Does Society Expect Too Much from its Police?
| Author | Peter McLaren |
| Date | 01 July 1979 |
| Published date | 01 July 1979 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032258X7905200302 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
INSPECTOR
PETER
McLAREN
Lothian
and
Borders Police
We congratulate Mr McLaren on winning the 1978 Queen's Police
Gold Medal Essay Competition with the following essay:
DOES
SOCIETY
EXPECT
TOO
MUCH
FROM
ITS POLICE?
The
answer from any overworked underpaid policeman would
probably be a heartfelt "Yes, they jolly well do!" But before
dismissing this as an old sweat's grouse, can we be sure
that
it is not a
subconscious evaluation of innumerable interrelated factors
producing acomputer-like conclusion - in much the same fashion
as 'feminine intuition'? Who or what is Society?
What
does it expect
from its police? Does it get what it expects? If not, why not.
Chambers' Twentieth Century Dictionary defines Societyas, inter
alia, "the body of mankind" or "a community" and it is the purpose
here, while giving due consideration to the question as it affects
mankind in general, to examine it more closely in the context of the
United Kingdom as a "society".
The
United Kingdom of Great Britain
and
Northern Ireland is a
society which in little over 160 years has undergone aradical
transformation from an agricultural community ruled by a
practically feudal oligarchy to a highly-sophisticated technological
entity with perhaps the broadest-based administration in the world.
Over the period, extremes of wealth
and
poverty have all but
disappeared
and
a more equitable, if not equal, distribution of the
Gross National
Product
achieved. Legislative and administrative
powers have passed from the hereditary aristocracy
and
nobility into
the hands of the democratically-elected representatives of the people.
The
Industrial Revolution saw the emphasisshift from agriculture to
industrial production.
The
evolution of the
Trade
Union movement
saw
Jack
become as good as his master -
and
in some case betteroff.
Living standards rose immeasurably,
and
so did the crime rate.
Keeping pace with the crime-rate is an ever-increasing proliferation
of legislation,
and
while not all of it affects the Police, a large
proportion
does. A notable
and
notorious example is the current
multiplicity of
Road
Traffic legislation which can defy interpretation
but
still requires to be enforced.
This, then, is the changing environment through which the British
Police Service has evolved from the inception of Peel's Metropolitan
Police in 1829, through the system of City, County and Borough
Forces to the modern streamlined Regionalised entity of today.
218 July 1979
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