The Police Role

How is the policing role under review?

1) Austerity

2) New managerialism

Impact of austerity?

* Reduced workforce
* Doing more with less
* The ‘private’ provider

Impact of new managerialism?

* Performance Management- comparing different police forces
*  Consumerism/ citizens as clients

Types of policing according to Brodeur (1983)

High policing and low policing

What is high policing?

The work of the intelligence community

What is low policing?

The police role as we recognise it. Everyday uniformed officers

What is front-line policing

Involves those who are in everyday contact with the public and who directly intervene to keep people safe and enforce the law. Approval, managing relationships and overforce, everyday contact

What are the four main roles of policing?

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* Crime Control
* Order Maintenance
* Social Service 
* Risk Management

Crime control function

Crime fighter has been dominant since the 1960s/70s. Government need the police to be crime fighters

Police and crime- reactive role

The police have little to do with crime and crime control

Ranasinghe (2017)- reactive role of policing

Police engage in crime work but not the crime work that is perceived by the public

Social service function

Police do the work of parents, teachers, social workers etc. The police are a secret service (Punch)

Order maintenance function

1) The peacekeeper

2) Reproduction of order- reproduce unfair social order

Negatives of order maintenance according to Brogden and Ellison (2013)

The state police has always been committed to maintaing a diverse social order, targeting the ‘usual suspects’

Managing risks

Police are now taking on offender management and have created police algorithms in order to predict new crime hotspots and who offenders will be

Policing offender management

1) Education as a crime prevention tool

2) Safer school partnerships- police stationed in schools

3) Immigration/ Asylum control- potential risk of criminality (terrorism)

What does Millie (2013) say about the police role in the 21st century?

That it has become too wide. The police now have various roles such as crime fighting and reduction, terrorism, school work, offender management, mental health, victim support etc

What does Bittner (1970/90) say about the police and the public?

That the public turn to policing when something bad happens and they need someone to do something about it

Reiner- police fetishism

We complain about the police but we couldn’t imagine a world without them. When there is a problem, people call the police and expect them to solve it

Mission creep- expansion of the police role

The police role is part of the criminalisation of social policy (policification)

An attempt to narrow the police role

Structural changes have tried to narrow the police role. Creation of the 3E’s to increase police professionalism

What are the 3E’s?

1) Efficiency- making the police more professional

2) Effectiveness- making the police more effective

3) Economy- making the police more financially accountable

New public management

1) Achieving results not on processes

2) Explicit targets/ performance indicators

3) Externalisation of non-essential responsibilities

4) Interagency cooperation

How is police performance measured?

Through quantitative measures. Set criteria that informs police performance and success

Symbolic role of the police

Police have a symbolic role e.g. maintaining order

Hidden dimension of policing

Not everything is recorded in statistics e.g. invisible safety of the police

Role of citizen- public consultation

Citizens act as a consumer/ customer of the police. As a customer, public satisfaction of the police can be measured