It is what you do as well as the way that you do it: the value and deployment of PCSOs in achieving public engagement

Abstract

Resurgent efforts to reconnect the police with local communities and encourage more positive engagement with the public gained momentum over the last decade in England and Wales in the recent move from community to neighbourhood policing. Drawing on data from two ethnographic studies conducted in two English forces, one with a community police team and the other across two neighbourhood policing teams, this paper considers whether neighbourhood policing, specifically the introduction of police community support officers (PCSOs), has achieved more meaningful engagement where its predecessors have struggled, or whether the obstacles and pitfalls that have hindered previous models remain. It demonstrates that PCSOs are achieving more inclusive engagement in local communities, but their efforts are mitigated by their structured position in the organisation, aspirations to become police officers and the organisational environment in which they work. In light of such constraints, we argue that the capacity of PCSOs to break down barriers between the police and disaffected members of local communities and facilitate more representative public participation in policing would be greatly enhanced if they are driven by crime prevention and capacity building rather than crime control imperatives.

‘I wannabe a copper’: The engagement of Police Community Support Officers with the dominant police occupational culture

“…Whilst PCSOs are socialised into the traditional culture and its associated working rules, they are also excluded from it. In a similar but more demoralizing vein to that documented by Rigakos (1998) (Loftus, 2010, Cosgrove and Ramshaw, 2015, O'Neill, 2015 will continue to undermine efforts towards cultural reform. Reform efforts designed to improve diversity, transparency and openness, and/or operational effectiveness through citizen-informed policing for example, might help improve public confidence and even reduce isolation between officers and the public if embraced.…”

Fear of crime on the rail networks: Perceptions of the UK public and British Transport Police

“…Thus the offence of terrorism appears to be a distinct and different type of criminal activity that the public may be more fearful of, perceive as higher risk, and thus desire increased levels of force to feel reassured. The use of PCSOs scored poorly in this study, which may be because the public perceive them as having restricted powers (Cosgrove & Ramshaw, 2013) and so they are not seen as an extreme enough security measure against high risk terrorism. However, interestingly, it was found during the London 2012 Olympics that public feelings of safety were relatively high, despite the widespread media criticism of the security measures provided by G4S (George & Mawby, 2015), suggesting that perceptions were not influenced by media coverage.…”

Ripe for the Chop or the Public Face of Policing? PCSOs and Neighbourhood Policing in Austerity

“…The difficulty for PCSOs is that while their role is designed to be one of engagement with the public with minimal confrontation, they work within an organisation which is oriented around enforcement (Cosgrove and Ramshaw 2013). A few of the PCSOs observed for the project had received awards for their service from their police force.…”

“…The Police Federation, initially quite hostile to the idea of PCSOs and which refused to grant them membership, now maintains only a qualified support for the role (Police Federation 2014). However, research evidence suggests that PCSOs have gained a great deal of support from many local communities and from police colleagues (Merritt 2010 andCosgrove &Ramshaw 2013). In the New Labour government's drive to have a dedicated Neighbourhood Policing Team in every 'neighbourhood area' in England and Wales, these policing auxiliaries became a vital resource in spreading the visible police presence further and more consistently than had been the case before (Paskell 2007).…”