What Future for Policing? Some Reflections on the Concept and Purpose of Policing and Their Implications for Police Reform in England and Wales

Abstract

Policing develops in different ways at different times and to differing demands in states around the world. Thus, policing and security models are established and evolve in the context of the host society. In England and Wales, modern bureaucratic policing emerged from a locally focused and administered system. Following on from this, contemporary Anglo-American policing aligns, to varying degrees, with the political, socio-cultural, legal and ideological aspects of contemporary liberal democratic society with its emphasis on democratic localism and decentralised accountability. Policing is also a field where Anglo-American and other western states provide support to transitional states with often different developmental paths. The transitional states seek, or have imposed on them (depending upon your perspective), western democratic models of policing and the policies, programmes, institutions and tactics associated with these models. This paper reviews the conceptual and theoretical assumptions that underpin thinking about policing and asks whether there is a sufficiently common philosophical and conceptual understanding of policing across nation states to support the development of policing rather than just a common understanding of police functions. This is profoundly important when considering different conceptual understandings of policing and how that is applied in support of the reform of policing in transitional states. The paper calls for a concerted effort to conceptualise a philosophical understanding of policing and its relationship to social development.

‘Paedophile Hunters’: Practitioner Perspectives

“…It has been said that probation represents a profession with a profoundly moral purpose that works for the benefit of service users, but that also serves the public good insofar as improving rehabilitation and reducing recidivism (Kirton & Guillaume, 2019). Of police officers, it has been reported that in modern, post-enlightenment societies, they are an essential requirement for the maintenance of order (Paterson and Williams, 2019). With this considered, it is not surprising that practitioner responses were so often focused on risk.…”

Victim-Oriented Police Reform: A Comparative Perspective

“…Victim-oriented policing thus requires organizations tasked with the delivery of policing to form collaborations that include those communities who are most at-risk of harm and to think about how they collectively conceptualize policing needs (Paterson & Best, 2016;Paterson & Williams, 2018). In practical terms, this should include the social, political, legal, and ideological alignment of structure, governance, partnership, roles, functions, training, and education to this conceptualization of policing (Williams & Paterson, 2019).…”

“…It is commonplace for states experiencing political transitions and significant economic development to have pluralized forms of policing that incorporate nonstate actors who perform community-centric policing functions. Lessons learned from the development of professional policing in Anglophone countries point to the importance of retaining these community linkages as centralized state policing capability grows (Grabosky, 2009;Hills, 2014;Williams & Paterson, 2019) to ensure that the voices of communities and those most at risk of crime are not lost.…”

Social Development and Police Reform: Some Reflections on the Concept and Purpose of Policing and the Implications for Reform in the UK and USA

“…Hence, definitions of policing tend to be atheroretical, bound to individual nation states, and problematic when placed in a comparative context. This absence of a philosophical conceptualisation of policing is profoundly important when considering police reform, police practice and the transferability of policing models internationally (Williams, 2014;Paterson and Williams, 2018;Williams and Paterson, 2019).…”

“…Canada (Council of Canadian Academies, 2014) and Ireland (Commission on the Future of Policing in Ireland, 2018) have recently undertaken fundamental reviews of policing. However, the absence of a conceptual and philosophical understanding of policing as distinct from the institution of 'the police' often results in tinkering around the edges of police reform (Vitale, 2017) rather than delivering on the calls for fundamental reform (Paterson and Williams, 2018;Williams and Paterson, 2019). These calls come from society, government and the police, suggesting that there is an urgency and need to review policing as a 21 st century concept and only then to determine how best to deliver policing.…”