12. Conclusion: histories of the future

The concluding chapter pulls together the implications of the earlier chapters of this book for an assessment of where policing is heading, and what is to be done to achieve greater effectiveness, fairness, and justice. It seeks to answer eight specific questions: What is policing? Who does it? What do police do? What are police powers? What social functions do they achieve? How does policing impact on different groups? By whom are the police themselves policed? How can policing practices be understood? It considers technological, cultural, social, political, economic changes and their implications for crime, order, and policing. It also examines the multifaceted reorientation of police thinking, especially shifts in the theory and practice of policing in the 1990s that included the rhetoric of consumerism. The chapter considers the limits of police reform and the implications of neo-liberalism for the police before concluding with a call for policing based on the principles of social democracy.

6. A fair cop? Policing and social justice

This chapter examines fairness in policing with reference to issues of race and gender. It first defines the terms of debate—justice, fairness, discrimination—then considers individual, cultural, institutional, and structural theories and applies these to various aspects of policing. It considers the histories of police discrimination in relation to the policing of poverty, chattel slavery, racial segregation, colonialism, religious conflict, and ethnic minority communities, to understand their contemporary legacy. The chapter then examines spheres of police activity where allegations of unfairness and discrimination are particularly salient, including the response to women crime victims of rape and domestic violence, the use of ‘racial profiling’ in stop and search powers, and the use of deadly force. It examines the experiences of people from ethnic minorities, women, gay men, and lesbians within police forces. Through an exploration of the historical and contemporary literature, the chapter draws conclusions on whether or not the police act fairly in democratic societies.

2. Theories and models of police and policing

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.

9. The politics of global policing

This chapter explores the impact of globalization on the architecture of policing, its organizational culture, priorities, and practices. Following a discussion of the context of the globalization of the economy, communications, and governance, the chapter examines the growth in the power and scope of transnational policing and its emergence as a field of study. The chapter explores the development of global policing organizations (such as Interpol and UNPOL), regional policing agencies (such as Europol), and the development of national hubs (such as the UK National Crime Agency). It explores the role of foreign police agencies acting abroad, the emergence of the overseas liaison officer as a policing specialism, and how global developments are shaping local policing. The chapter concludes with an assessment of the impact of globalization on debates about national and local police capacity, accountability, and control.

8. Cop cultures

This chapter critically examines the concept of cop culture, that is, the world view and perspectives of police officers. It considers the core characteristics of police culture portrayed in empirical studies at many different places and times, relating them to the danger and authority associated with the police role. It then discusses the themes of mission, hedonistic love of action, and pessimistic cynicism that characterize policework and how they relate to other facets of cop culture such as suspicion, isolation/solidarity, and conservatism. Finally, it analyses variations in cop culture and in organizational culture. The fundamental argument is that the structural features of the police role in liberal democratic societies generate tensions and the cultural perspectives that enable police to cope with them, although these have negative features reflecting the fundamental patterns of social injustice and inequality.

11. Police powers and accountability

This chapter focuses on police powers, accountability, and the regulation of police discretion. It begins by considering the legitimation of police legal powers in democratic societies and the problem of police accountability. There is then discussion of policy-making for the police force—priorities in resource allocation, strategy, and style—and the street-level actions of rank-and-file officers. Developments in police powers before and after the landmark Police and Criminal Evidence Act (PACE) 1984, and the principle of fundamental balance between powers and safeguards supposedly enshrined in PACE are covered. The chapter then examines developments in police accountability, including the mechanisms for handling complaints against the police and the role of political control in police governance. It concludes by assessing the attempts to reconcile police power and democratic accountability in contemporary societies characterized by a patchwork of domestic, transnational, public, and private police agencies carrying out ‘high’ and ‘low’ policing.

7. Below, beyond, and above the police: pluralization of policing

The chapter surveys theories concerning the hybrid nature of the plural policing web. It evaluates the claim that a fundamental shift in policing occurred at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Holding police métier as a definitional constant, the chapter examines how policing is enacted from different institutional positions in plural policing. It outlines the history of claims about the rise of plural policing before discussing its relation to law, the military, technology, territory, locality, the rising importance of private ‘high policing’, and the centrality of surveillance. The chapter demonstrates the complex opportunity structure of the plural policing web, the variety of legal and technological tools involved in its operations, and suggests that it poses fundamental problems for the democratic governance of police that have not been resolved. It concludes that there is both continuity and change in the politics of the police and that claims of a fundamental break have been overstated.

5. The police role, function and effects

This chapter explores some of the political myths about police and policing by reviewing the research evidence on police practice. It considers the police role in theory and practice by focusing on three questions: what is the police role? what do the police actually do? and how well do they do it? It explores the original historical purpose of the police, the governmental authority on which it is based, the role of public opinion, why people call the police, the role and effectiveness of the police in crime control, and in broader social functions. The chapter concludes that the core function of the police is best analysed not in terms of any of their social functions but rather the special character of the means the police can bring to bear. Underlying the diversity of situations to which the police are called is the core capacity to use legitimate coercive force.

4. Learning the blues: the establishment and legitimation of professional policing in Britain 1829–2018

This chapter first looks at the history of British professional policing between 1829 and 1856, when the police idea was highly controversial. It compares the new police with the old forms, the motives for police reform, and the social impact of the new police. It also considers the basis of opposition to the police, and describes how the role of policing in social order became recognized. There follows an analysis of the legitimation of the modern British police in the face of widespread opposition. This partly relates to such operational strategies as bureaucratic discipline, subjection to the rule of law, non-partisanship, accountability, a service role, and preventive policing. These were facilitated by cultural changes, notably the incorporation of the working class, into the fabric of civil, political, and socio-economic citizenship. After the 1970s, with the emergence of neo-liberalism, these processes reversed and the police became increasingly controversial and politicized.

3. Out of the blue: the establishment and diffusion of the modern police from the French Revolution to the twentieth century

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.