The politics of policing

© John Lea 2007

What is policing?

In the previous lecture we saw how the process of reporting a crime triggers off the working of the criminal justice process by involving the police.  But it is important to understand that the police are much more than simply an organisation with certain legal powers to respond to crime. It is important to understand that:

• the functions and activities of the police are more wide ranging than responding to reported crimes

• the police are a large, bureaucratic, organisation and the way it is organised is an important influence on how it works.

• the police are a social group in society. They are a subculture with their distinct set of attitudes and values. Sometimes this is known as 'occupational culture'.

All three of these aspects have a crucial effect on the nature and dynamics of policing. They lie behind many of the big current debates about policing such as Institutional Racism, the role of stop and search, (known in the USA as stop and frisk), the efficiency and effectiveness of the police.

The functions and activities of the police

The origins of the term 'police' in Europe go way back into the later Middle Ages. The term originally meant 'good order' or the 'proper functioning of things' as applied to towns and social life. Thus in early towns 'good police' meant the town functioned properly. This involved all manner of things besides crime control in the modern sense. In particular

• Public order and safety.

• Control of outbreaks of disease.

• Ensuring the circulation of traffic and vehicles: even today the police play a major role in the regulation of road traffic

• The management and surveillance of the poor and unemployed.

Thus we still find the police as the main agency responsible for the regulation of road traffic. In London until recently 'black cab' taxi drivers were tested on their grasp of 'the knowledge' (familiarity with the various routes between various parts of the city) and given their licence by the Metropolitan Police. Only quite recently has this function been transferred to a Local Government agency

During the 19th century the new police forces (The London Metropolitan Police were founded in 1829 and in the 1830s and 40s in the rest of England) functioned partly as an apparatus of 'moral control' for bringing the newly urbanised working class into line with requirements of industrial capitalism: getting up and going to work on time. Thus the police regulated places of working class entertainment such as Taverns and fairgrounds. Anyone out late at night or on the streets or not at work or school during the day, might become an object of police suspicion. (the 1824 Vagrancy Act, now defunct, enabled a police officer to arrest an individual suspected of 'loitering with intent' ) In the early days of working class industrial organisation the police played an active part on behalf of employers by disrupting the activities of trades unions. (If you want to read more on the history of the English police I have a lecture on this subject in my history course.)

Gradually other institutions such as schools and social services took over a good part of surveillance and regulation and activities of the police became more focused around public order and crime control. But the police have never lost their concern with the general regulation of the poor - especially young people who may be unemployed and excluded from school and thus spending a lot of time on the streets 'hanging around.' Such groups are seen as a potential threat to public order and therefore legitimate targets for various types of surveillance quite irrespective of whether they are actually engaged in committing criminal offences

At the present time, and almost continually since the 1980s, the practice of 'stop and search' continues to be a source of friction between police and young - especially non-white - people. Many young people feel they are being stopped for no reason or because police hold prejudiced stereotypes about who is or is not likely to be involved in crime.

This type of policing is proactive rather than reactive. That is to say:

• crime control is reactive. Police activity follows as a response to the reporting of crime by victims or witnesses and the police decide to respond

• stop and search is proactive. Police stop people on the basis of suspicion of being in some way 'out of order'. Such activities can of course be argued for on the grounds that they allegedly have a deterrent effect on crime. On the other hand a very small percentage of stops (around 11 percent) result in an arrest for a criminal offence. It might be argued that such activities as stop and search are not particularly intended to catch criminal offenders so much as serve as a reminder to the young and unemployed on the streets that the police are present and watching them, and also as a mechanism for 'trawling' for general information about the likely forms of criminality or anti-social behaviour in a particular area. In short, stop and search can be seen as a mechanism of social control more general and wider than simply seeking to apprehend criminal offenders.

We shall have more to say on stop and search presently. The important point here is that, unless a stop leads to an arrest for a criminal offence, it is not part of the chain of events which lead an individual through the criminal justice agencies. It is important to understand that this wider 'social control' function of the police has existed since the nineteenth century. 

Police and Public

The performance of most of the police tasks noted above require a degree of collaboration from the public. This collaboration is lowest in practices like stop and search where the police make the decision to stop and individual or group. It is highest in areas like crime control where, as regards the identification of suspects and the gathering of evidence, the police are very dependent on the flow of information from the public. But of course stop and search and crime control cannot be entirely separated. If a community distrusts and resents the police because it feels that they, the police, are stopping young people from the community disproportionately or for no apparent reason then there is likely to be less willingness to collaborate with the police on other matters. On the other hand, if the local community is blighted by drugs dealers and violent gangs, the criticism of the police may well be that they do not stop enought people or take sufficiently strong measures to curb drug dealing.

Basically, the public normally want to be policed unobtrusively: they want to see police officers patrolling the streets but not harassing people aggressively.  Different sections of the public also want their particular crime needs to be prioritised by the police. People working late want to see police around at night when walking home from the tube. Shop keepers and householders want to see the police respond quickly and efficiently to burglary. Women suffering rape or domestic violence want to be taken seriously as victims by the police. Most people want the police to do something about drugs and gangs. There will be a number of things pulling the police in different directions. There may be a shortage of police officers in an area. Local commanders will have to make decisions about where to deploy their officers and what crimes to concentrate on. 

The police, for their part, want the public to comply with instructions given, for example, by officers policing football matches or large public gatherings. They also want the public to give them information about crime, to come forward as witnesses even if anonymously through such channels as CrimeStoppers hotlines.

Consensus policing

So there has to be some sort of contract between police and public. For a long time in this country, from about the early 1900s to be precise, it was assumed that a sort of 'consensus policing' existed as the basis of good relations between police and public which was somehow uniquely British. Consensus policing can be contrasted with more militaristic styles of policing characteristic of some other European countries. The following table presents a contrast.

(There is a more sophisticated version of this chart on page 984 of Ben Bowling and Janet Foster's chapter 'Policing and the Police' in Mike Maguire et al. eds. (2002) The Oxford Handbook of Criminology, (third edition) Oxford University Press) The ideas originated in the books I wrote with Jock Young (Lea, John and Jock Young (1984) What Is To Be Done About Law and Order: Penguin) and with Jock Young and Richard Kinsey (1986) Losing the Fight Against Crime. Oxford: Blackwell

I do not have time to explore all aspects of this here. It is taken from the discussion in the book that Jock Young and I first published in 1984. But it can be seen that consensus policing describes a situation in which there areclose friendly relations between the police and the communities that are being policed. The police co-operate and compromise with the public. Often this may take the form of the police 'turning a blind eye' to minor crimes which the community does not get too worried about, in return for community co-operation on more serious matters. The police make an effort to find out what crime problems the community takes seriously and what its priorities are. Local police commanders adjust their own priorities in accordance with those of the public. For example a particular community may not worry too much about young people smoking cannabis, even though it may be illegal, while being very concerned about crack cocaine. The police may therefore spend less resources on arresting people for cannabis smoking and more time dealing with serious drugs. The important point here is that police officers on the streets can excercise a large degree of discretion about how they act.

Many police forces may combine elements of both approaches. Community policing might suggest a traditional English village, though most urban police forces in the UK have put much effort into community relations in recent years. Militarised policing might suggest some form of colonial policing such as South Africa during the apartheid period or, closer to home, the experience of many Catholics in Northern Ireland with the Royal Ulster Constabulary during the Troubles. Nevertheless it is important to remember that these styles of policing can to some extent co-exist in the same organisation at the same time or form a historical succession of stages. In the early years of the police in England there was much resistance from working class communities to what were considered intrusions. But gradually the police became accepted. This is important to remember because it is often asserted that the traditions of the police in Britain are purely and simply those of consensus policing. 

The use of discretion by officers on the street is thus a vital component of consensus policing. It refers to the fact that officers have the power to exercise choice in how they deal with a situation. They may be called to a public disturbance, say for example, a fight outside a pub. They have the legal power to arrest all the participants, take them to the police station and charge them all with various criminal offences. On the other hand they can separate the participants, tell them to stop behaving like idiots, sober up, act their age, and go home! How the officers act depends on a whole number of factors: the seriousness of the fight, whether the participants are well known locals, whether they have been in trouble with the police before, whether anyone has been injured etc. and what they think the members of the local community would wish them to do. The officers have to make very quick decisions when they arrive on the scene as to how they are going to deal with the incident. If they, the police, exercise their discretion sensibly they will enhance their reputation in the community. 

Exercising discretion also involves the structure of the police organisation and bureaucracy. Consensus police forces are generally 'bottom up' as opposed to 'top down'. That is to say, the commanders set general rules and targets on how to deal with various situations but often leave the officers on the street maximum leeway to exercise their discretion. This means that a good deal of decision making power is left in the hands of street cops. 

Consensus policing relies on the public to be forthcoming with information about crime. Officers knocking on doors in the locality where a crime has been committed will not expect the door to be slammed in their face but will expect the residents to respond to their questions and give any information, look at any photographs that may be available ("can you remember seeing the person in this photograph? Did you see anyone suspicious hanging around here last Saturday? Here is my phone number, give me a ring if you remember anything.") Once detectives get involved in a case they will value this co-operative attitude on the part of the public. The police have a vested interest therefore in maintaining good relations with the local community.

Consensus policing generally has some form of input from the local community. It may be a form of local government control or local liaison committees in which community groups (e.g. residents associations, shopkeepers, women's groups, groups representing different ethnic groups) meet periodically with local police commanders to discuss priorities and what the crime problems in the area are and how best to deal with them. Police will have similar meetings with social workers, head teachers and other significant local professionals. Enforcing every law in the book, and arresting everyone who breaks any law are not necessarily the best way to go about things. They are subordinate to the wider aim of keeping the locality a peaceful and safe place to live.

Militarised policing is in most respects the mirror image of community policing. It is not particularly concerned with local community relations. The police see it as their job to enforce the law, if necessary against the wishes of the public. The attitudes of the public are not considered relevant. The law has to be enforced and that's that!

Military-style policing involves the minimum use of discretion by officers on the street. When the police turn up to an incident they have one set of priorities: find out what criminal offences have been committed and arrest the perpetrators. It is not a major consideration as far as the police are concerned what the after-effects in a locality of arresting people may be. In police forces organised on a militarised basis the organisation may be 'top-down' rather than 'bottom up'. Senior officers will issue clear instructions and officers on the street will carry out orders rather like soldiers in a battle. The amount of discretion available to officers on the street is minimal.

Such police forces may be regarded by the local population as distant and alien, even like an occupying army. People will only give them information when absolutely necessary. The police will face the problem about how to get information about crime from a relatively unco-operative local population. Hence there will be a much greater use of informants, spies, surveillance technology such as CCTV. Also such policing may regard stop and search as an important source of information. People will be stopped in the street on some pretext or other, not because there is any suspicion they have committed a crime, or that they are a public nuisance, but that they are known to come from a particular locality about which the police are seeking information.

Such police forces are not very open to local influences. They do not see it as a valuable use of their time to consult with local people or professionals to discuss priorities. The police 'know' their priorities--enforce the law-- and that's that! The only purpose for discussions with locals, generally on the police's terms, is to get information about crime. Such policing is much more likely to be accountable for its actions only to central government. They, the police see it as their job to enforce the law as determined by central government.

The rise and fall of consensus policing

By the end of the nineteenth century there was indeed a 'grudging acceptance' of police in middle class and upper working class communities. It could be upset at any moment if the police police were used for political purposes such as strike-breaking. A sort of unwritten contract was established between police and community in which the police, as local body learned the arts of compromise. Officers would 'turn a blind eye' to all sorts of minor mischief and petty crime - on the assumption that parents and relatives would give the perpetrators a good telling off or a good hiding - in return for which the community would tolerate the police presence and be forthcoming with information when serious offences were committed in the area. There remained of course, substantial sections of the population--the very poor and socially marginalised--who bore the brunt of a policing more oriented to stop and search.

It should be clear that according to the above chart, pure consensus policing has not existed for some time, if it ever did. This is unlikely precisely because stop and search and the general surveillance of the poor has always been an aspect of policing. The real issue is the direction of movement.

The basis of this compromise was

• Cultural:  Police occupational culture overlapped very much with that of the community. Many police officers would be recruited from a class and cultural background similar to the areas they policed and thus shared its definitions of crime, sense of morality, understood the things local people were concerned about.

• Political: The working class had established powerful channels of interest representation such as local trades union councils, and of course local government councillors. It was in the interest of the police to show some respect. Likewise the middle classes, some of whom would be Magistrates and important employers in the area also had to be shown respect, particularly as they would have some influence over the appointment of the head of the police, the chief constable. Again, the very poorest sections of society, those most involved in petty crime would be the least able to articulate their interests or force the police to understand their problems. Rather, they were seen as a problem.

• Organisational: The autonomy of officers on the street to make decisions was a key factor in enabling the police to be flexible in their relations with local communities.

The stability of this state of affairs can of course be exaggerated. But something approximating what we have described here lasted up until the early 1970s For example in 1962 the Royal Commission on the Police (a government inquiry into police organisation) illustrated what Robert Reiner termed the 'high point of police legitimacy'. The Royal Commission undertook a social survey on popular attitudes to the police. Reiner summarises the evidence as follows:

"While 85.2 per cent of the professional and managerial classes had 'great respect' for the police, so too did 81.9 per cent of the semi- or unskilled working class..... By the 1950's 'policing by consent' was achieved in Britain to the maximal degree it is ever attainable.... Police power, that is, the capacity to inflict legal sanctions including force, had been transmuted into authority" (Reiner 2000 pp 59-60)

That is to say that the police no longer deployed predominantly military style tactics to assert their power in local communities but had come to be tolerated and to a large extent respected. The police had achieved 'legitimacy' in the eyes of the community.

There are of course a number of factors which work towards increasing the distance between police and public. Robert Reiner, in his classic text mentioned above talks about a steady decline in police legitimacy since the end of the 1970s. Some of the factors he identifies are: new technology - the role of patrol cars, computers and radio communications in producing a long run decline in the importance of the foot patrol officer with his or her close contact with the public. It should of course be added that there are a number of features of police life that help to reinforce the police culture of separateness from the public: a life which can be at times dangerous and risky reinforces the solidarity of police officers with each other and against the public. This is obviously at its strongest where policing approaches the militarised version. For these reasons police occupational culture can be expected to be segregated to some extent from the public even where class and ethnic backgrounds of police officers are similar to those of the community at large.

But by the 1980s it was clear that the whole set of cultural, political and organisational assumptions on which consensus policing rested were coming undone. 

• Cultural: the cohesion between police and communities was breaking down. Ethnic minority communities found themselves facing a monolithic white police force. Analogies were made with the policing of colonial populations in the British Empire. Police racism undermined consensus policing with white officers tending to stereotype non-white, particularly young black males, as virtually a criminal community.  Even today, despite the presence of some high profile senior Black and Asian officers and a general increase in the recruitment from non-white communities, the police are still an overwhelmingly white, male organisation. In the poorer areas of large cities the ethnic composition of the police is significantly different from that of the communities being policed. Police occupational culture is widely seen as no longer a source of affinity with community values but as a source of conflict. Being regarded as particularly racist and sexist.  The use of discretion by police officers is seen as often in conflict with community values and needs rather than in accordance with them. This began to be recognised as a problem during the 1970s and despite strenuous efforts to solve it, still remains an issue.

• Political:  the communities among whom non-whites were concentrated tended to be poor. Discrimination in education and job markets has combined with the decline of secure, well paid, working class jobs with strong trade union representation to concentrate the poor and non-white communities among the most powerless in society. While in recent years police and local authorities have attempted to establish new channels of consultation and interest representation (see the lecture on community safety) these often exclude the poorest sections of society, young people who have dropped out of the labour market and live in the most deprived areas of the city. Their relationship with the police becomes overwhelmingly one of stop and search and their ability to influence police policy and attitudes is minimal

• Organisational: under the Conservative governments of Margaret Thatcher during the 1980s the police began to be subject to the same type of scrutiny that was being applied to the health service, education and other public bodies. Police forces were issued with performance indicators and targets to demonstrate the efficient use of public money.  Police accountability to the public was interpreted less as a matter of responsiveness to community needs regarding crime control and more as a matter of audit and resource efficiency. The usual crude measure of efficiency was arrest rates and crime clearups. This resulted in  the identification of inefficiency in the form of declining 'clearup' rates for crime (a crime is 'cleared up' if someone is charged for it. This does not necessary mean that the case leads to a conviction in the courts.). During the 1930s clearups had been around 50 percent of crimes reported to the police. During the 1960s they were around 45 percent. By 1983 they were down to 37 percent and by 1994 down to 26 percent. These are averages. They vary by region (they are lower in big cities) and by types of crime (over 90 percent for homicides but as low as 6 percent for burglaries in poor areas). This, of course, could lead police to concentrate on those crimes most easily cleared up, that is, for which someone could be arrested and charged. Such crimes were not necessarily the ones the public, particularly in poor communities, demanded action on.

By the middle of the 1980s the deterioration in relations between police and poor communities was severe. Communities distrusted the police and the police relied increasingly on stop and search and general surveillance as the means to get information about crime. This became a self-reinforcing vicious circle in which police use of stop and search alienated the community - not just young people who were constantly stopped but also their parents - so that less information about crime was given voluntarily to the police.  The police reacted with more stop and search. It was felt by many people that stop and search was conducted on a racist basis: that police were using the ethnicity of young people as the basis for whether to stop them or not. The police argued that stop and search was necessary to get information about crime. Yet only a small percentage of stops (around 11 percent) led to an arrest for a criminal offence. Young people in poor areas felt that stop and search was simply a method by which the police kept them under a regime of general harassment and surveillance.Things came to a head in Brixton in 1981 with three days of open violent street confrontation between police and mainly (but not only) black young people. It was started off by a massive police stop and search operation called 'Swamp 81'

The government invited a judge, Lord Scarman, to investigate the events and his report, the Scarman Report, became a government manifesto for change. However, although he accused police officers of racist behaviour and called for increased recruitment of police officers from non-white communities, he denied that the police were characterised by institutional racism. As regards stop and search, although he called for greater regulation of stop and search he did not challenge the right of police to stop and search and agreed that it was an important measure in crime control. Scarman's recommendations resulted in the provisions in the 1984 Police and Criminal Evidence Act which stipulated that certain types of stops and searches (not all stops) should be recorded and the person stopped should be entitled to a written statement of the reasons for which they were stopped and searched by police. Scarman also recommended the setting up of improved structures for liaison between police and communities. The 1984 Act established local liaison panels in which local police commanders would discuss with community groups the priorities for policing and crime control in their area. These panels have been superceded by the community crime reduction partnerships which will be discussed in a later lecture.

Under the impact of Scarman other measures were taken such as increased 'race awareness' training for police officers and greater community involvement in crime prevention and reduction. In 1999 the government established the Metropolitan Police Authority, an elected local government body to give a measure of democratic oversight of general policing strategies in London

How much has changed?

It is almost 30 years since the Brixton riots and it has to be said that the extent of change in the relations between police and young people in poor areas is the subject of controversy. There are a number of issues

The ethnic composition of the police

In London almost 25 per cent of the population is of non-white ethnicity. When Lord Scarman reported on the Brixton riots in 1981 black officers constituted merely 0.5 percent of the Metropolitan Police. He called for a substantial increase in the number of non-white officers. But progress has been slow. By 2001 a little over 4 per cent of Metropolitan Police officers were from a minority ethnic background. At the end the financial year 2003/4 it was 6.6 per cent. The Home Office has set a target of 25.9 percent ethnic minority officers by 2009. Many consider this unlikely to be achieved. 

Of course the issue of ethnic minority recruitment to police forces has a number of aspect. For most people the notion that public bodies such as the police should reflect the ethnic - and indeed the gender - composition of society is beyond controversy and anything short of that is taken as evidence of discrimination. In other words a police force that reflects the ethnic makeup of society is an equal opportunities issue. But the relation between ethnic makeup of police and the relations between police and particular communities is complex. In parts of the country where the majority of young people in deprived communities are white, as are most police officers, issues such as the role of stop and search still feature in relations between police and community. Until recently, Asian communities in Britain did not complain of high rates of stop and search. This has changed dramatically since 2000 as stop and search has been deployed as a measure under anti-terrorist legislation. 

Finally, race and ethnicity are, like gender, issues within police forces. The National Black Police Association represents black and Asian officers in UK police forces. In recent years there have been a number of issues concerning alleged discrimination against non-white officers

Poverty, deprivation and social exclusion

Brixton, in the London Borough of Lambeth, was one of the most deprived areas in the UK. But almost 25 years later, in 2004, the London borough of Lambeth was ranked the 23rd most deprived out of 354 English local authorities. In 2007 the social research organisation, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation conducted a major survey which found evidence of growing inequality and poverty in the UK and also evidence that rich and poor areas were becoming more spatially separated.

As regards poverty, the survey found that 

"even though there was less extreme poverty, the overall number of 'breadline poor' households increased – households where people live below the standard poverty line. This number has consistently been above 17 per cent, peaking at 27 per cent in 2001.

Earlier tendencies towards more equality of income and wealth in British society had been reversed: 

"Britain is moving back towards levels of inequality in wealth and poverty last seen more than 40 years ago.... The general pattern is of increases in social equality during the 1970s, followed by rising inequality in the 1980s and 1990s."

Finally, most alarmingly, the wealth of the richest portions of the population is increasing and 

"already-wealthy areas have tended to become disproportionately wealthier. There is evidence of increasing polarisation, where rich and poor now live further apart. In areas of some cities over half of all households are now breadline poor.... Urban clustering of poverty has increased, while wealthy households have concentrated in the outskirts and surrounds of major cities, especially those classified as 'exclusive wealthy', which have been steadily concentrating around London

In other words deprived areas - which are inevitably high crime areas - are becoming more rather than less numerous. Non-white populations are disproportionately concentrated in such areas. With recent concerns aboutrising gang violence in London , involving firearms, a case can be made that the situation is if anything worse than it was when Scarman wrote his report in 1981. 

All this impacts on the development of policing. Most of the population living in deprived areas want the police to protect them from crime and also a wider range of disorder and anti-social behaviour which they find threatening. The police tend to react by intensifying such measures as stop and search which are aimed at the general surveillance and control of, particularly, young people in such areas. Where large numbers of young people are unemployed, excluded from school, dealing in drugs, members of gangs, then the police may feel justified in stopping almost any young person dressed in a certain way (e.g. wearing a 'hood')

Anti-social behaviour 

At the same time other measures put in place by government in recent years tend to move in the same direction. The 1998 Crime and Disorder Act introduced the Anti-Social Behaviour Order or ASBO as it has become known. Additional measures were added in the 2002 Police Reform Act, the 2003 Anti-Social Behaviour Act 2003 and the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005.

In criminology a crucial text which lay behind, and which provided a justification for such measures, was a well known article by two American academics, James Q. Wilson and George F. Kelling, called Broken Windows  (read it here). The effect of the 'Wilson-Kelling argument' as it became known, was to turn consensus policing on its head. Rather than police 'turning a blind eye' to minor disorder in order to secure the co-operation of the community with the policing in tackling more serious crime, minor disorder (or 'incivilities' as they were called by Wilson and Kelling) were seen as crucial precursors of more serious crime. Thus the police (and other agencies such as Local Authorities, Housing Associations, Transport Authorities, Schools etc.) needed to act firmly against minor disorder to stop it developing into more serious crime

The argument, put in its most favourable light, was that perhaps traditional communities were strong enough in terms of family cohesion and community spirit to deal with minor disorder - troublesome youngsters etc. But now communities in deprived urban areas were much weaker. Isolation, high turnover of population, large numbers of single parents, kids out of school with nothing to do etc. made for a more volatile situation in which the ability of the community to control disorder was much weaker. Such disorder - kids hanging around on the streets, noise, low level graffiti and vandalism, would attract more serious crime such as gang organisation and drug dealing into the area. Hence the need to be tough on minor disorder and anti-social behaviour before it turned into something more serious.

Critics argue that the idea that minor disorder leads to more serious crime is a misunderstanding. In areas where crime is already at high levels then minor disorder will appear threatening because it will be seen as indicating that something more serious is likely to happen. Kids making a noise will be seen as evidence, rightly or wrongly, as evidence of the risk of drug dealing or weapons. But in a peaceful, low crime area, noise or people hanging around, will just be seen as a nuisance and nothing more. No need to crack down on it with a heavy hand but rather to give young people something more rewarding to occupy their time.

We cannot settle the argument here. The point is that such ideas have been influential in the development of things such as Anti-Social Behaviour Orders and Zero-Tolerance policing. They have also helped to keep stop and search in the frame as a major police activity.  The use of stop and search has to be seen as part of a wider increase in the use of surveillance of populations seen as constituting a risk of criminal activity. It is accompanied by an increasing reliance on technology, Closed Circuit Television  (CCTV), and police covert intelligence gathering.

Having large numbers of officers patrolling the streets many make for good community relations (and thus in the long run a better flow of information) but, because patrolling officers rarely come across crimes actually being committed, such activities can come to be seen as inefficient and time wasting. A compromise solution to the public's demand for the visibility of police officers on the street has been the formation, under the Police Reform Act 2002, of Police Community Support Officers. These have less powers than warranted police officers (and less pay!) but are empowered to deal with minor incidents and also have a high public visibility.

The continuing issue of stop and search

Stop and Search continues to be one of the most controversial aspects of policing. The Scarman Report in 1981 called for the written recording of certain types of stop and search and this was made law in the 1984 Police and Criminal Evidence Act. But almost 20 years later (in 1999) a committee under another judge, Lord Macpherson, investigated the complaints about police failure to investigate properly the murder of black teenage Steven Lawrence. Another part of the Macpherson report  focused on attitudes towards the police among young members of the black and asian communities. Macpherson found that the use of stop and search was still widely seen as unfair and the disproportionate number of young non-white people stopped by police remained high. 

Macpherson also characterised the London Metropolitan Police as guilty of Institutional Racism.  The meaning of this term he defined as:  

"the collective failure of an organisation to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture or ethnic origin", which "can be seen or detected in processes, attitudes and behaviour which amount to discrimination through unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness, and racist stereotyping which disadvantages minority ethnic people.".

This implies that the issue is not simply the ethnic prejudices of individual white police officers but the way the police institution as a whole functions to reinforce them. The two factors of culture and power have been identified as central.

Culture: one of the factors stressed to the Macpherson inquiry, including by black police officers was the lack of contact between white police officers and members of the black community outside and arrest situation or other confrontation. This, it was argued, means that police work acts to reinforce the racial stereotypes that white police carry around with them.

Discrimination: some senior police officers giving evidence to the Macpherson report stressed that race discrimination elsewhere in society (in schools, in the labour market) mean that young people from ethnic minorities are disproportionately on the streets anyway because of unemployment, school exclusions etc. They therefore become overrepresented in the group that the police have always stopped and searched: the poor and unemployed. This again, reinforces police racist stereotyping. 

Power: It might be argued that for these reasons the political power of local communities to check what the police do is important. But as we have noted, power and influence even at a local level is quite difficult for poor communities to exercise without sustained mobilisation. There have indeed been sustained efforts on the part of senior police officers to establish liaison with local communities of all ethnic backgrounds. Liaison with local community groups was made statutory under PACE. The aim was to 'reconnect' the police with local communities, ethnic minorities in particular. Under the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 police and local authorities were given statutory responsibility for crime reduction and instructed to work together in community safety and crime reduction partnerships. But again, it is difficult to influence the behaviour of officers on the streets. 

One solution to this argued for in the Macpherson report (like the Scarman report twenty years previously!) was that the rules governing stop and search should be tightened. Scarman called for a written record to be made of the reasons for a stop and a copy given to the person stopped. This was made law under the 1984 Police and Criminal Evidence Act (known as PACE) but did not cover all categories of stops. Macpherson called for this process to be extended to all stops. But at this point critics refer to the 'bottom heavy' nature of the police organisation which we have discussed already. The limited power of senior officers to influence how officers on the street use their discretion on the street also applies to legal rules. A recent survey suggested that 70% of even stops supposed to be recorded under the 1984 PACE are not being recorded: a full twenty years after the legislation!

In recent years police have taken some steps to try and make stop and search less controversial and high profile. Following the Macpherson Report, in 1999, the Home Office issued a briefing note on the improvement of stop and search.  It was concerned with issues such as better communication with the community about the need for stop and search and trying to make stops more 'intelligence-led'. That is to say, more based on intelligence about crimes that have actually taken place rather than general stopping of people on the basis of vague suspicions. For example if a murder has just taken place and the killer was seen to run off, no one is going to object to the police setting up road blocks in the area and stopping every person and vehicle leaving the area. In this way it is hoped that the proportion of stops which actually lead to arrest for a real offence can be increased.

Also the issue of stop and search has in recent years become more controversial within communities themselves. While there is strong opposition to disproportionate stopping of people purely on the basis of their ethnicity, the growth of drugs dealing, gangs and the use of guns in some poor urban communities has created a basis of public support for stop and search. Thus in 2002 the editor of Black newspaper The Voice called for increased use of stop and search to tackle rising gun crime. This gave rise to a considerable controversy (read about it on the BBC news site). More recently, from within the police, Keith Jarrett, the chair of the National Black Police Association called, in 2007, for increased use of stop and search.

Finally, stop and search is not only considered as part of the process of combatting street crime but has, in recent years, become and important part of the anti-terrorist legislation. For example, under the Terrorism Act 2000 police are enpowered to stop and search for "equipment that could be used to commit a terrorist act." This has led to steep increases in stop and search in Muslim communities who were hitherto not especially targetted by stop and search. This has served to reignite the controversy over the usefulness of stop and search. While the police claim it is an essential anti-terrorist power, critics point to the incredibly low number of actual arrests resulting from such stops and also that, by antagonising the community, stop and search reduces the flow of information about terrorist activities to the police.