The pluralisation of policing Flashcards
Developments in plural policing: Re-orientation of UK Policing policy under the crime and disorder act 1998:
Required and facilitated the dispersal and reinvention of policing provision
Rationale of plural policing under Crime and disorder act 1998:
- There should be no automatic assumption that the police and/or local authority will lead every aspect of the work, decisions should be approached on the basis that leadership for policing will fall to whoever is best placed to provide it in the light of local circumstances and the nature of the specific issues - making the police work with others
The ‘death’ of the police?;
Police struggling beneath the diversity and demand for policing in society;
- Increased specialisation has exposed the rigidity of the idea that the basic training and experience of a constable is sufficient and appropriate basis for the complex array of task demanded of modern policing
- Many police roles and function which can be civilianised/not necessary for constables to do
Civilian police or plastic peeler? PCSO’s
PSCO’S introduced under police reform act 2002:
- To support the role of public police
- Limited not full police powers
- Patrol and reassurance role
- Designed to deal with low-level, often ‘non-police’/ ‘non-crime’ issues
Drawn from the area where they live, variety of powers, detain someone for 30 mins, contribute to police landscape
DO NOT HAVE IN NORTHERN IRELAND due to security issues
Symbolic pluralisation of public police, outlined in ‘policing a new century’
Public find it difficult to distinguish between police and psco’s
Specialist policing bodies and regulatory authorities:
Range of national/local policing bodies in UK:
MI5 MI6, ministry of defence police, BTP
Regulatory and investigative bodies: Health and safety executive, NSPCC, RSPCA
‘Public auxiliaries’ and Wardens
Used as part labour’s neighbourhood renewal agenda
’ the explicit intention was to recreate layers of intermediary actors within civil society capable of commanding sufficient authority to act as agents of social control ‘
Belfast city council - Holyland wardens scheme
- Social control and order
Policing ‘ Partnerships’
Crime and disorder act 1998 creating co-ordinated, plural partnerships around crime and disorder - police and non police to work together
Ties in notion of partnership working and criminalisation of ASB to involve variety of actors;
Such policing as combining informalism and pluralism to soften the hard edge of policing
Plural co-ordination
Partnerships as framework to co-ordinate pluralism around policing into effective mass
Partnerships also create new opportunities for practitioners to break down barriers, build trust between agencies, share information and maximise skills, capacity and knowledge… partner organisations can also act as check and balances on each other
Police usually remain as lead partners in these ‘mixed policing partnerships’ creating difficult of:
Alienation, role confusion, blaming, competing goals
Increased total power of police state authority
Civilian policing
Encapsulates policing by citizens themselves:
Based upon informal social control and community ties
Civilian or ‘self-policing’ as a government strategy to support public police and grass-roots community development
Constant use of ‘ community’ as a ‘site’ for policing by state over past 20 years:
Hpme office - communities and crime reduction - engaging communities, fighting crime
Difficulties of using ‘ community’ within plural policing landscape:
Implies a willingness of communities to become involved in policing issues
Works best where needed least
Community and social problems tend to become subsumed under ‘master crime status ’
Community could wield too much power
Embedded plural policing:
As a more subtle form of policing to influence flows and events and human interactions (Crawford, 2008)
Encompasses physical and social forms
Labour’s ‘Sustainable Communities: Building for the Future’(2003):
About reducing crime and increasing social control through creating and embedding conditions for that environment
Embedded policing through environmental design:
- Access and movement
- Structures
- Surveillance
- Ownership
- Activity
- Management and
Maintenance
Examples:
Skateboarders as ‘outlaws’ & homeless people as ‘pigeons’ - anti homeless features
Policing the night time economy
Plural policing extending into our everyday lifestyles, routines and activities
Massive increase in volume, capacity and opening hours of licensed premises
Parallel need to police associated activities, usually through private industry/’doormen’
‘Polluter pays’ principle
Policing the internet
Internet as a contested, complex landscape with own security needs
Internet policing about decoupling of traditional notion of policing
from territories and the ‘objects’ of criminal activity (Crawford, 2008)
‘Policing’ of internet by:
Internet Watch Foundation
State bodies (NCA)
Private security industry e.g.
McAfee, Norto
Making sense of plural policing?
the relationship between the state, non-state and commercial developments in policing has seen the cross fertilisation of techniques, practices and mentalities…the interactive nature of developments…is particularly acute with regard to flows of
information which have become more evident through partnership arrangement’
