisation’ of the police service in the 1960s—largely focused on employing technology and modern systems of organisation (known as Unit Beat Policing) to more effectively respond to incidents—played a significant part in the decline of public confidence in the police, since officers became isolated from the routines of community life (Brain, 2010; Reiner, 2010). This emphasis on the primary importance of responding to calls for help has been described as ‘fire-brigade’ policing. Loader and Mulcahy (2003: 28–9) noted the significance of this shift in terms that serve as a warning against contemporary demands for the police to retrench into a narrow crime fighting role:
[Unit Beat Policing] has…come to be seen—both by many police officers and among the public—as a significant watershed in post-war policing, the point at which local, visible, service-oriented guardianship gave way to something “more distant and less human”
(Whittaker, 1964: 200)—remote, technology-driven, ‘fire-brigade’ policing.
Review questions
What are the key differences between ‘broad’ and ‘narrow’ definitions of policing?
What other features of police work might be regarded as defining characteristics?
For what reasons has the service role of the police been regarded as important?
History and development of the police in England and Wales
The historical development of policing in England and Wales reflects the complex role and mandate sketched out in the previous discussion. The importance of maintaining public legitimacy is reflected in the enduring provision of various forms of community policing organised and delivered at the local level. The introduction of the modern police service in England and Wales was an evolving process that commenced in the late eighteenth century—when efforts were begun to establish a force in London—and continued at least until the middle of the nineteenth century when it became mandatory for all areas to establish a police service. Tension between local and central organisation, funding, power, and accountability in relation to policing have been fairly consistent themes ever since, and continue to feature in twenty-first century debates about the organisation and direction of police services, as is outlined below.
Historical accounts tend to regard the establishment of the Metropolitan Police in 1829 as the pivotal point at which the modern system of policing that endures to the present period was first introduced. While 1829 is a symbolically important date it remains the case that many features of the new Metropolitan Police were continued from an earlier patchwork of fragmented local arrangements. Working practices, police duties and even the personnel employed by the ‘new police’ represented a continuation of the watchmen and parish constable model of policing of the pervious era. Mawby (1999: 30) noted that policing in England between the 1740s and 1850s were characterised by self-policing, community engagement in street patrols, and private sector provision of many policing services: all continuing themes in debates about contemporary police reform. The grassroots engagement of the public in police activity has been central to much of the discourse and practice of policing in Britain, and can be traced back at least as far as the thirteenth century (Ascoli, 1979; Critchley, 1978).
Various proposals to establish a professional institutionalised police service were developed over a period of decades from the middle of the eighteenth century and were largely prompted by the combined effects of industrialisation and urbanisation that created new opportunities and pressures for crime and lawlessness (Emsley, 1996). At the same time the prevailing policing arrangements were exposed as ineffective in an increasingly urban society with a transient population. Political protest, most notably trades unionism and the Chartist campaigns for the extension of democracy, posed additional challenges to a system for the maintenance of public order that relied largely on an inflexible and, at times, very violent military response. Against this background, the Home Secretary at the time, Robert Peel oversaw the passage of the Metropolitan Police Act 1829 that established a type of police force that remains largely recognisable today.
Opposition to the establishment of the Metropolitan Police was not quickly assuaged once police officers took to the streets in their new roles. Concerns continued in relation to cost, the lack of visible police constables on patrol and the poor quality and discipline of officers—drunkenness was a particular problem that lay behind the huge turnover in police staff (Critchley, 1978; Reiner, 2010). Political and financial criticisms were expressed by local watch committees concerned that they were investing greater funds in the new police but receiving a lower police presence over which they now had no control or direction. Violence against police officers was a problem common enough to encourage officers to keep their wooden rattles in their chest pockets to avoid stab wounds to the heart (Reith, 1948: 41). For various reasons—including democratic political reform, changes to police funding arrangements and, perhaps, increasing familiarity with the ‘new’ police (Palmer, 1988)—opposition to the police service began to decline in the 1830s. Reith (1948) argued that public acceptance of the police was partly due to success in reducing crime and street lawlessness.
Success in London meant that crime problems were being displaced to other parts of the country. This helps explain why policing arrangements introduced in the capital were extended incrementally across other urban areas and then into rural districts during the middle of the nineteenth century (Emsley, 2003; Wall, 1998). The Country and Borough Police Act 1856 completed the establishment of police forces for all areas of England and Wales, requiring that all counties established a police force under the direction of the local magistrates but with a proportion of funding provided centrally via the Home Office. In return for central government resources, local arrangements were subject to inspection by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary that was tasked with ensuring forces operated efficiently. This combination of local and national direction and funding has continued to be a key principle, and an enduring source of tension. Wall (1998: 45) argued that during the latter decades of the nineteenth century the police in England and Wales came to be elevated to a ‘sacred status’ as an ‘all purpose emergency service on which the local townsfolk relied when in trouble’. Although many sections of the general public, in particular among working class and migrant communities, have experienced continuing conflict with the police throughout this period and beyond, most accounts suggest that the status of the police service remained relatively high until the last decades of the twentieth century. Reiner (2007) suggests that this was a reflection of the social democratic consensus, strong welfare provisions, and relatively low-crime rates that characterised the period.
Review questions
What characteristics of policing from pre-1829 were continued in the ‘new’ Metropolitan Police?
What problems did the Metropolitan Police face in its first decades?
Why did Reiner suggest the police service enjoyed a high level of public support until the last decades of the twentieth century?
An organisational map of policing
The police service in England and Wales is organised around 43 separate constabularies. Additionally, there is one in Scotland and one in Northern Ireland. (The Police and Fire Reform Bill (Scotland) 2012 established a single Scottish Police Service.) These police services are the core institutions of the public police, and most of the legal and governance arrangements discussed in this chapter relate to these 43. There are a number of other public police services that are organised on a different constitutional basis, most significantly in numerical terms is the British Transport Police that operates on the rail network, other services include the Atomic Energy Police, military police, and the Royal Parks Police. The size of constabularies varies considerably in personnel terms: the largest force, by some distance, is the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS), which employed 31,657 staff as of September 2011. The smallest were the City of London Police (854 officers) and Dyfed Powys Police (1,145 officers), as of the same date (Home Office, 2012a). There are also considerable differences in terms of the population served by different police services: the City of London police serve a resident population of 117,00, the next smallest is Cumbria with 494,000, while the West Midlands and the Metropolitan Police serve populations of 2,655,100 and 7,813,500 respectively (Home Office, 2012b). There are also considerable variations in geographical terms and in relation to the rural and urban character of different police service areas.
Size differences apart all services have the same functional responsibilities within their force areas and all in England and Wales are subject to the same funding and governance arrangements. The exception is the MPS, partly because it performs functions such as diplomatic and royal protection that are of national significance. Each service is organised hierarchically around a rank structure that consists of mandatory ranks of constable, sergeant, inspector, superintendent, and then chief officer ranks of assistant, deputy and chief constable. Again, the MPS is slightly different in terms of senior ranks which are designated as Commander, Assistant Commissioner, Deputy Commissioner, and Commissioner. A hallmark of the British model is that all officers enter the service at the lowest rank of constable; unlike in some other jurisdictions there is no ‘officer-level’ entry directly into middle or senior ranks. This arrangement is often defended on the grounds that it means that senior staff carry authority and legitimacy based upon their personal experience of frontline operational duties. Conversely, it has been argued that this model prevents the recruitment of talented and experienced leaders from other fields joining the police service as officers (although they may occupy senior roles as civilian staff members) and has been part of a long-standing concern about the poor quality of leadership within the service (Rowe, 2006).
There are 43 police services in England and Wales, fewer than in the past—there were 123 prior to the 1964 Police Act—but more than would have existed had the power given to the Home Secretary by the Police Act 1994 to amalgamate forces ever been enacted (Morgan and Newburn, 1997). Plans for services to amalgamate were high on the police reform agenda under the Labour government of 2005–09 (Loveday, 2006). The Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition administration has abandoned these proposals but more informal collaborative working arrangements between neighbouring forces are appearing. Each of the 43 services is sub-divided into Basic Command Units, each of which operates with a degree of independence in terms of identifying local priorities, staffing and resources, and consultation with communities. Community policing has also been pursued through the Neighbourhood Policing programme developed in recent years in order to promote the (re)integration of police into communities by maintaining dedicated beat officers. The emphasis on community policing, in different guises, has persisted for many decades and represents the operational application of the principle of policing by consent, whereby the police operate on the basis of public support, that is heralded as central to police effectiveness and legitimacy. Although maintaining the ‘bobby on the beat’ in the traditional form of foot patrol has come to be seen as lacking value in terms of crime control and the direct enforcement of the law, commitment to this iconic aspect of police activity has remained strong for political and symbolic reasons and as a means of shoring up police legitimacy (Rowe, 2009). Since meeting public demand for a visible presence of officers on foot patrol has been seen as a non-negotiable political priority for successive governments other policing models and strategies have perhaps received relatively little attention. Key principles and themes common to many contemporary models of police practice are reviewed in the following section.
Review questions
How many police services are there in England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland?
How many were there in England and Wales immediately prior to the 1964 Police Act?
What are the mandatory ranks for each police service?
Police accountability and governance
Consistent with the historical development of policing in England and Wales, arrangements for police accountability have combined oversight from central government with local elements of democratic control. Similarly, funding of police services is sourced from central government and via local taxation. The combination of central and local democratic control emerged partly in response to recognition of the long history of policing in England organised at a grass-roots level, a tradition that extends back to feudal times (Critchley, 1978). The development of modern policing in the nineteenth century was the result of a combination of central government direction and local demand, which helps explain why traditional localism was intermixed with central oversight that accompanied national government funding for services organised and delivered at the country and borough level. For much of the recent past this model of local and national accountability and governance has been enshrined in the tripartite arrangements set out by the Police Act 1964. While the balance of powers within this arrangement might have shifted somewhat over the decades in which it operated, the model provided the main basis for regulating the 43 Home Office police forces in England and Wales until the introduction of Police and Crime Commissioners (PCC) in 2012.
The 1964 Act divided the governance of the police between three parties: the Chief Constable (or Commissioner in the case of the Metropolitan Police); the police authority, representing local citizens until replaced by PCCs in 2012; and the Home Office, on behalf of central government. The Chief Constable has operational responsibility and considerable autonomy when it comes to enforcing the law in any particular situation. Case law has established over many years that Chief Constables can exercise discretion when it comes to establishing priorities and policy for law enforcement in each police service area. The principle underpinning this has been the prevention of undue political interference in the application of the law. Chief Constables formulate policy and act collectively, to some degree, under the auspices of the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO). The power of ACPO to determine police policy and to provide a corporate voice for chief officers raises significant questions about police accountability since it sits outside of the legislative framework established by the 1964 Act.
The other two parties, local police authorities (until 2012) and the Home Office, were responsible for funding the police service and for determining policy in more general terms. The police authority was a locally constituted body that provided resources and local direction to each of the 43 police forces in England and Wales. Police authorities were made up of independent members, local councillors, and magistrates. They were responsible for appointing senior officers, subject to Home Office approval, and for devising local policing plans required by the Police and Magistrates’ Courts Act 1994. The local sheen that continues to coat policing in Britain only barely conceals the centrality of the Home Office in determining services delivered locally. Although, in the recent past there has been a reduction in the plethora of performance targets that had been established by central government in order to measure, compare, and contrast different police services. Whether this trend is continued by the election of Police and Crime Commissioners in November 2012 accelerates this pattern remains to be seen.
Police and Crime Commissioners: public champions or paper tigers?
In an effort to re-balance these arrangements, the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011 introduced, the Government claimed, the most significant constitutional change to the governance of policing in England and Wales for almost 50 years. Unlike police authorities, the Police and Crime Commissioner for each police service is directly elected by the public. The creation of a new role of PCC in each police force area is claimed to provide direct local democratic oversight of the police, replacing the indirect democracy previously practised by local police authorities. Critics have suggested the role will reduce the independence of the police and lead to political interference (Joyce, 2011). PCCs are responsible for appointing the chief constable, setting priorities, representing community interests, and raising local funding in each police area. Commissioners are advised and assisted by Police and Crime Panels comprising local councillors, and independent lay members. The arrangements for the Metropolitan Police will be different as the responsibilities of the PCCs are assigned to the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime, which is scrutinised by the Policing and Crime Committee of the Greater London Authority. The government explicitly claim that the new Commissioners will strengthen democratic oversight by giving the public greater ownership of crime, disorder, and antisocial behaviour. The Commissioners will, it is argued, provide a mechanism that will strengthen community cohesion, improve community well-being, and develop the ‘Big Society’. In particular, four key benefits are identified by the Home Office (2010: para 2.5):
the public can better hold police forces and senior officers to account;
there is greater public engagement in policing both in terms of priority setting and active citizenship;
there is greater public—rather than Whitehall—ownership of force performance;
and, the public have someone ‘on their side’ in the fight against crime and anti-social behaviour.
These constitutional changes follow in the wake of considerable and widespread academic debate about processes of governance and accountability in a policing environment radically transformed by privatisation, globalisation, security and risk management (Johnston and Shearing, 2003; Loader, 2000; Stenning, 2009). Much of this debate implicitly reinforces the perspective that there is a lack of effective local accountability. Stenning (2009) notes that proposals for police reform in North America, in South Africa and in Northern Ireland have included the establishment of local policing boards or police commissions that might strengthen local accountability and provide for more effective community engagement that would enhance social and economic well-being in neighbourhoods especially affected by high levels of crime and disorder. In that sense it might be that the PCCs in England and Wales add to constitutional oversight. However, there are several important grounds for concern. First, it is not clear that PCCs will do anything to address the democratic deficit in terms of a lack of accountability of private sector or hybrid forms of policing, the governance of which is considered at greater length in the following chapter. Neither will PCCs address the lack of accountability applied to regional, national, and transnational policing arrangements.
A second reason for caution is the potential impact of the election of extreme or maverick individuals who might be elected on narrow mandates and with scant local support. While a more visible and high profile office might provide for better engagement with the public there is a parallel risk that contentious PCCs might be a source of conflict. This possibility raises broader questions about low levels of public participation in elections and a lack of engagement in conventional politics. The low-level of the turnout in the inaugural PCC elections in November 2012 (the overall turnout was less than 15 per cent, the lowest level recorded) has not provided a strong democratic mandate.
Third, there is a more general problem that communities might not have a coherent or consistent demand for policing services that can be represented by a Commissioner and transformed into operational policing priorities. The establishment of the new office of the PCC rests on the idea that the problem of the past has been a failure to represent local wishes and to ensure that they are translated into police practice. If police authorities did not connect with the local population then they did not provide a counter-weight to chief constables and the Home Office. However, it might be that the problem also arises from the complex, contradictory, and confusing range of priorities that communities increasingly represent: the ideal type community necessary for the new arrangements to be effective might be rare (Hughes and Rowe, 2007). The size and complexity of ‘localities’ represented by some PCCs means that this challenge is particularly significant: the PCC for West Yorkshire, for example, will represent 2.2 million people and cover 23 parliamentary constituencies (Sampson, 2012: 5).
Fourth, many issues relating to crime and anti-social behaviour have been addressed by multiagency partnerships and it might be that PCCs are not able to respond to concerns outside the remit of the police, even if they have significant impact on well-being and social development. Ensuring that partner agencies play a meaningful role in community safety, and invest the relevant resources, might prove particularly challenging in a period of financial austerity. This problem is not created anew by the arrangements for PCCs, but it will prove a significant challenge for those elected to the new role.
The potential impact of PCCs remains to be seen. While the issues outlined above establish a formidable series of challenges, the provisions for local accountability have been regarded as problematic for many decades. Furthermore the constitutional balance between central and local governance form only one aspect of police accountability and oversight. Alongside arrangements for appointing senior staff, setting budgets and identifying priorities are other provisions to regulate officer behaviour and respond to public concerns. Key among these is the arrangements for investigating complaints against the police.
Complaints against the police
The Police Reform Act 2002 established the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC), which has responsibility for investigating public complaints about specific activities of police officers as well as for scrutinising broader policing issues that might be of public concern. The IPCC replaced the Police Complaints Authority (PCA) and extended the independence of investigations into police misconduct. Police services themselves can refer contentions matters to the IPCC and any fatal incidents involving the police must be referred for examination. In addition the IPCC has a ‘guardianship’ role of enhancing public confidence in the accountability and transparency of police services and the manner in which complaints about misconduct are dealt with. This includes the dissemination of findings from investigations to police services in an effort to promote learning and reform on the basis of problems identified with aspects of police work. Unlike PCA arrangements, the IPCC employs its own investigators, who cannot have been employed as police officers.
In 2010–11, 33,099 complaints were made against the police in England and Wales, this was a fall of four per cent on the previous year and amounted to 225 complaints for every 1000 officers (IPCC, 2011). Allegations made are categorised and the most common concerns were ‘neglect of duty’ (27 per cent of the total), ‘incivilities’ (18 per cent), ‘other assaults’ (12 per cent) and ‘oppressive conduct’ (7 per cent). Only one per cent of allegations related to corruption, two per cent to discrimination, and four per cent to a ‘lack of fairness’. In terms of the response to allegations, 39 per cent were informally resolved between the police service and the complainant: a relatively quick method to which both parties agree and which is applied for relatively minor issues. A further 19 per cent were either withdrawn, discontinued or subject to dispensation (for example where the IPCC considers a complaint to be vexatious). The remaining 49 per cent of cases were subject to full investigation. In the period after April 2010, 16,021 investigations were completed and 11 per cent of these were upheld.
As with police complaint arrangements in many countries, there remain considerable concerns that the above provisions fail to provide effective accountability (Prenzler, 2009; Stenning, 2009). Criticisms relate to the cumbersome and time-consuming nature of the investigation process and that the IPCC has not been effective in terms of dealing with organisational or strategic aspects of policing and has remained largely focused on acts of individual malfeasance. In addition, several cases in which officers have resigned ahead of investigations and so pre-empted inquiries into high-profile allegations have raised questions about an improper balance between protecting the rights of police officers exposed to malicious complaint and the need to demonstrate public transparency (Joyce, 2011; Smith, 2009).
Review questions
Identify the key elements of the ‘tripartite’ governance arrangements that governed police from 1964–2012?
How are these changed by the introduction of Police and Crime Commissioners?
What are the core functions of the Independent Police Complaints Commission?
Diverse policing and the policing of diversity
Principles of policing by consent, accountability, and community engagement—institutionalised in the arrangements outlined in the previous section—underpin continuing controversies relating to police relations with minority groups of various kinds and to the status of women within the police service. Instances of police racism, high profile cases in which the police have failed to respond effectively to victims of hate crime, and allegations of sexual discrimination against female officers raise significant questions about the state of the police service. Such controversies arise in the context of other public organisations but are particularly salient in relation to police services that claim to operate on the basis of public legitimacy. Debates about police racism and discrimination of different kinds can be considered along two lines. First, those relating to the diversity of policing in terms of internal composition of police services and professional culture. Second, those that relate to the external performance of policing that raises concern about the over-policing of marginalised communities and failing to respond to crimes that have a disproportionate impact on those groups.
The value of developing a police workforce that reflects the diverse composition of wider society has long been recognised in Britain as in other societies. Partly this has been for operational reasons, on the basis that officers drawn from a cross-section of society will better understand, communicate with, and secure the trust of those various communities. The operational imperative has been recognised in highly segregated and divided societies—such as colonial India and apartheid South Africa and in Northern Ireland based on ethno-sectarian divides—that have not had any broader commitment to racial or ethnic justice and equality. In England and Wales commitments to recruit more minority ethnic officers have been reiterated at regular intervals for half a century and yet progress has been glacially slow. In the wake of the 1999 Lawrence Report (Macpherson, 1999), the government established targets for each of the 43 police services of England and Wales that detailed in precise numerical terms how many minority ethnic officers they should employ in order that they represent the demographic profile of the local population. The table below indicates that there has been an increase in minority ethnic officers in the decade following the establishment of targets, but that these have been modest.
Table 2.1 Ethnicity by rank in the police service, 2009 and 1999, per cent
White |
Asian |
Black |
Chinese or Other |
Mixed1 |
Not Stated |
||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Rank |
2009 |
1999 |
2009 |
1999 |
2009 |
1999 |
2009 |
1999 |
2009 |
2009 |
1999 |
ACPO |
93 |
100 |
2 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
1 |
4 |
0 |
(Chief) Superintendent |
96 |
99.5 |
1 |
0.1 |
1 |
0.3 |
0 |
0.1 |
1 |
1 |
0 |
(Chief) Inspector |
96 |
99.1 |
1 |
0.3 |
1 |
0.4 |
0 |
0.3 |
1 |
1 |
0 |
Sergeant |
96 |
98.6 |
1 |
0.5 |
1 |
0.6 |
0 |
0.3 |
1 |
1 |
0 |
Constable |
94 |
97.8 |
2 |
0.7 |
1 |
0.9 |
1 |
0.5 |
1 |
1 |
0 |
1 the category ‘mixed’ was not used in presentation of the 1999 data.
Reasons for the under-recruitment of minorities and female staff are complex. In contrast to minority ethnic group, the proportion of females within the police service has risen from 17 per cent in 2000 to 25.7 per cent in 2010 (Heidensohn, 2003: 568; Ministry of Justice, 2010b). There is some evidence to suggest that minority ethnic groups, especially women, do not wish to pursue police careers because of a mixture of generic factors (such as antipathy toward shift work), as well as more specific reasons related to their perception that they would encounter racism (and sexism) in the workplace. Both of these problems have been identified as core characteristics of police occupational culture. The influence of ‘canteen culture’—characterised by stereotyping, machismo, suspicion, and insularity—is difficult to determine and might have been curtailed somewhat in recent years (Chan, 1997). Several police services, for example, have won diversity awards from Stonewall—the gay rights organisation—which suggests that police ‘canteen culture’ might have been transformed in some respects at least.
Review questions
Why are questions relating to diversity particularly significant in relation to policing?
Why might more diverse personnel improve operational policing?
How has police operational culture been characterised?
Policing strategies
The democratic transformation of various societies over the last three decades or so—such as the ‘velvet revolutions’ of Eastern Europe in the post-Soviet era or post-apartheid South Africa—have entailed considerable international, governmental, and civil society focus on criminal justice and policing reform. Western ‘police advisors’, policy programmes, symposia, and conferences have facilitated global knowledge exchange such that strategic approaches to policing have been applied and adapted across a broad range of societies. In this environment there is considerable conceptual and operational overlap within and between different policing strategies. Globally policing strategies such as Zero Tolerance Policing (ZTP), Hot Spots Policing, Intelligence-Led Policing, and community policing have been applied in many and varied forms to the extent that it is difficult to talk about any one of them in general terms. ZTP is usually associated with a strong law enforcement approach developed in New York City in the 1980s that focused upon tackling low-level nuisance behaviour in ways that might reduce more serious offending and enhance public safety (Hopkins Burke, 1998). In other contexts though, ZTP has been applied and interpreted differently. So widely has it been interpreted, that Stenson (2000) argued, ZTP is best understood as a philosophy of policing intended to push emotive buttons among the public by signalling a vigorous response to minor offences. Not only has ZTP been applied in different ways, some of its core themes are shared by other policing strategies. Much of the Reassurance Policing Model applied in England and Wales in the early twenty-first century, for example, was predicated on the importance of police tackling ‘quality of life’ problems such as vandalism, litter, and graffiti (Innes, 2004). Although the Reassurance Policing model was rooted in the philosophy of community policing and lacked the aggressive law enforcement tactics often associated with ZTP, both approaches drew upon the ‘broken windows’ perspective that suggested that a failure to respond to minor problems caused them to escalate and had a negative impact on quality of life and reduced the capacity of communities to respond to them (Wilson and Kelling, 1982).
Other recent models that have been widely adopted include Hot Spots Policing and Intelligence-Led Policing. As with the strategies mentioned above, these two approaches also share much in common. Hot Spots Policing was developed in the United States in the mid-1990s and is predicated upon criminological evidence that offending is not evenly distributed in geographical terms but rather is clustered in particular areas. Weisburd and Braga (2006) noted that while the research evidence is relatively consistent in this respect and has been established for a long time, criminologists and police leaders have not focused effort in addressing geographical differentials at the micro-level. While it has been understood that poor neighbourhoods might fare differently in crime terms than prosperous suburbs, this broad perspective has not been applied in more focused ways that might be used in the allocation of policing resources. Technological innovations in terms of the Global Positioning System that can fix an individual’s location and mapping software have allowed for finely detailed analysis of the geography of crime to be developed, and the ‘hot spots’ experiments that began in the US, and are being piloted in the UK, use these as the basis to target police resources. The general police patrol, for example, was replaced by a more directive model targeting specific places and times at which types of offending were at their highest. The same technology underpins the production of crime maps of local neighbourhoods made publically available on the internet early in 2011. Analysis of Hot Spots Policing has suggested that targeting patrols on the basis of such analysis is effective. A US review found that the focusing of police resources on crime hot spots was effective in reducing crime and disorder in those areas, and that there was no significant problem associated with displacement (Committee to Review Research on Police Policy and Practices, 2004, cited in Weisburd and Braga, 2006: 232–4). Sherman (2009) and Durlauf and Naglin (2011) have noted that the deployment of targeted police patrols can prevent offending and argued that the expenditure invested in the rapidly expanding prison populations in many western societies should be withdrawn and redeployed to policing. Currie (2011) argued that calls for more investment in targeted hot spots policing is a call to redirect expenditure from one form of crime control (prisons) to another (police) and that neither address the complex of social, economic, political, and cultural factors that cause crime. Ratcliffe (2002) expressed concern that Hot Spots Policing had negative implications in terms of social justice, privacy, and ethics for those areas that were identified as having particular crime problems, concerns exacerbated by doubts about the reliability of the data used in the mapping process. Along similar lines, Tonry (2011) has argued that targeted Hot Spots Policing is based upon contentious statistical identification of characteristics of offenders and crime-prone neighbourhoods and so runs the risk of racial profiling and other socially unjust outcomes.
Hot Spots Policing might be considered a sub-genre of Intelligence-Led Policing, a broad strategy that seeks to tackle crime problems through analysis of data relating to trends, patterns and profiles of offenders. The model is based upon the recognition that traditional reactive policing methods are inefficient since they concentrate on responding to incidents reported rather than proactively targeting a relatively small number of high-volume repeat offenders (Ratcliffe, 2008). Intelligence-Led Policing focuses resources on monitoring the activities of the small number of offenders responsible for the bulk of recorded offences, and on the places and contexts in which they operate. This might mean that officers withdraw from traditional areas of work (such as routine foot patrol) that has little impact in terms of crime control. As with potential problems such as racial profiling, a reduction in general foot patrol might have negative repercussions in terms of public confidence in policing. The National Intelligence Model (NIM) was developed in England and Wales in the 1990s as a management system that sought to integrate information about offenders and offending collated at the local, cross-border (in terms of boundaries between police districts), and national/international levels. Intelligence-Led Policing requires the acquisition, analysis, review, implementation, and evaluation of intelligence that calls upon statistical, mapping, and IT expertise not usually associated with police work (Cope, 2004).
The science of policing?
As this brief overview indicates, a key feature of recent police strategies is their reliance on scientific techniques made possible through the collection of extensive and sophisticated data relating to offending and victimisation. Transforming this information into intelligence that is useful in operation terms is possible because IT systems and software has the capacity to provide real-time analysis. The potential contribution of science to policing has been advocated alongside the promotion of experimental criminology more broadly. Both endorse the application of scientific advances, for example relating to collection and analysis of DNA samples collected at crime scenes, and the use of evaluative methodologies to assess the effectiveness of policing techniques and innovations. In a recent paper advocating that scientific approaches ought to have a central role in policing, Weisburd and Neyroud (2011) noted that law enforcement contrasts very poorly with sectors such as agriculture and medicine when it comes to investment in technological innovation and evaluation. In the UK, they argued, government investment in medical research amounts to £600 million per year, whereas the annual Home Office budget for crime research amounted to just £2 million. If police services are to be delivered more effectively to meet public expectations in a period of financial austerity, and the professional reputation of policing is to be enhanced, Weisburd and Neyroud (2011: 12) proposed that:
Police science must ‘make the scene’ and become part of the policing world. Police involvement in science must become more generally valued and rewarded. For that to happen, the policing industry must take ownership of police science. Police science is often irrelevant to the policing world today because it is not part of the policing enterprise but something external to it. To take ownership the police will have to take science seriously, and accept that they cannot continue to justify their activities on the basis of simplistic statistics, often presented in ways that bias findings to whatever is advantageous to the police. We accept that this is not a straightforward challenge.
Weisburd and Neyroud (2011) argue that it is the political, institutional, and cultural contexts of policing that make the development of a new paradigm of police science challenging. It might also be that the contested and ambivalent mandate of policing makes a scientific evidence-based model difficult. If the role and function of the police service cannot easily be identified then it is difficult to imagine how it can be scientifically evaluated in overall terms. Clearly scientific innovations can contribute to the investigation of crime, enhance police communications, and provide for better health and safety of officers, but not all aspects of policing can easily be subjected to scientific evaluation or the rigours of the randomised control trial. Not only are there significant methodological challenges to be overcome in the development of scientific evaluation of police interventions (Hope, 2009) but many key functions of policing are inherently subjective, open to interpretation and fundamentally contested. A classic police function—routine foot patrol—illustrates these conundrums very clearly. It might be that rigorous analysis could measure the impact of routine foot patrol in relation to crime rates, deterrence and public reassurance, three of the primary reasons often advanced for this iconic element of police work, but the performance of officers on the beat remains a matter of subjective interpretation. The value of patrol work in one respect cannot be easily assessed against the impact that it might have in another domain. If patrol work has no impact in terms of deterrence but is positively correlated to public reassurance, for example, then the overall value of patrol work remains a matter for discussion and debate.
Review questions
Why has Stenson argued that Zero Tolerance Policing is best understood as a philosophy of policing?
What are the defining characteristics of Hot Spots Policing?
What advantages might flow from the development of science in policing?
Conclusion
Future controversies and challenges
The key theme of this chapter has been to locate current efforts to reshape policing in England and Wales in their wider historical context. Much of the chapter has focused upon innovations in current policing, many of which relate to financial constraints that apply generally across much of the public sector. In addition to cuts in resources, current pressure points for the police service have been identified in terms of controversies in relation to public order policing and responding to political, social, and environmental protest. In some respects this raises issues about the police use of force and the extent to which surveillance can be deployed against citizens. For many years different forms of environmental protest have been subject to sustained police surveillance techniques, and concerns also have been raised about the use of CCTV, drones, and covert forms of human surveillance in the context of counter-terrorism work. Among other things these debates raise important questions about the role and mandate of the police service and the ethical conduct of police officers. The extent to which the police, and the state and other agencies more widely, should be able to contravene the civil liberties and privacy of citizens has been subject to debate in a range of contexts: including political protest, the collection and retention of DNA, and the interception of private communications and other personal data. These aspects of social regulation have become especially significant in part because of technological innovations that expand the reach of the state and because of the extended range of public and private, national, and transnational organisations engaged in such work. The proper relationship between the police and the extended family of security, surveillance, intelligence, and other agencies engaged in twenty-first century regulation seems likely to remain a matter of contention for the foreseeable future.
These debates raise important questions about the role and mandate of the police service, which, as has been shown in this chapter, has always been more complex and contested than a crime control or law enforcement model would suggest. Important questions about police ethics have also been raised in relation to forms of corruption that are long-established, but which perhaps are of greater significance in an information society in which privacy, personal identity, and data protection are subjects of particular concern. Unfolding revelations about phone and email hacking by journalists and suggestions that the ineffective nature of the police response might be explained by inappropriate relationships between the media and police staff are illustrative of wider challenges and controversies that are likely to persist.
While these and other exceptional aspects of police performance will continue to be scrutinised, the routine activities of police work in terms of responding to and preventing crime and delivering a broad remit of service activities are also subject to reassessment in the light of changing public demand and financial constraints. Underpinning much of this is an emerging discussion, partly developed as a result of changes in resources and police pay and conditions, about how ‘frontline’ policing is conceptualised. Government ministers have insisted that cuts to police budgets, as outlined above, are inevitable and can be managed in ways that do not mean a reduction in frontline policing. Assessing the veracity of these claims focuses attention on how ‘frontline’ policing is defined, and this, in turn, raises significant debates about the proper role and function of the service. Successfully balancing the provision of officers on foot or vehicle patrol with the need to invest resources in other functions such as intelligence gathering, multiagency partnership working, and crime prevention activities is especially difficult in the face of financial restrictions. In any circumstances, though, the distribution of police resources inevitably invokes questions about what the primary role and purpose of the police should be.
In the light of budget cuts, HMIC were asked to review the allocation of police resources and establish which police roles ought to be considered frontline services. The HMIC report (2011b: 18) defined frontline policing in terms of staff who ‘are in everyday contact with the public and who directly intervene to keep people safe and enforce the law’. The report estimated that around two-thirds of police roles were ‘frontline’, while the rest comprised of a combination of ‘middle’ and ‘back’ office functions that were not directly experienced by the public. While such categorisation may be useful in terms of personnel and resource management, and forms a yardstick for measuring the impact of reductions in funding, it raises further questions about what the proper role and functions of the police service ought to be and the extent to which practices and purposes that were developed in the early nineteenth century remain appropriate in the twenty-first. In assessing current challenges, however, it is important to note that many of the themes and controversies about the future direction of policing have recurred from time to time during the period of almost two centuries since the ‘new’ police service was introduced. Policing is an inherently political and contested activity, involving as it does key questions about the rights and responsibilities of citizens in relation to the power of the state, and as such the debates outlined in this discussion will continue long into the future.
Questions for Discussion
Do historical controversies about the nature and role of police reveal lessons about contemporary developments?
Does it matter if the police enjoy public legitimacy?
Are Police and Crime Commissioners an effective way to promote accountable policing?
Why has the recruitment of a more diverse police work force proved such a stubborn challenge?
What are the strengths and limitations of the application of science to policing?
Guide to Further Reading
Reiner, R. (2010) The Politics of the Police (4th edn). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
This book continues to provide an authoritative account of the historical development and contemporary character of police services.
McLaughlin, E. (2009) The New Policing. London: Sage.
This book examines academic perspectives on modern policing and considers cultural and media representations of the police officer.
Rowe, M. (2013) Introduction to Policing (2nd edn). London: Sage.
This book provides for a more developed discussion of the themes introduced in this chapter. Moreover, the book examines police investigations, the development of plural policing, and transnational arrangements.
Sampson, F. (2012) ‘Hail to the Chief? - How far does the introduction of Elected Police Commissioners Herald a US-Style Politicization of Policing in the UK?’. Policing 1–12.
This article provides an excellent summary and analysis of the role of the Police and Crime Commissioners and some of the Key challenges that remain.
Weisburd, D. and Neyroud, P. (2011) ‘Police Science: Towards a New Paradigm’. New Perspectives in Policing. Washington: National Institute of Justice/ Harvard Kennedy School.
This article puts forward the case for developing a more robust scientific approach to policing.
Hope, T. (2009) ‘The Illusion of Control: A Response to Professor Sherman’. Criminology and Criminal Justice1 9: 125–134.
Web Links
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Justice/Police
The Scottish Government: Provides general information on police in Scotland.
http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/police/
The Home Office: Information on the police in England and Wales.
http://www.nipolicingboard.org.uk/
The Northern Ireland policing board: Includes information about the police in Northern Ireland.
http://independentpolicecommission.org.uk/
The Independent Police Commission: The Commission reviewed a broad range of aspects of contemporary policing and this site provides information about the Commission including related publications.
Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC): Contains performance statistics, reports into specific complaints, and links to other agencies and useful police-related resources and organisations.
The Police Executive Research Forum: Website includes publications and research reports.
The College of Policing: Particularly useful for those interested in learning more about the professionalization debate.
