Exploring strategic perspectives on the Special Constabulary
| Author | Matthew Callender,Iain Britton,Laura Knight |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0032258X211028272 |
| Published date | 01 December 2022 |
| Date | 01 December 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Exploring strategic
perspectives on the Special
Constabulary
Matthew Callender , Iain Britton and Laura Knight
Institute for Public Safety, Crime and Justice, University of Northampton,
Northampton, UK
Abstract
This article explores senior and strategic perspectives on the volunteer Special
Constabulary in England and Wales, based on 38 interviews with senior police leaders.
The strategic context and leadership of Special Constabularies represents an overlooked
element of police leadership, given the scale and potential of volunteer officers to impact
upon policing delivery and reform. The paper identifies tension between a traditional
strategic paradigm that frames bounded expectations of the role of Special Constables,
emphasising differences between them and their paid counterparts, and considerations
of police reform which prompt different thinking in respect of practice, identity and
integration of volunteer officers.
Keywords
Special Constabulary, police leadership, police reform
Introduction
The strategic leadership of the Special Constabulary in police forces represents an
important but largely overlooked element of police leadership. This paper, in the first
study of its kind, explores the perspectives of senior and strategic leaders within policing
in respect of the volunteer Special Constabulary in England and Wales, and the strategic
culture reflected in their perspectives.
It is difficult to find more than an occasional or cursory mention of Special Constables
in mainstream policy, professional and academic discourse of policing. Britton and
Corresponding author:
Matthew Callender, Institute for Public Safety, Crime and Justice, University of Northamp ton, Waterside
Campus, University Drive, Northampton NN1 5PH, UK.
Email: matthew.callender@northampton.ac.uk
The Police Journal:
Theory, Practice and Principles
ªThe Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/0032258X211028272
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2022, Vol. 95(4) 691–712
692 The Police Journal: Theory, Practice and Principles 95(4)
Callender (2018: 149) describe the Special Constabulary as ‘missing in action’ across
strategic thinking and reform in policing; suggesting that a ‘regular-centrism’ (2018:
150) sits pervasively across policing strategic discourse, shaping the priorities of police
reform and debates on police professionalism. The numbers of ‘regular’ police officers
has tended to retain a privileged, symbolic position in debates on the future strategic
challenges for policing and has often been centre-stage within a prominent strategic
discourse on the impact of austerity on policing (Sindall and Sturgis, 2013). In marked
contrast to this emphasis on ‘regular’ paid police officer roles and numbers, a near-
halving of the number of Special Constables in recent years (Britton, 2017a, 2017b,
2018; Home Office, 2019) and commensurate reductions in the hours served (Britton
et al., 2018) have received only occasional and very limited attention at a strategic,
senior or national level in policing. While there has been a ‘rhetoric of growth’ for the
Special Constabulary, at least episodically, across recent decades (Britton and Callender,
2018: 150) and it is true that ‘successive governments have endeavoured to promote,
reinvigorate and increase the numb ers of Special Constables’ (Bulloc k and Leeney,
2016: 483), such growth narratives have simply not materialised or sustained in reality
(Britton and Callender, 2018; Britton et al., 2016, 2018; Hieke, 2017). Where there is a
strategic attention upon the Special Constabulary these are primarily to be found in
peripheral, niched strategic documents, such as national strategies for the Special Con-
stabulary or for ‘Citizens in Policing’ (cf. NPCC, 2018), rather than within broader,
generalist strategic documents on the future of policing. This strategic picture suggests
an unfulfilled strategic potential (Britton and Callender, 2018; Britton and Knight,
2016), summed up by Caless (2018: 25) who talks of:
...frustration with the unnecessary short-sightedness of individual police forces and with
the Home Office’s rather feeble adoption of an incomplete national strateg y for police
volunteers. So much more could be done than is being done. So much more use could be
made of special constables.
The practical scale and reality on the ground is far more substantive than this relative
strategic neglect would suggest. Within England and Wales, the Special Constabulary
has a long history in policing (Leon, 1991, 2018a, 2018b), and currently over 10,000
volunteer Special Constables perform approximately 3 million hours of service across
their communities in England and Wales in an average year (Britton et al., 2018; Home
Office, 2019). The position of the Special Constabulary in policing and the meanings of
volunteering are being reconstituted in pra ctice, despite the absence of much wider
strategic debate. Special Constables over the past two decades have experienced a steady
shift towards a primarily front-line deployment model increasingly equivalent, at least in
respect of operational context, to their paid ‘regular’ police officer colleagues (Bullock
and Leeney, 2016). Special Constables are increasingly engaged in specialist roles and
teams (Britton et al., 2018, 2019b).
Developments in role, deployment, s pecialisation and training within the Special
Constabulary can be conceptualised as representing elements of a ‘professionalisation’
for volunteer police officers. However, specific consideration of the Special Constabu-
lary has largely been absent from wider calls to ‘professionalise’ poli cing and from
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