Book review: Good Policing: Trust, Legitimacy and Authority
| Author | Roy Bailey |
| Published date | 01 March 2021 |
| Date | 01 March 2021 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0032258X21992542 |
| Subject Matter | Book review |
Book review
Book review
Good Policing: Trust, Legitimacy and Authority
Michael Hough
Bristol University Press: 2020, 143 pp. ISBN 978-1-4473-5507-6.
Reviewed by: Roy Bailey
1
Email: royjbailey@googlemail.com
DOI: 10.1177/0032258X21992542
It seems axiomatic to say that good policing is founded on trust, legitimacy and
authority and that, without it, there can be no true public consent. While the notion
of policing by consent may appear to be a central tenet to the British approach, recent
evidence suggests otherwise, particularly in respect of the policing of minority groups,
whose relationships with the police have been at best strained and at worst hostile.
These tensions have been inflamed where those communities feel there has been racial
bias and police misconduct.
The introduction of community policing was an attempt to bolster the public image
and legitimacy of the police. But it has not always enjoyed the success it was designed
for, principally because it was undermined by the introduction of ‘crime fighting’ targets
in the 1990s and a more ‘managerialist’, and populist, approach to policing, from both
Labour and Conservative governments. There has, though, been a growing acknowl-
edgement that good policing can only be realised where the police have been given
popular legitimacy by the communities they police. Procedural justice theories provide a
significant development for policing in that they are a route to build legitimacy.
Good Policing: Trust, Legitimacy and Authority, by Professor Mike Hough, offers an
excellent and compelling critique of the nature of crime control and the implications for
policing. Hough suggests that for the police to be more effective in their crime fighting
role, they must first build trust with those they police, which is a prerequisite to establish
their legitimacy. It is a brief, well written and coherently argued book which offers key
insights for both policing academics and practitioners.
Procedural justice theory is an integral part of the wider body of theories of policing.
Hough asserts there are four main strands and these are:
What is the mandate of modern policing institutions?
What do they actually do?
What functions or outcomes flow from these activities?
What are the mechanisms or processes by which the outcomes are achieved?
1
Roy Bailey, Independent Scholar, UK.
The Police Journal:
Theory, Practice and Principles
2021, Vol. 94(1) 75–77
ªThe Author(s) 2021
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