Policing: Continuity,Consensus and Controversy The Political Quarterly Lecture 2010

While British policing has an unparalleled worldwide reputation for excellence, its system of governance has not been formally examined for almost fifty years. Known as the tripartite system, giving overlapping but compatible powers and duties to the Home Secretary, to local Police Authorities and to Chief Officers of Police, it is now long overdue for reconsideration and adjustment. More than one political party is suggesting significant reform but only of individual parts of the system. Given other issues concerning the police, particularly the number of United Kingdom forces and the fixation with the number of police officers as an indication of political success, there is now an urgent need for agreement that policing in Britain should have a holistic and cross‐party re‐examination, possibly but not necessarily in the form of a Royal Commission.     

The challenge of diversity management: police reform and the Arab minority in Israel

Diverse societies present different challenges for police forces that have to gain the trust and legitimacy of minorities. Police forces must develop the ability to engage with diversity and overcome their own biases and prejudices in order to better serve minorities. Police reforms, however, may fail to address the challenge successfully if core problems are not clearly identified. In such a case, reforms may be misdirected and fail to achieve the desired results. This paper, based on a study of the Arab minority in Israel, suggests a bottom-up approach that concentrates on identifying the attitudes of minority groups as the basis for any reform plan. A survey was conducted among Arab citizens to identify general attitudes, perceptions of over-policing and under-policing and assessment of three potential reforms; recruitment of minority members into the police, community involvement in policing, and cultural training for police officers.     

警察文化与警察文化建设

警察文化是警察机关在长期警务活动实践中逐步形成的、为全体民警所认同并遵守的,带有警察特点的使命与愿景、精神与价值观、警务理念,以及在警务活动、管理制度、民警行为方式上的体现和对外形象的总和。它是警察机关以共同目标为核心的内在精神与外在表现的统一。警察文化是警察精神世界中最核心、最本质的东西,它以观念的形式来调控组织及个体的行为,是警察事业的制高点。警察文化建设是对警察机关管理中的正规化管理的补充和强化,将其潜移默化地贯注于民警的行为之中,是民警为实现警察目标自觉地团结协作的过程。研究警察文化的目的就是在警察机关中培养警察文化,使全体民警树立共同的警察价值观。     

Representative Bureaucracy,Organizational Integrity,and Citizen Coproduction: Does an Increase in Police Ethnic Representativeness Reduce Crime?

In 1999, the U.K. government set force‐specific 10‐year targets for recruiting new police officers from ethnic minorities. Using these targets as instrumental variables, this study finds that this policy mandating an increase in the share of ethnic minority officers in a given force is associated with a decrease in the number of crimes in the area under the force's jurisdiction during the 10‐year period. It is argued that greater representativeness and diversity within a public organization improves organizational integrity, which influences bureaucrats’ attitudes and behaviors toward minority citizens. In the context of policing, diversity can mitigate the institutionalized practice of officers acting on implicit assumptions about minorities being inherently more unlawful than whites: Police representativeness is associated with a decrease in the overrepresentation of black individuals among those subject to “stop and search.” Such a change may make minority citizens more willing to cooperate in the coproduction of public values, facilitating the attainment of organizational goals.     

Defining Policing Policies and the Political Agenda

Police officers influence the British policy process through their representative organizations. One of the main ways in which this is achieved is through police domination of the definition of certain sorts of issues at the central governmental level. This definition also occurs at the local level. Analysis of the location of the police as an interest group in the structure of the British state suggests how the politics of policing might be understood. Five issues relating to the police policies towards behaviour -street assaults, 'rural public disorder'. rape, battered women and racially motivated assaults - illustrate how the police define issues and affect the policy process. The debates about police 'politicization' and accountability should be set in the context of the relationship between political structure, issue definition and the political agenda.     

Leadership with an Enduring Impact: The Legacy of Chief Burtell Jefferson of the Metropolitan Police Department of Washington, D.C.

On January 13, 1978, after nearly 30 years of public service, Burtell Jefferson became the first African American to serve as chief of the Metropolitan Police Department of Washington, D.C. This profile describes his personal and professional journey and describes—from the perspective of a cadre of active and retired police chiefs and chief executive officers—the impact of Jefferson's career on the Metropolitan Police Department and policing in America more broadly. Jefferson's story, an exemplary illustration of public sector leadership, has profound implications for contemporary efforts to ensure the equality of employment opportunity. Jefferson's career provides a model of effective leadership that is applicable across organizations and sectors. He not only led his organization well but also encouraged and developed generations of future leaders.     

Forcible Stops: Police and Citizens Speak Out

A recent federal district court decision found that the New York City Police Department engaged in unconstitutional policing. Officers stopped millions of minority young men over the span of several years. Most of those stopped were innocent of any wrongdoing. This article uses qualitative and quantitative research methods to investigate these inequities, examining the views of both the police and those who were stopped. The authors find that pressure on officers emanating from headquarters was responsible for much of the illegal behavior by lower‐level officers. Additionally, youth in minority neighborhoods felt mistreated by the police; this led to distrust in the police. The authors suggest solutions to ameliorate this painful episode in police practice. The article concludes with specific recommendations such as reducing management pressure on officers and police developing community partnerships.     

Governing disorder: the Australian Federal Police and Australia's new regional frontier

Abstract

The Australian Federal Police has in recent years become an important actor in both the implementation and design of Australian-led state building interventions in Australia's near region of Southeast Asia and the South Pacific. The article focuses on the recent expansion of the Australian Federal Police as a way of understanding the emergence of a new partly (and strategically) deterritorialized, ‘regional’ frontier of the Australian state. Within this new frontier, whose fluctuating outlines the Australian Federal Police not only polices but also to a considerable extent shapes and reshapes, as one of the primary expert agencies on identifying and managing transnational security risks, Australian security is portrayed as contingent on the quality of the domestic governance of neighbouring states, thereby creating linkages between the hitherto domestic governing apparatus of the Australian state and those of other countries. This allows for the rearticulation of the problems affecting intervened states and societies – indeed, their very social and political structures – in the depoliticized terms of the breakdown of ‘law and order’ and the absence of ‘good governance’, which not only rationalizes emergency interventions to stabilize volatile situations, but also delegitimizes and potentially criminalizes oppositional politics. The Australian Federal Police, however, does more than merely provide justification for intrusive state transformation projects. Its transnational policing activities open up a field of governance within the apparatus of intervened states that exists in separation from international and domestic law. The constitution of such interventions ‘within’ the state leaves intact the legal distinction between the domestic and international spheres and therefore circumvents the difficult issue of sovereignty. As a result, police and other executive-administrative actors obtain discretionary ordering powers, without dislodging the sovereign governments of intervened countries.     

Learning Organizations in the Public Sector? A Study of Police Agencies Employing Information and Technology to Advance Knowledge

In an attempt to reap the purported benefits that "knowledge workers" bring to organizations, many police departments have shifted to a community problem–oriented policing philosophy. Rather than focusing on enforcement and incarceration, this philosophy is based on the dissemination of information to promote a proactive, preventative approach to reduce crime and disorder. In keeping with much of the contemporary literature on the "learning organization" (sometimes called the "knowledge organization"), police departments hope to deter crime through the knowledge benefits that derive from information and its associated technologies. With goals to stimulate productivity, performance, and effectiveness, police departments across the country are employing information technology to turn police officers into problem solvers and to leverage their intellectual capital to preempt crime and neighborhood deterioration.
Many public and private organizations are striving to change their operations toward this same concept of the knowledge worker. Information technology is often touted as a vehicle for capturing, tracking, sorting, and providing information to advance knowledge, thus leading to improvements in service–delivery efforts. Based on an extensive study of police departments that have attempted to implement a knowledge–worker paradigm (supported by information technology initiatives), this research explores the feasibility, effectiveness, and limitations of information and technology in promoting the learning organization in the public sector.     

The thin blue line in schools: New evidence on school-based policing across the U.S.

U.S. public school students increasingly attend schools with sworn law enforcement officers present. Yet little is known about how these school resource officers (SROs) affect school environments or student outcomes. Our study uses a fuzzy regression discontinuity (RD) design with national school-level data from 2014 to 2018 to estimate the impacts of SRO placement. We construct this discontinuity based on the application scores for federal school-based policing grants of linked police agencies. We find that SROs effectively reduce some forms of violence in schools, but do not prevent gun-related incidents. We also find that SROs intensify the use of suspension, expulsion, police referral, and arrest of students. These increases in disciplinary and police actions are consistently largest for Black students, male students, and students with disabilities.     

Beyond Enforcement: Welcomeness,Local Law Enforcement,and Immigrants

Studies of local law enforcement actions toward immigrants show that while some cities engage in enforcement, many others do not. The extent and determinants of enforcement have been assessed, but these studies have not evaluated the full range of practices, including welcoming practices, toward immigrants. This article introduces the concept of “welcomeness,” develops a framework for measuring it, and, using a nationwide survey of local police departments, examines how widely departments are welcoming (or unwelcoming) to immigrants. The data show that many police departments have consciously and deliberately developed practices intended to foster positive relationships between the police and immigrants and to encourage immigrants to call the police for assistance.

Practitioner Points

• Welcomeness encompasses a range of practices toward immigrants that are often intentionally created, thoughtfully implemented, and found in a variety of communities.
• The dimensions of welcomeness provide a framework for police departments to assess their practices and provide a model for police departments that want to engage positively with immigrants.
• Welcoming practices may improve interactions between police officers and immigrants and may improve immigrants’ perceptions of local law enforcement.
• Welcoming police departments often have a deeper commitment to community policing.

     

Why do street-level bureaucrats risk themselves for others? The case of Israeli police officers

What factors influence police officers’ willingness to risk themselves for others? Police officers are street-level bureaucrats, who are not only given the mandate to use deadly force in order to keep public order but also risk their most important resource – their lives – to protect society. We suggest three factors that prompt police officers to risk their lives: individual characteristics (a desire to gain respect and recognition, and testing one's courage, ideology, and personality), organizational conditions (expectations of peers and supervisors, promotion opportunities), and environmental context (a hostile working environment and the importance of public opinion to them). Using an abductive approach combined with a triangulated qualitative method, our findings indicate that personal characteristics are indeed important, but so too are organizational conditions and environmental context. The practical insight, therefore, is that decision makers ‘can’, in various formal and informal ways, influence street-level bureaucrats’ behaviour. Here, the interactions among managers, workers, and clients are a crucial element.     

What Really Happens: Department Secretary Appointments,Contracts and Performance Pay in the Australian Public Service

This account of the practice in the Australian Public Service (APS) for appointing department secretaries, using contracts and rewarding for performance, is based on my own experience in being appointed, reappointed and not reappointed, and in receiving and not receiving performance pay. It also draws on my experience as Public Service Commissioner in assisting with appointments and performance pay of secretaries. I also discuss weaknesses in the current system, and the drift to ‘politicisation’. I was first appointed as a department secretary at the end of 1993 after 25 years in the APS including 15 years in the Senior Executive Service (SES) in three different portfolios (Social Security, Finance and Defence). I was secretary of three different departments (Administrative Services, Housing, and Health, some of which went through changes in name and responsibilities during my tenure) before being appointed as Public Service Commissioner from the beginning of 2002. I retired from the APS in June 2005.     

Entrepreneurial Police and Drug Enforcement Policy

The hypothesis that drug enforcementis relatively high in local jurisdictions where statelaws dictate that police retain seized assets istested in the context of a reduced-form equation ofthe supply and demand for drug enforcement. Theresults are robust across model specifications, someof which directly control for the level of drug use:legislation permitting police to keep seized assetsraises drug arrests as a portion of total arrests byabout 20 percent and drug arrest rates by about 18percent. Police bureaucrats apparently desirediscretionary budget increases, and they haveconsiderable discretion in determining resourceallocation.     

继往开来 再铸辉煌——在铁道警官高等专科学校60周年校庆大会上的讲话

铁道警官高等专科学校建校60年来,培育了一大批高素质公安专门人才,为铁路公安工作和公安队伍建设作出了突出贡献。在新的历史时期,铁道警官高等专科学校要以60周年校庆为新的历史起点,紧紧抓住公安院校招录培养体制改革的机遇,不断深化教学和管理机制改革,积极扩大服务面向,不断改善办学条件,积极申办本科教育,进一步拓展办学空间,提升办学层次,增强教学科研水平,真正把学校建设成为公安专门人才培养高地、公安理论研究高地和科学技术创新高地。     

Reducing traffic fatalities in the American States by upgrading seat belt use laws to primary enforcement

A key component of crime deterrence is the certainty of detection, but in 2005 seat belt laws in 27 states prohibited law enforcement officers from ticketing an observed violation unless the driver is stopped for another offense, which is referred to as secondary enforcement. Thirteen states and the District of Columbia have upgraded from secondary to primary enforcement, which authorizes police to stop a motor vehicle if a driver or occupant covered by the law is observed not using a seat belt. To test the impact of seat belt enforcement provisions, cross‐sectional time series regressions are estimated for annual driver and occupant fatality rates in the American states from 1990 to 2002. Using several control variables for other traffic policies and state demographics, the results indicate primary enforcement is more effective in saving lives than secondary enforcement. Furthermore, upgrading to a primary law enhances the effectiveness of an existing state mandatory use law. © 2006 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management     

Preventing the Use of Deadly Force: The Relationship between Police Agency Policies and Rates of Officer‐Involved Gun Deaths

Killings of civilians by police officers have become a matter of intense public concern in the United States. High‐profile deaths, especially those of black citizens, have caused outrage and sparked the Black Lives Matter movement with calls for dramatic changes in how police agencies operate. However, little systematic research exists to answer questions about which policies should be ended or put in place to reduce these deaths. The authors leverage a large data set of gun deaths by police officers in the United States, combined with agency‐level policy data and community demographic data, to examine whether certain policies are associated with lower or higher rates of officer‐involved gun deaths. Findings show that one policy—the requirement that officers file a report when they point their guns at people but do not fire—is associated with significantly lower rates of gun deaths.     

新形势下警察危机公关工作初探

警察危机公关是警察公共关系的重要组成部分。在我国经济社会快速发展和互联网等新媒体影响力与日俱增的新形势下,公众对公安机关的社会管理服务和自身素质形象高度关注并监督甚严,公安机关稍有不慎不当,极易形成警察危机事件。要认真研究警察危机事件的成因和特点,正确把握相关原则和方法,切实提高预防处置的能力和水平。     

Response to Peter Shergold

Andrew Podger wrote an article in the June 2007 AJPA entitled ‘What Really Happens: Department Secretary Appointments, Contracts and Performance Pay in the Australian Public Service’. Dr Peter Shergold replied to his criticisms in the September issue of AJPA. This short response from Podger is the final rejoinder. In a second paper following this rejoinder the present Australian Public Service Commissioner comments on public service independence today.     

警风构成论

了解警风的构成要素对于认识警风及其发展具有重要意义。警风是由警察认识、警察价值观、警察行为方式诸要素构成的一个有机整体。警察认识是多样化的、多层次的,既有日常感知层面的认识,也有抽象理论层面的认识,它是警风的依存基础。警察价值观是警察组织生存的基点和灵魂,是警察善恶是非判断的标准,是警察群体对所认同的目标持续一贯的追求,主导着警察制度的性质和方向,决定着警察的行为方式,它是警风的内在灵魂,在深层次上制约着警风的形成与发展。警察行为方式是警风的外显机制,是警察认识和警察价值观的外化,它包括交流、合作和冲突等。