Book Review: Police Powers and Politics
| Author | Andrew Goldsmith |
| Published date | 01 September 1984 |
| Date | 01 September 1984 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/000486588401700306 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
AUST
&NZ
JOURNAL
OF CRIMINOLOGY (September 1984) 17 (181-192)
BOOK REVIEWS
181
Police Powers and Politics, Robert Baldwin and Richard Kinsey, Quartet Books,
London (1982) 309 pp.
The authors have produced a book which in a number of ways deals with some
specific issues in recent British policing which even now are more of historical
significance, given the new Criminal Justice Bill before the UK Parliament and
expected to become law sometime in 1984. I am thinking here particularly of the
recent Royal Commission on Criminal Procedure, the Criminal Justice (Scotland)
Act of 1980, and the Scarman inquiry into the Brixton disorders in 1981, each of
which is the subject of a separate chapter in this book. The broader significance of
this work, however, lies in some of the prevalent assumptions about policing and
the crime "problem" which are challenged by Baldwin and Kinsey, and in their
discussion of "policing by consent".
An all too often neglected question in discussions of police powers concerns the
kind of policing desired by a community. The public in the past seems to have
presumed that this is a question best left to the "experts", notably the police
themselves. Baldwin and Kinsey point out that the traditional response of society's
"experts" has been to press for more of the same: more police with greater powers.
Not only is there a failure here to appreciate that crime waves have been with us
for centuries and are likely to remain with us, the authors argue, but there may also
be an unfavourable trading-off public cooperation and respect as a result of
increasing the size of police forces and granting greater powers of detention, arrest,
search etc. In other words, efficiency may be undermined, not improved by such
measures. Throughout the book, various proposalsfor changes in police powers are
evaluated by the authors, albeit somewhat speculatively, against this rough measure
and are often found wanting.
In order to return to genuine, consent-based policing, not only must the external
constraints upon the police be examined and reformed (legal controls, complaints
mechanisms etc) but the organizational realities of police work must be confronted.
In discussing the patrol and investigative functions, based on their own observations
of an English police force, the authors point to the profound desk-killing and
isolating effects of specialization and the introduction of computers upon police
work. In pointing to the impact of these changes upon the nature of police work and
upon police-public relations, it is a pity that Baldwin and Kinsey do not also discuss
the significance of other technologies employed by the police in recent years, such
as CS gas and water cannons, and the significance also of internal police disciplinary
procedures for police work. Effectively, this discussion of organizational realities
serves as a precursor to the topic of community policing. Here the authors are
chiefly concerned with
the
ideas of John Alderson, former Chief Constable of
Devon and Cornwall. In discussing this topic, as throughout the rest of the book,
Baldwin and Kinsey maintain apragmatic approach, arguing for the at least
occasional efficacy of legal controls and judicial scrutiny of police practices (p 168).
As they note, the alternative to legal controls is even broader discretion.
In sum, as accounts of some recent events in British policing, many of the
chapters of this book may be described as sketchy and perhaps even deficient in
some ways. Nor
wouldone
perhaps rely upon the discussion of police work at the
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