Commentary
| Date | 01 December 2009 |
| Author | Daniel Gilling |
| DOI | 10.1350/pojo.2009.82.4.498 |
| Published date | 01 December 2009 |
| Subject Matter | Commentary |
The
Police
Journal
COMMENTARY
For most of the past decade, the police service has been under
pressure to improve its performance on crime reduction, having
historically been wedded too closely to a ‘detectionist’ mentality.
However, this is now changing, and the service is being asked to
raise public confidence.
For most of the past decade, the police service has been under
pressure to prove its mettle in terms of crime reduction, having
historically been wedded too closely to a ‘detectionist’ mentality.
However, this is changing, and the service is now being asked to
march to the beat of a different drum. That drum is the aim of
raising public confidence. But why the change, and what impli-
cations does it hold for policing?
It would be wrong to suggest that the importance afforded to
raising public confidence is entirely new. For a few decades, for
instance, public surveys have been measuring confidence in
services such as the police by asking the general public how
good a job they think the police have been doing. The results
show an historic decline in confidence levels that has precipit-
ated some official concern, although it should be noted that
confidence levels generally are far higher for the police than they
are for other public services. Additionally, since Labour took
office in 1997 raising public confidence has been one of their
explicit aims, although initially this was more system-wide, and
linked to perceptions that the system was both fair and just. More
recently, however, raising confidence has been applied to the
police and their partners, specifically through PSA 23 (avail-
able at http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/d/pbr_csr07_psa23.pdf),
indicator 3, which measures (in both the British Crime Survey
and in local Place Surveys) the proportion of the public that
expresses confidence in the work done by the police and their
partners in addressing local crime and antisocial behaviour
(ASB) issues.
The Police Journal, Volume 82 (2009) 285
DOI: 10.1358/pojo.2009.82.4.498
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