This article examines shifting debates about police amalgamation and governance reform in Scotland since the mid-nineteenth century in the light of the creation of a single police service (Police Scotland) in 2013. From a proliferation of 89 separate police forces in 1859, the number had been reduced to 48 by 1949 and eight in 1975. Yet the move towards a single police service was far from inevitable, as comparison with England and Wales demonstrates. The idea of a ‘single’ or national force was mooted from the 1850s onwards in moments of unrest, disorder and emergency, but for most of the twentieth century it remained anathema. For the Scottish Office and Home Office as well as for many police officers, the move towards larger policing units was seen as desirable on the grounds of economy, efficiency, and professionalisation. Yet the assumption that ‘local’ control of police forces through municipal and county councils best enabled accountability and hence legitimacy remained intact until the 1960s, whilst the regional model set up in 1975 persisted for forty years. The article explores the reasons for this, focusing on the changing dynamics of the relationship between central and local government across the last 150 years.
This article uses archival research and interviews to construct a social history of the relationship between police officers and the diverse communities they served in two contrasting regions of Scotland for the period c. 1900-1970: Glasgow and west central Scotland, and the Highlands and Islands. It argues these relationships were diverse and complex, shaped by local cultural, social and economic factors. Moreover, it identifies key constitutive elements that enabled or disrupted the forging of trust and legitimacy in urban and rural areas, including discretion, 'insider' status and embeddedness with settlements, enhancing and reinforcing conclusions of other studies of more recent 'community policing' models.
Policing in Glasgow was segmented into discrete roles, linked to the proliferation of specialisms across the twentieth century. This chapter analyses the effects of encounters generated by some of these specialist units (particularly those associated with plainclothes rather than work in uniform) on relationships between police and communities. After discussing the tactics associated with the use of plainclothes by detective officers, it examines the work of the Licensing Department (or ‘vice squad’) in relation to street betting, the sex industry, and the criminalisation of homosexuality. The chapter then analyses experiments with specialist units and programmes associated with the policing of young people, demonstrating the variegated effects of plain-clothes roles on police-community relations.
This chapter focuses specifically on the role of the Glasgow ‘beat man’ as well as the group identity and reputation that was forged in the city for ‘robust and ‘tough’ policing, grounded in male physical prowess (as embodied masculinity). It was constructed through the culture of the muster hall, inscribed into everyday life through the performance of policing on the beat, and was recognised by working-class communities (through resistance as much as acquiescence or deference). For those seen as ‘law-abiding’, the work of the police officer incorporated assistance, support and a significant social service role, with chivalric paternalism in evidence in relation to the aged and infirm. A different repertoire was deployed in relation to those viewed as anti-social, where ‘toughness’ spilled over into the routine use of physical force in the first half of the century, justified by the police themselves as necessary to maintain authority. The legal tool of ‘breach of the peace’ was a flexible device across the period to counteract the limitations assumed to arise from the rule of corroboration.
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