The New Policing

Eugene McLaughlin

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2006
• Print ISBN: 9780803989054, 9780803989047
• eBook ISBN: 9781446238240
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

The New Policing provides a comprehensive introduction to the critical issues confronting policing today. It incorporates an overview of traditional approaches to the study of the police with a discussion of current perspectives. The book goes on to examine key themes, including:

- the core purpose of contemporary policework;

- the reconfiguration of police culture;

- organisational issues and dilemmas currently confronting the police;

- the managerial reforms and professional; innovations that have been implemented in recent years;

- the future of policing, security and crime control.

In offering this discussion of the nature and role of the police, The New Policing illustrates the need to re-examine and re-think the theoretical perspectives that have constituted policing studies. Examining evidence from the United Kingdom, the United States and other western societies, the book promotes and enables an understanding of the cultural and symbolic significance of policing in society.

This ground-breaking text has been constructed to ensure that it touches on all the key issues that any course on police and policing will cover. It is an essential purchase for all students of policing and criminal justice, and academics and professionals working in this field.

---

The Cultural Construction of the Police

1

---

This chapter considers how a very particular cultural representation of the British police was established prior to and in many respects anticipated sociological analysis of policing. Today, the police constable, or ‘bobby on the beat’ can be found in virtually every tourist gift shop in London in a bewildering number of formats: postcards, key rings, puppets, dolls, teddy bears, coffee mugs, T-shirts all carry this instantly recognizable image of the English police. An avuncular ‘bobby’ has even featured on the front page of brochures for holidays in London. No other European capital carries such an array of police-based tourist trinkets. We must look to North America for comparable merchandising of the police officer. The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) registered its initials as a trademark in August 1998 in an attempt to halt the proliferation of cheap ‘tacky’ imitations of the force’s badge and other symbols that the Commissioner of the LAPD believed created confusion and threatened ‘to dilute the authority of LAPD officers’ (Guardian, 6 August 1998). In 1997 the Royal Canadian Mounted Police took similar action in relation to ‘Mountie’ merchandise proclaiming that every souvenir company wishing to use the instantly recognizable ‘redcoat’ image would have to clear copyright approval with a special licensing body. The Canadian government supported fully the new regulatory framework on the grounds that the ‘Mountie’ was not just an important police image but in certain respects the most expressive self-image of the Canadian nation. The process of public relations management was completed with the Disney Corporation acquisition of the licensing rights to all products bearing the image of the ‘Mountie’ (Gittings, 1998), generating accusations that the Canadian government was supporting the ‘Disney-fication’ of policing. And post 9/11, the image of the NYPD has been culturally and commercially revalued as illustrated by a new wave of heroic representations on sale. A general point to note, therefore, is that, within certain societies, the police officer can acquire a representative status that stands at the very centre of the popular cultural imagination (Ericson, 1989; Loader and Mulcahy, 2003).

What is truly significant is that the English ‘bobby’ has been culturally constituted through a set of popular cultural storylines which underscore his essential ‘difference’ from the police officers of other countries (McLaughlin and Murji, 1998). Numerous publications continue to assert that he is the finest police officer in the world: a faithful, incorruptible public servant who is unwavering in his commitment to the community; part of the ‘thin blue line’ that marks out an orderly society from a disorderly one; unarmed because he works with broad-based public consent and respect but ‘armed’ with prestige and street wisdom rather than power (Radzinowicz, 1955; Critchley, 1967; Ascoli, 1979). This ‘exceptionalist’ discourse has also exercised a powerful hold over police scholarship.

As we shall see in later chapters, sociological interest in the UK police force in its own right was to come later. For now, we need to look at how the police were depicted in contemporary press, fiction, film and TV in order to throw light on how the ‘bobby’ came to be such an important icon of ‘Englishness’. To date most discussion of the origins of the positive image of the English ‘bobby’ reproduces the discourse of the ‘native genius’ of far-sighted reformers who created him and the unique constitutional settlement and bureaucratic processes that legitimated the police mandate in England. According to this perspective, the English not only laid down a unique policing model but devised a constitutional framework within which policing, civil liberties and social order could not just be reconciled but interwoven as an exemplary form of liberal democratic citizenship. This chapter seeks to complement and complicate this ‘national feeling for policing’ perspective by focusing on the intersecting popular cultural practices that re-imagined the police constable from being the most un-English of ideas into a multi-dimensional icon of English national identity.

This chapter does not propose to re-tell and re-argue the history of the British police. Suffice to say that a considerable amount of political work had to take place in order for ‘the police’ (this most ‘un-English’) of institutions to be first of all sheltered from popular resentment and hostility and gradually transformed into one which could be ideologically celebrated as the epitome of Englishness (Critchley, 1967; Ascoli, 1979; Gatrell, 1990; Emsley, 1991; Reynolds, 1998). Newman (1987) argues that in the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth century we witness systematic efforts to constitute a mythological ‘Englishness’. The quintessential characteristics and values of ‘Englishness’ materialized in a variety of political, cultural and institutional settings. The English character was seen to be marked by robust common sense; a sense of fair play and humour; decency; self-restraint; pragmatism; a sense of duty; chivalry; an individualism bordering on eccentricity; under-statement; and team spirit. Moreover, the English were seen as patriots rather than nationalists – patriotism being defined as an unconscious individual predilection and nationalism a consciously expressed collective sentiment (Colls and Dodd, 1986). What is interesting is that Hobsbawm and Ranger (1983) have detailed how quintessential markers of ‘Englishness’ were initially denounced and rejected as unacceptable departures from ‘English’ practice and custom. The police provide us with one of the most striking examples of this process of cultural metamorphosis. As we shall see, initial public responses to the ‘bobby’ did not envisage him as a defining representation of the English character.

The cultural construction of the English police constable

It is hard to convey the depth of resistance to the idea of ‘police’ in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century England. Available evidence suggests that, because of public sensitivities, considerable attention was paid to the image and styling, demeanour and status of the new police before they finally joined the parish watch (the ‘Charlies’) on the streets of central London at 6 p.m. Tuesday, 29 September 1829 (Lyman, 1964; Miller, 1977; Palmer, 1988; Hay and Snyder, 1989; Reynolds, 1989; Beattie, 2002; Harris, 2004). As Clive Emsley notes because of the English antipathy to a standing army quartered at home, Metropolitan Police constables did not, in any way, look continental or military. They were dressed in:

top hats, uniforms of blue, swallow-tail coats with the minimum of decoration, in contrast to the short scarlet tunics with colour facings and piping of the British infantry; the constable’s weaponry was limited to a wooden truncheon, though cutlasses were available for emergencies and for patrolling dangerous beats, and inspectors and above could carry pocket pistols. (Emsley, 1991, p. 25)

The new force’s officially defined mandate was crime prevention, and constables were given written instructions stressing the need to be civil and obliging to people of every rank, and to respect private property at all times. The force was headed not by a government minister but by two independent commissioners. Even though the ‘new police’ were drawn from the ‘ordinary classes’, they faced considerable derision, public hostility and violent resistance to this most ‘un-English’ of innovations from many different sectors. Well-attended public meetings, placards, posters and petitions demanded the abolition of the ‘robin redbreasts’, ‘crushers’, ‘bluebottles’, ‘bobbies’, ‘coppers’, ‘raw lobsters’ and ‘Peelers’. The middle classes protested against having to pay for a public service that both lowered the tone of their neighbourhoods and they did not believe would succeed. The working class objected to the clampdown on leisure pursuits and the unprecedented regulation of public space. London parishes took issue with central government control while police magistrates complained about their loss of power. Political radicals and nascent trade unions objected to the introduction of an ‘alien’ force of gendarmerie, spies and uniformed troublemakers (see Storch, 1975; Reynolds, 1998). The press, both popular and otherwise, highlighted controversial police actions, with The Times commenting that the new police was an instrument ‘for the purposes of the arbitrary aggression upon the liberties of the people’ (The Times, 10 January 1842).

Indeed, such was the depth of public animosity that at the conclusion of the inquest into the murder of PC Robert Culley during a political riot in Clerkenwell on 12 May 1833, the coroner’s jury brought in a verdict of ‘justifiable homicide’ (see Thurston, 1967). The jurors concluded ‘that no Riot Act was read nor any proclamation advising the people to disperse; that the Government did not take proper precautions to prevent the meeting assembling; and that the conduct of the Police was ferocious, brutal and unprovoked by the people’ (quoted in Gould and Waldren, 1986, p. 14). The jurors were feted as public heroes – indeed, a coin was minted to commemorate ‘this glorious victory for English liberty’.

There was further public outcry when the police began to expand: for instance, when the Metropolitan Police established a detective department in 1842 and when new police were introduced into other cities in the course of the nineteenth century. In certain parts of the country the new police were forced physically from the streets (see Storch, 1975, 1976; Philips and Storch, 1999).

‘One of us’: popular cultural representations of the new police

The foregoing is not meant to serve as a definitive survey of the public controversy surrounding the introduction of the new police. However, it does suggest that a considerable amount of very basic cultural as well as political work would have to take place in order for this most ‘un-English’ of institutions to be first of all sheltered from popular resentment and gradually transformed into one which could be celebrated as ‘a very English institution … and the envy of less fortunate people – a reassuring symbol of all being well and tranquil in the world’ (Ascoli, 1979, p. 3). Three key measures were needed in order to achieve this.

First, the new police required sustained political patronage and judicial protection. A pattern was established where the authorities refused to investigate allegations of police violence, corruption or malpractice or established commissions and inquiries which either supported the police version of reality or opted for a ‘rotten apple’ theory to explain acts of deviance and asserted on every possible occasion that the English police was the finest in the world. The judiciary passed exemplary sentences on those who dared to attack or obstruct a constable carrying out his duty.

Second, as historians have established, the police had no choice but to negotiate often ‘unspoken’ contracts with various social groups. For example, police constables learned to ‘turn a blind eye’, as far as possible, to middle-class indiscretions and to respond as quickly as possible to their demands. In turn, the urban middle classes began to see the advantages of a routinized and predictable police presence. Political commentators noted with barely disguised relief how the Metropolitan Police handled the great Chartist demonstration in London 1848 and compared this with the mob violence that had engulfed other European capitals (Emsley, 1991). The new police were also forced, because of lack of organizational resources, to reach settlements with elements of the working class. Critical concessions included institutionalizing contacts with informal social control systems and leaving working-class neighbourhoods to police and order themselves (Storch, 1975; Humphries, 1981; White 1986). In certain parts of London, for example, there was virtually no police presence. The real site of struggle was control of movement of the disreputable working class on the main thoroughfares and public squares. The working class also came to realize that not only were the police not going to be abolished but that their presence could be useful in ‘sorting out’ local disputes. Evidence of this gradual transformation in attitudes can be found in the murder of PC Frederick Atkins on 22 September 1881, which resulted in unprecedented positive press coverage and public sympathy for the police (Gould and Waldren, 1986).

Third, and equally important I would argue to the stabilization of the new institution, was the rapid incorporation of the police constable into Victorian popular culture where he became a normalized presence. Popular cultural representations personalized the general and the abstract, concentrating not on the organization but on the character of the individual constable (Kift, 1986). The formal establishment of the Metropolitan Police detective department in 1842 attracted widespread attention in the popular press and was crucial to both the development of the English detective novel and eventually the myth of Scotland Yard. Prior to this, as Julian Symons has pointed out, crime stories had tended to bestow criminals (operating outside the law and on their own terms) with heroic status. Charles Dickens’ public support for the new detective force is very significant – extolling its worth stood in contrast with his barely hidden disdain for virtually every other public official (Collins, 1964; Welsh, 1971; Ousby, 1976; Haining, 1996). The ‘Penny Dreadfuls’ and ‘Yellow Back’ novels also provided Victorian readers, of all classes, with exciting stories which foregrounded the deeds of fictional Scotland Yard detectives. The detective novels barely mentioned the uniformed police constable. Even then, the detective is not portrayed as ‘all powerful’ and needs a cast of other characters to help him do his job (Symons, 1992).

Dickens’ Inspector Bucket of Bleak House (1853) was the first fictional English police detective and was based on Inspector Fielding of Scotland Yard. There was also the Night Inspector in Our Mutual Friend and his detective stories in Household Words. Dickens left an unfinished detective novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870). For him, the exploits of the new detectives and their villainous foes and rivals were the repository of the most exciting tales of the city. The detectives also provided the author with safe passage when he wanted to visit London’s notorious rookeries. Not surprisingly, the reader’s understanding of the criminal underworld and police work was constructed through Dickens’ detective based perspective.

The first full-length English language detective novel, Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone (1868), introduced Victorian England to Sergeant Cuff, who was based on the Scotland Yard detective Jonathan Whicher. In the introduction to a 1998 reprint of The Moonstone, Trodd argues that Sergeant Cuff’s presence ‘has all the social and moral ambiguity surrounding the new detective force appearing to those around him as thief taker, spy, domestic servant and public guardian’. Indeed, Collins positioned his detective very carefully: Sergeant Cuff is neither the main protagonist nor the narrator. He is professionally competent but socially unacceptable to the novel’s upper class characters. The local police are represented as socially acceptable but incompetent. The author’s intention may have been to accommodate middle-class fears of creating a too effective police force that does not know ‘its place’. Sergeant Cuff is also bestowed with an eccentricity that is intended to emphasize that he is not just a crime fighter but quintessentially English. He has an interest in gardens and is an ardent admirer of the virtues of the English rose. Importantly, Sergeant Cuff does not solve the crime, thus reassuring readers that the new detective police were fallible and needed to rely on the help of others (Ashley...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 The cultural construction of the police
• 2 The sociological construction of the police
• 3 Police studies: traditional perspectives
• 4 Police studies: new perspectives
• 5 Policing crime and disorder
• 6 Police culture
• 7 Police governance
• 8 Policing the new terrorism
• References
• Index