Book review: Bryn Caless, Policing at the Top: The roles, values and attitudes of chief police officers
| DOI | 10.1177/1748895811435577 |
| Author | Peter Neyroud |
| Published date | 01 April 2012 |
| Date | 01 April 2012 |
| Subject Matter | Book reviews |
Criminology & Criminal Justice
12(2) 217 –224
© The Author(s) 2012
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DOI: 10.1177/1748895811435577
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Book reviews
Bryn Caless
Policing at the Top: The Roles, Values and Attitudes of Chief Police Officers, Policy Press: Bristol, 2011;
288 pp.: 9781447300168, £70 (hbk), 9781447300151, £24.99 (pbk)
Reviewed by: Peter Neyroud, University of Cambridge, UK
It is over 20 years since Robert Reiner (1991) carried out the first detailed study of Chief
Constables in England and Wales. Since then major changes to policing have taken place
and continue to take place under the current Coalition government. Bryn Caless does not
profess to repeat Reiner’s seminal study, but he certainly pays homage to it. In Caless’s
case it is not Chief Constables, but the whole of the Association of Chief Police Officers
(ACPO) – Chiefs, Deputies and Assistants – who form the basis of his study. In so doing,
he states that he is providing ‘rich detail of chief officers’ views’ (p. xv) on a wide range
of policing themes, relations and developments. What results is an interesting book,
which for a number of reasons does not quite fulfil its promise.
Right from the start Caless admits that he is not trying to write a work of sociology or
criminology. However, he does not provide the reader with a wholly convincing frame-
work for the book. By avoiding the disciplines of both and neglecting a more rigorous
method, he reduces the potential impact of what is an important piece of work. The
problems start with an absence of good demographic data about his interviewees. He has
interviewed 43 per cent of serving officers of ACPO rank – a very high response rate for
any set of semi-structured interviews – but we are never provided with a clear idea of
which 43 per cent were included in the study. If a second edition of the book is to be
published then this omission needs addressing. We need to know, at the very least, the
gender, ethnicity, age, education, force and rank of the Chief Officers to be able to assess
the potential selection bias and judge the validity of his conclusions. At one point, he
himself admits ‘in retrospect, it might have been helpful to ascertain’ (p. 187) whether
the views were biased by age and experience.
The second major flaw is the absence of a discussion about the questions chosen for
his study. There are some really curious omissions. Given that the interviews were with
ACPO officers, it is most peculiar that there was no question devoted to their views about
the institution itself, instead of a rather oblique review of the way Chief Officers function
within their national ACPO roles. Given that ACPO itself has been recently under so
435577CRJ12210.1177/1748895811435577Book reviewsCriminology & Criminal Justice
2012
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