International Journal of Police Science and Management

vLex
Publisher:
Sage Publications, Inc.
Publication date:
2021-09-06
ISBN:
1461-3557

Issue Number

Latest documents

  • Twenty-five years of achieving best evidence: Investigative interviews with victims and witnesses in England and Wales

    The guidance in Achieving Best Evidence or ABE, as it is more commonly known, has been with us for nearly 25 years. It stems from concerns raised about the quality of interviews with vulnerable witnesses in the 1980s and from the Memorandum of Good Practice that set out to address them. This article will argue that the various editions of ABE that have been published over that time represent both continuity and change in the practice of interviewing victims and witnesses. It represents continuity in the interview structure that it promotes and in the principles that underpin it. It represents change in its responsiveness to new legislation, new research and emerging operational challenges. Over the years, ABE has become influential internationally, alongside other models such as the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Protocol and the cognitive interview, and its capacity to adapt to change is such that its influence is likely to last for years to come.

  • Steering a path to cultural change: Emerging and enduring characteristics of policing cultures in the UK

    In the 25 years since the first issue of the International Journal of Police Science & Management was published, policing has undergone significant change as a result of economic, political and social change. Yet this period has unfortunately been bookended by the Macpherson Report in 1999 and the Casey Review in 2023, both highly critical of the occupational cultures within policing. This article takes the issue of policing cultures and examines the extent to which early ethnographic writings on the everyday realities of policing reflect the cultures of today and examines the potential and the desire for both continued research in this area and for cultural change itself. An understanding of cultural characteristics as individual layers contributing to the overall sedimentation of policing practices enables us to see how change, albeit slowly, can potentially happen. The article also suggests, however, that the tendency towards conformity within policing – in terms of both conforming to organisational working practices and norms and conforming to informal occupational cultures – puts pressure on everyone within the policing organisation to ‘fit in’, restricting difference, challenge and ultimately, significant change. A better understanding of the deep roots of occupational cultures within policing and an appreciation of both its benefits and appeal is necessary for a whole organisation approach to reform.

  • Twenty-five years on: A bibliographic analysis of articles appearing in the International Journal of Police Science & Management

    From a corpus of 678 articles appearing in the International Journal of Police Science & Management representing 25 years of publication, This article reviews the achievements of the Journal's founding principles. Aiming to be multidisciplinary, international and collaborative, with particular emphasis on diversity and operational issues, the Journal also sought to present research informing both policy and practice. A bibliographic analysis revealed 45 police jurisdictions, 41 cognate disciplines and 150 topics covered. The majority of articles (79%) were empirical papers of which 69% derived from primary, 26% secondary and 5% mixed research designs. Around one-fifth of papers related to police management issues, one-third to police deployments and policing practices, and one in ten papers were devoted to accountability and misconduct. Diversity featured in about one-third of papers with gender being the most referred to, whereas disability, religion and sexuality were barely referenced. The majority of articles (77%) were by those from academic institutions with relatively few police/academic collaborating authors. The article concludes with a brief assessment and discussion of the future direction of policing research.

  • What goes up must come down? 25 years of public trust in the police

    Public trust in the police is an almost ever-present feature of United Kingdom policy, political and indeed cultural debates, and this has been true right across the past quarter century. Concentrating on the population-level picture, and on England and Wales, in this article I outline what we know about changes in ‘trust and confidence’ over the past two decades or so, and make comparison with changes in other, closely associated, indicators. Why it might be that over this period trust in police first increased significantly, and then declined? Answers to this question implicate what might be termed the political economy of trust. Change in public trust may be due to a whole set of factors operating across multiple levels of policing and the society in which it takes place.

  • Race, policing and me: Inclusive leadership in the twenty-first century for the 25th anniversary of Macpherson Report and the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry

    ‘Race, policing and me: Inclusive leadership in the twenty-first century’ is a participant observer’s experience of policing, politics and prejudice from a 30-year career in the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) that spanned the 1993 racist murder of Stephen Lawrence, the 1999 Macpherson Report, which labelled policing institutionally racist, and the battle to come to terms with the fallout that created. A battle this observer believes policing has lost. He reveals how the most senior officer of colour in the UK for the past decade battled racism as a child, adolescent and young professional before joining a profession that did not act as it though it wanted people like him. The early successes to improve its diversity after Macpherson were not sustained and policing now rejects the term and Basu provides some thought for police leaders at how they might tackle issues of diversity and prejudice to regain their legitimacy with minorities who have been over-policed and/or under-protected for too long. To ignore this requirement to regain its legitimacy lacks the humility to understand that it is wrong about this debate on diversity. After the catastrophic loss of trust and confidence following the 2023 Dame Louise Casey Report into culture in the MPS, policing's refusal to admit it remains institutionally racist by the Macpherson definition, and indeed institutionally prejudiced by the Casey definition, imperils the Peelian concept of policing by consent. If policing cannot accept the moral case for Diversity, Equality and Inclusion, it should think of the business case that Peel, Rowan and Mayne built that underpins consent. It may be the only way to maintain order and keep communities safe, which must be its primary mission.

  • An overview of offender profiling

    Generally speaking, criminals are caught by police for one or more of the following reasons: they confess to the crime; another criminal gives the police useful information about a crime; they are arrested red-handed or chased and caught by police; an eyewitness describes them; forensic evidence (fingerprints, footprints, DNA, etc.) at the crime scene or their handwriting or video footage is linked to them; or finally, because the police link a number of crimes committed by the same offender. Further, in today's large urban centres all over the world, the work of police detectives is becoming increasingly difficult, calling for more sophisticated techniques as criminals become even more adept. Films such as Silence of the Lambs, television series like Cracker in the UK, Mindhunter, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, CSI: Miami or Profiler, and popular books like The Real Cracker by Stephen Cook (2001), The Jigsaw Man and Picking Up the Pieces by Paul Britton (1998, 2001) have popularised criminal profiling. In addition, well-known retired Federal Bureau of Investigation profilers (e.g. John Douglas, Roy Hazelwood, Robert Ressler) have published some of their experiences in helping law enforcement agencies catch serial killers. Likewise, in the UK, two very experienced offender profilers have published works; namely, academic psychologist Julian Boon and psychiatrist Richard Baddock. Offender profiling refers to the use of behavioural data evident in a crime to assist a police investigation by seeking to infer attributes of probable offenders, thus narrowing the police search for suspects.

  • The re-emergence of police education

    In the past 25 years growing complexities of the policing landscape and emerging challenges, like technology, increased vulnerability and new crimes, mean that police officers require different skills and knowledge than previously. One way to enable this has been the increasing professionalisation of the police service including the academisation of police learning and an emphasis of developing better police knowledge informed by evidence. Increased professionalisation is viewed as one of the solutions to resolving some of the problems often associated with policing like the negative effects of police culture. The process of embedding higher education into policing has been slow, fragmented and challenging at times, and influenced by a broader set of political and external dynamics. Critics argue that policing is a more practical occupation in which the best way to develop is to learn on the job or develop craft knowledge. The intention of this article is to discuss the relationship between police and education particularly in the recent past. It will explore why higher education has become increasingly important, explore why resistance to the academisation process continues and look at the developing relationship between academia and the police. Finally, the future of higher education and policing is discussed.

  • 25 Years of increased politicisation of UK policing reform

    The past 25 years has seen the greatest attempted political shifts in the reform, governance and character of UK policing in nearly 200 years. This article takes a broad, but incomplete, look at that increased trajectory of party politics involvement in changes in British policing, the possible effect on governance, operational independence and leadership, and the probable impact of those activities on tactical effectiveness (for example, in performance, community engagement, discipline, morale, retention and recruitment). It is the increased trajectory and significance of party politics that has created a paradigm shift in the British policing model and impacted on contemporary interpretations of the wrongly called Peelian Policing Principles. This article seeks to show that Savage’s model of police reform, as a conjunction of driving forces, is useful in exploring the primary use made, over the past 25 years, of the politicisation of police reform by the other five elements of the model. It also seeks to identify what we can learn from this exploration for the future of police reform. Nothing of what follows here signifies anything but disgust at the ghastly behaviour of some criminals in police uniforms. It comprises some evidence for use at a possible Labour ‘root and branch reform of the MPS’. This proposal might take up the misguided suggestion to disband the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS), as a result of possible extinction-level events for the 200-year-old MPS experiment in policing and will inevitably and irrevocably lead to the destruction of the British policing model – one of the global pillars of democracy. Brown also offered some more effective possible reforms using Savage’s model.

  • Investigation and detection: Back to the future

    This article reflects upon the key insights and evidence from policing research with regards to the organisation and conduct of police crime investigations and detective work. In particular, it attends to how a number of innovative technologies have had a shaping effect on this aspect of the police role. A central thread of the argument developed is how shifts in the context for policing, associated with the information environment has been inducing socio-technical changes to how crimes are investigated and resolved. Projecting forward from such developments, the article concludes by speculating on the ways the increasing availability of 'opensource intelligence' might reconfigure the social organisation of police crime investigations.

  • 25 years of technology use in policing

    Technological innovations including artificial intelligence (AI) and cognate systems with accessible user interfaces are informing policing decision-making around the world. The systems form part of the ‘smart justice’ technologies increasingly replacing analogue modes of law enforcement such as paper-based information analysis. This article maps the evolution of technological innovations in policing over the past 25 years, that is, since the 1990s. The article situates its analysis within relevant socio-political contexts and discusses key prospects, impacts, and challenges.

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