Handbook of Policing, Ethics and Professional Standards

Allyson MacVean, Peter Spindler, Allyson MacVean, Peter Spindler

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780415630757
• eBook ISBN: 9781136222757
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

Low confidence in the police and the increasing crime rates during the 1990s led to a series of government initiatives directed at changing both the structure and management of the police service. In 2006 in an attempt to define what a principled police service should resemble, the Home Office Minister, Hazel Blears, announced the development of new Code of Professional Standards for the police service, informed by the Taylor Review of 2005. While there has been a growing awareness of the role of Professional Standards within law enforcement activity, to date there has been little scholarly debate on the understanding of ethics and how that is applied to practical policing.This book provides a single text of different perspectives on how professional standards and ethics has been conceptualised and developed into practical policing processes for the purposes of policing, not only by the police but also by the partner agencies. Leading academics and practitioners consider the moral minefield of policing through examinations of undercover operatives, MI5 and deaths in police custody as well as looking forward to the future considerations and practices in professional conduct.

It will be of interest to those working within the field of policing as well as students and academics focussed on policing and criminal justice.

Part I

Theories, structures and
challenges of professional
standards

1	Introduction to Part I
	Allyson MacVean

Can theories and principles of professional standards help us to understand what are the ethical problems; and can professional standards help solve these? This dilemma is elaborated and expanded by the first contributor, Jonathan Hughes, as he identifies some of the key issues that need to be considered in developing and assessing professional standards. Using theoretical models, Hughes suggests that the ethics of policing that underpin professional standards may have a different focus from the ethics of more traditional professions. This thought-provoking chapter articulates how the relationship between the ‘professional’ and ‘service user’ defines professional standards; yet the relationship between the police and citizens is defined within a social contract and not an actual agreement as in many professions. Hughes argues that the unique powers invested in the police by the state, which include use of force and power of arrest, require a distinct set of moral obligations and professional standards to that of other professions.

While there has been constant debate about professional standards and policing with integrity, so too has consideration been given to how those officers who have engaged in misconduct be disciplined. William Taylor, author of the Taylor Review, takes an innovative look at how the change from a ‘discipline code’ to a ‘code of conduct’ shifted the focus from a culture of blame and sanction to one of development and improvement. Taylor details his experience of conducting the Review of Police Disciplinary Arrangements and how this has provided a more robust system to develop and enhance professional standards within the police organization

While the police require their own Professional Standards Department, the need for independent oversight to investigate and oversee particular incidents of police misconduct is central to maintaining and securing public confidence. Len Jackson provides a detailed account of how the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) contributes to professional standards by ensuring that lessons learnt are widely disseminated to all police forces in England and Wales. While the reporting and investigating element of the IPCC is widely acknowledged, other aspects of their work is discussed, including the development of the Performance Framework, which has established for the first time a series of agreed and consistent key indictors that provide an insight into how complaints are being dealt with locally.

The independent police complaints system for England and Wales is compare and contrasted against the role of the Police Complaints Commissioner for Scotland and the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service in the chapter by Ian Todd. This dual system of oversight provides an explanation as to why non-criminal complaints are overseen by the Commissioner and criminal complaints by the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service. Using case study examples, Ian Todd succintly explains why the Police Complaints Commissioner is the first independent oversight body with the power only to review and not investigate, unlike its English and Irish counterparts.

In combination, these contributions offer the reader an anthology of how police misbehaviour is theoretically constructed and understood in relation to professional standards, ethics and integrity. It provides a historical narrative of how police malfeasance was constructed within the police service and the response to dealing with it. It charts the shift of dealing with unprofessional behaviour through a discipline code to one of a code of conduct where the emphasis is on improvement and development. It also identifies the contemporary structures that have been developed to provide independent oversight of police misbehaviour to ensure that the police are not seen as being ‘above the law’.

2	Theory of professional standards and ethical policing
	Jonathan Hughes

What is the relation between professional standards and ethical policing? At first sight the answer to this question may seem obvious: in policing, as elsewhere, professional standards exist in order to promote ethical behaviour. This view, however, is both open to challenge and in need of elaboration. Sceptics can point to a range of non-moral functions and unintended consequences that may be associated with professional standards while those wishing to develop and implement professional standards need an account of how they can promote ethical behaviour. What are the ethical problems that professional standards can help to solve? Can professional standards succeed in solving those problems and if so how? What does this tell us about the sorts of ethical standards that we should seek to implement, and about how we should determine their content? The present chapter can only sketch the outline of an approach to such questions, but in doing so will hopefully identify some of the issues that need to be considered in developing or assessing professional standards.

Professionalism and professional ethics

The relation between professional standards and ethical policing is a particular instance of a more general relation between professional standards and professional ethics. Posing the issue in these terms raises questions about the concept of professionalism and its relevance to both ethics and policing.

The distinction between professions and other occupations is a matter of controversy, driven partly by the attempts of diverse occupational groups to claim for themselves the advantages associated with professionalism. There are, however, a number of characteristics that are widely taken to be indicative of professional status. These are of interest not only for definitional reasons (which I will suggest are relatively unimportant) but also because of what they indicate about the relation between professionalism and professional ethics.

First, professions are said to have a service orientation. Kleinig (1996, p. 31), for example, writes that

the traditional professions of law, medicine, architecture, education, and theology … have been thought to offer a valuable public service. Their practitioners have provided highly skilled and knowledgeable assistance in respect of some of our most important interests – our negotiations with others, our bodily integrity, our need for shelter, our intellectual development, and spiritual destiny.

Miller (2002, p. 43) similarly attributes to the professions an orientation towards ‘the satisfaction of certain fundamental needs, such as justice and health’.¹

Most would agree that policing in a democratic society has (or should have) a service orientation, although there is disagreement about what precisely it is. Central to most accounts are law enforcement and crime prevention, but other suggestions include promoting public safety and order, reducing fear, protecting rights, mediation and social engineering (Kleinig 1996, pp. 22–24; Neyroud and Beckley 2001, chapter 2).

The fact that professionals deal with matters of such importance to the welfare of the individuals affected, with the potential for great benefit or severe harm, makes the conduct of their work an intensely ethical matter. One way of understanding this is to see professional contexts as providing particular opportunities for acting in ways that satisfy or violate general principles of morality that apply in everyday life as well as in professional life. For example, the principles of beneficence (the duty to promote the wellbeing of others), respect for autonomy (the duty to respect the free choices of competent informed individuals and to provide the means of making such choices), and justice (the duty to treat people fairly in accordance with their deserts)² would suggest that those who are in a position to satisfy the needs and interests referred to above have at least a prima facie duty to do so.³

In addition to this, however, some commentators understand the service orientation of a profession as a commitment (Beauchamp and Childress 2009, p. 7) or pledge (Koehn 1994, p. 56) made by members of the profession, rather than merely a description of their field of operation. This is significant because general duties to assist others are often quite limited in the demands that they place on us, whereas duties based on voluntary undertakings, agreements or promises may be more extensive and weightier when balanced against other demands on an agent’s time and resources. The idea of professionalism as involving a commitment or pledge to supply certain kinds of service therefore provides the basis for attributing to professionals a set of duties that is both grounded in their professional role and more demanding than those held by ordinary members of the public.

A second characteristic commonly taken to be definitive of professional status is that professional practice is based on specialist knowledge or expertise, especially of a systematic or theoretical kind. Acquiring such knowledge requires a lengthy process of education or training, and so, according to some accounts, a requirement for degree-level education is also necessary for professional status (Kleinig 1996, p. 35).

The fact that the services provided by professionals depend on specialist knowledge means that clients cannot easily provide the services for themselves, nor judge whether those providing them are acting in their best interests. Clients are therefore vulnerable to harm resulting from incompetent or careless professional practice, or from deliberate exploitation or abuse of power. In this context, the moral principles of non-maleficence (the principle that we should avoid causing harm to others) and respect for autonomy might plausibly give rise to more specific duties aimed at preventing such outcomes – duties, for example, to ensure that professionals are competent for the jobs they take on, act in the best interests of clients, tell the truth and disclose relevant information, and obtain informed consent before acting on clients’ behalf.

Third, professions are said to be characterized by a high degree of autonomy and professional discretion. It is this that provides the arena for ethical decision-making by professionals. As Kleinig (1996, p. 38) puts it, ‘[t]he service they provide is not dictated by a rigid and closely defined set of rules but by judgement and skill anchored in a thorough grasp of the principles governing the service’. A key reason for allowing such discretion is that problems faced by professionals are often complex and their optimum solutions are dependent on their particular circumstances in such a way that they are not easily amenable to general rules. Professional discretion allows for flexible and context-sensitive responses, but also for bad judgement or abuse of discretionary power if its exercise is not guided by ethical considerations. The existence of professional discretion therefore creates a need for ethical awareness among practitioners and perhaps for guidance in the form of professional standards to assist practitioners in making discretionary decisions.

Other characteristics commonly associated with professions, but which are less plausibly thought of as criteria for professionalism, include professional associations, whose functions may include maintenance of a professional culture, training, accreditation and control of entry into the profession, self-regulation and possession of an ethical code.

Policing and professionalism

The characteristics discussed above give an indication of why professionals are typically thought to have particular ethical obligations distinct from those of everyday life. However, while the professionalization of policing has long had its advocates (Kleinig 1996, pp. 30–31), doubts have also been raised about this ambition. First, while police do employ specialist knowledge of certain kinds in carrying out their work, it has been questioned whether this is the right kind of knowledge to qualify them as professionals. Historically, degree-level education has not been required for entry into the police, and the skills required for the job have been thought of as primarily practical rather than theoretical and academic. Although there has been a move towards graduate entry, it has been questioned whether this is essential (rather than merely desirable) for the police role and whether the content of the educational provision that police recruits might be expected to have undergone is closely enough connected to the performance of their duties (as opposed to providing generic reasoning and personal skills) to underpin a claim to professionalism (Kleinig 1996, p. 37).

Second, it has been questioned whether the kinds of discretion enjoyed by police officers are sufficient to confer professional status. Noting a shift in some forces from ‘rule-driven’ to ‘value-driven’ policing, Kleinig (1996, p. 39) argues that value-driven guidelines still tend to be ‘top-down de...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Notes on Contributors
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction: Understanding professional standards and ethical policing
• PART I Theories, structures and myths of professional standards
• PART II Professional standards and ethical policing in practice
• PART III Models and comparative forms of professional standards
• PART IV Future considerations for professional standards and ethical policing
• References
• Index