Policing UK 2013 - Police Federation

THE ROLE OF POLICE
Reforming
the service
Professor Jennifer Brown looks at the reforms
that are taking place following the Independent
Commission into the Future of Policing
Professor Jennifer Brown
is Deputy Chair of the
Independent Commission
into the Future of Policing
in England and Wales and
Co-Director of the Mannheim
Centre at the London School
of Economics
The Independent Commission
enquiring into the future of
policing in England and Wales,
chaired by Lord John Stevens, launched
on 6 December 2011 at the invitation of
Her Majesty’s Opposition, is the latest
in a long line of analyses of police and
policing.
The last 30 years have seen huge
changes in the way police forces are
managed, how they are subject to
accountabilities, and the structural
imposition of national police agencies.
Police reform and re-organisation has
been on the political agenda since the
1980s when, under Mrs Thatcher’s
government, Sir Patrick Sheehy examined
police roles and responsibilities and Ingrid
Posen looked at separating core and
ancillary tasks of the police.
Since then we have seen the
introduction of performance targets,
inculcation of new public management,
value for money morphing into best
value, a Policing Standards Unit (which
has come and gone) and changes in local
accountabilities under the 1994 Police
and Magistrates Courts Act foreshadowed
the election of police and crime
commissioners.
Police reform then is not new. Stephen
Savage tells us that reform is driven
by a process of politicisation of the
police, policy disasters, police failures
(ie, scandals and corruption) and that
legislative changes (eg, PACE, the Sex
Discrimination Act) imported ideas (eg,
policing by objectives, zero tolerance) and
home grown initiatives (eg, reassurance
policing. community support officers)
lead to changing police practices (Savage,
2007 1 ).
So when the Commission was
launched, it was perhaps a timely and
needed look at the issues currently facing
the police service. The context for such
an enquiry is that the United Kingdom
is experiencing a period of particular
economic turbulence, social polarisation
and shifts in political emphasis which
not only impact policing, but are also
associated with a raft of proposed
changes in police pay and conditions,
local police governance and introduction
of new national organisations.
The wider context within which to
consider the future of policing must
be the current state of the economy.
George Osborne, the Chancellor of the
Exchequer, has gone on record to say
that the crisis in the Eurozone is having
a direct impact on the UK’s economic
recovery.
The Home Secretary, Theresa
May, made it very clear at the Police
Federation conference last year that
the police service must take its share of
the cuts as a consequence of present
economic austerity. The economic
climate is likely to exacerbate the
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