This chapter is concerned with three key constitutional issues relating to policing. First, it considers the extent and limits of the powers of the police—and, correlatively, the relevant rights of individuals. Second, it examines the arrangements for overseeing the police and holding it to account. Third, it addresses police governance, including the recent introduction of Police and Crime Commissioners and the balance between political direction and police independence.
Chapter
Benjamin Bowling, Robert Reiner, and James Sheptycki
The chapter outlines seven ideal-typical models for thinking about the politics of police. The models are not mutually exclusive and can be combined to form complex descriptions of theoretical relations. They rest on a variety of conceptual distinctions. Crime control and due process; high and low policing; police force and police service; organizational structure and officer discretion; state, market, and civil society; police knowledge work, investigation and intelligence; and the democratic, authoritarian, and totalitarian politics of policing are all discussed. The police métier is discussed a set of habits and assumptions that envisions only the need to control, deter, and punish. It has evolved around the practices of tracking, surveillance, keeping watch and unending vigilance, and the application of force, up to and including fatal force. The chapter concludes that these seven models for thinking about police and policing facilitate micro-, meso-, and macro-level analysis.
Chapter
Benjamin Bowling, Robert Reiner, and James Sheptycki
The chapter outlines the development of modern police institutions around the world from the eighteenth century until the early twentieth. The discussion unfolds under five headings. The first is policing in Europe prior to the French Revolution and in the wake of the Napoleonic Empire. Next the evolution of the police under the common law in England up to the early nineteenth century is discussed. The third heading concerns the independent evolution of policing in the USA from independence to the First World War. European colonial and imperial police are the fourth consideration. Lastly, efforts to build modern police institutions in Iran, Japan, China, and Russia are considered. The chapter discusses a number of recognizable models for thinking about the politics of the police. It also considers contemporary concerns about the relationship between democratic and totalitarian policing, high and low policing, between police force and service.
Chapter
Trevor Jones, Tim Newburn, and Robert Reiner
This chapter reviews some of the key themes in academic research and writing on the police and policing. It begins by discussing definitions of ‘policing’ and ‘police’, before outlining the development of academic research on policing in the USA and UK. The nature of police discretion is then discussed along with the factors that shape police decision-making and the implications of these for the accountability of policing agents and organizations. The next section reviews contrasting models of policing that have emerged over recent years, including community policing, problem-oriented policing, ‘zero tolerance’ policing and intelligence-led policing. Subsequently, two overarching developments within contemporary policing—pluralization (with a particular focus on private security) and internationalization—are explored. The chapter concludes with some reflections on the future of police and policing. The primary focus is upon policing in Britain, though many of the themes are similar across liberal democratic societies.
Chapter
Trevor Jones, Tim Newburn, and Robert Reiner
In this chapter we review some of the key themes in scholarly work on policing, one of the major sub-fields within criminology. The focus is primarily upon the United Kingdom though many of the themes are familiar across all western democracies. We begin by considering what is meant by ‘policing’, before outlining the emergence of this field of academic research. The chapter then examines the development of modern policing, and the challenges of establishing and maintaining police legitimacy. This leads into a discussion of a series of key themes in policing research, including the operation and control of police discretion, occupational cultures, matters relating to diversity and discrimination, and the politics and governance of the police. The next section outlines distinctive policing ‘models’ that have emerged in recent times. The policing landscape is increasingly complex and the chapter concludes by considering two of the most significant developments: pluralization and transnationalization.
Chapter
Michael Rowe
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.
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Graham Ellison
This chapter examines practice or ‘doing’ of state policing, and why and how certain police policies and practices impact disproportionately on particular social groups. It also considers ‘policing’ as something beyond what the state police do to examine the role of the private/corporate sector in the provision of policing and security.
Book
Benjamin Bowling, Robert Reiner, and James W E Sheptycki
In its fifth edition, The Politics of the Police has been revised, updated, and extended to take account of recent changes in the law, policy, organization, and social contexts of policing. It builds upon the previous editions’ political economy of policing to encompass a wide global and transnational scope, and to reflect the growing diversity of policing forms. This volume explores the highly charged debates that surround policing, including the various controversies that have led to a change in the public’s opinion of the police in recent years, as well as developments in law, accountability, and governance. The volume sets out to analyse what the police do, how they do it and with what effects, how the mass media shape public perceptions of the police, and how globalization, privatization, militarization, and securitization are impacting on contemporary police work. It concludes with an assessment of what we can expect for the future of policing.
Book
Edited by Anthea Hucklesby and Azrini Wahidin
Criminal Justice provides a thought-provoking and critical introduction to the challenges faced by the UK's criminal justice system, including policing, sentencing, and punishment at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Expert contributors, including criminologists and lawyers, provide students with a critical introduction to issues, institutions, and agencies that shape the operation of the criminal justice system. The book provides students from a range of disciplines including criminology, law, sociology, psychology, and social policy with knowledge and understanding of the key areas of the subject and an appreciation of contemporary debates, policies, and perspectives. Each chapter features questions, summaries, tables, diagrams, annotated further reading, and weblinks to ensure the book is as accessible and engaging as possible, and provides clear guidance on further study. An illuminating glossary of key terms is also included. In this second edition: all chapters have been completely revised and updated; a new chapter has been included on the policy landscape of criminal justice; additional material has been incorporated into two chapters on the police and policing; and a new chapter on the criminal courts has been included, as have additional chapters on innovative aspects of criminal justice, and science and psychology in criminal justice. This title is accompanied by an Online Resource Centre containing an online version of the glossary of key terms and annotated web links.
Chapter
Trevor Jones
This chapter, which considers some key themes within policing research, begins by discussing the definition of ‘policing’, and its growth as a focus of political concern and criminological enquiry. It outlines the organization and structure of policing in England and Wales. The chapter then examines what the police actually do in practice; provides an overview of some contrasting models of policing; and explores several key debates within the policing literature.
Chapter
Benjamin Bowling, Robert Reiner, and James Sheptycki
This chapter offers a broad introduction to the study of policing. It first outlines the concepts of police and policing, and the long-term evolution of these processes, with an emphasis on the idea of policing as an aspect of social control. There is discussion of the notion of the police as a body of people patrolling public places in blue uniforms, with a broad mandate of crime control, order maintenance, and some social service and specialist functions. The chapter then considers various sources of police research ranging from journalists and academic institutions to official government-related bodies, think-tanks, and pressure groups. It also looks at the development of police research. The concluding section offers an analysis of the vexed conceptual relationship between policing and politics.
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Essential Cases: Criminal Law provides a bridge between course textbooks and key case judgments. This case document summarizes the facts and decision in R v Pagett (1983) 76 Cr App R 279, Court of Appeal. The document also included supporting commentary from author Jonathan Herring.
Chapter
Essential Cases: Criminal Law provides a bridge between course textbooks and key case judgments. This case document summarizes the facts and decision in R v Pagett (1983) 76 Cr App R 279, Court of Appeal. The document also included supporting commentary from author Jonathan Herring.
Chapter
Essential Cases: Criminal Law provides a bridge between course textbooks and key case judgments. This case document summarizes the facts and decision in R v Pagett (1983) 76 Cr App R 279, Court of Appeal. The document also included supporting commentary from author Jonathan Herring.
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This chapter examines the questioning stage of the criminal process, looking at the role and powers of the police. It covers the context of questioning and interviewing of suspects, interviewing victims, and confessions in court. It argues that confessions remain a suspect type of evidence despite the fact that the police questioning process is well regulated. Police detention will always be stressful, and innocent suspects will always have some incentives for confessing. This is why there is a case to be made for the corroboration of confessions. It is also crucial that the gains made since the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (PACE) are not undermined by government initiatives to cut costs by reducing the amount and quality of legal advice available to suspects.
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In this chapter, we identify and critically evaluate the kind of things that can go wrong in the criminal justice process and describe the institutional architecture used to regulate the actions and effects of criminal justice practitioners and to hold them to account. The focus of the chapter is on the organisational, legal and democratic regulatory and accountability mechanisms associated with the police, courts and CPS. Specifically the chapter covers: Police and Crime Commissioners; citizen- and volunteer-led forms of accountability/regulation; royal commissions, public inquiries and independent inquiries; police complaints processes and inspectorates; trial remedies and appeals; the Criminal Cases Review Commission; civil proceedings; inquests and Coronial Courts.
Chapter
Alpa Parmar
This chapter examines the powers of the police to stop and search people in the context of an initial discussion of police culture and discretion in general. The development of greater powers over the last 35 years since the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (PACE) was introduced is charted. The chapter considers whether stop and search is racially discriminatory; the constraints and controls on the exercise of discretion; and the impact of stop-search powers. It argues that the working assumptions based on ‘suspiciousness’—i.e. hunch, incongruity, and stereotyping on the basis of types of people, previous records, and so forth—still play as important a part in influencing the exercise of discretion as do legal constraints. This is all true even when responding to citizen reports of suspected offences.
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This chapter examines the power of the police to question suspects, both in theory and in practice. It discusses the expanding powers of the police to interrogate, reflecting the drift from due process to crime control; the multiple aims of police interviews; the dwindling away of the right to silence, for example as a result of the introduction of adverse inferences and the ‘sidelining’ of legal advice; the (inadequate) regulation of interrogation, for example, through trial remedies founded on interviews being ‘unfair’ or ‘oppressive’ ; traditional police interview tactics; the development of investigative interviewing, based on the PEACE model; why the innocent confess and the role of coercion and suggestibility in this; and the need for a corroboration rule.
Chapter
This chapter examines the main types of non-interrogatory evidence gathered through criminal justice processes. First we look at witness and identification evidence; like the interviewing of suspects, this is not as straightforward as it might appear. We then move onto entry of premises (eg suspects’ homes, places of work, etc), search of those places and seizure of ‘suspicious’ goods discovered by searches. Whereas most entry and search is known to the suspects and/or owners of the premises concerned, ‘covert’ policing is, by definition, not made known to the subjects of the policing. Covert policing takes many forms: eg, surveillance, ‘undercover’ policing, use of informers, interception of communications. Finally we examine scientific evidence which, like witness evidence, is far from straightforward. There are many problems common to all these types of information-gathering. These include the fragility and ambiguity of what often appears solid and objective; the way they erode human rights; the effect of ‘police culture’ on what is gathered and how it is interpreted; and the lack of accountability for what is done and how it is done.
Chapter
This concluding chapter studies police powers. It is the function of the police to keep the public secure by preventing and detecting crime, and maintaining public order. This involves the exercise of public power and powerfully engages the relationship between the citizen and the state. There are clear links between police powers and the rule of law: it is imperative that police powers are not used in a random, arbitrary way; are clear, foreseeable, and accessible; are not unlimited; and are in accordance with the law. Police powers are mostly statute-based, the most significant of which is the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (PACE) which was enacted to achieve a balance between protecting citizens’ rights and effective police powers. Under section 66, the Home Secretary issues detailed Codes of Practice regulating the exercise of police powers and providing clear guidelines for the police and safeguards for the public.
