Criminal Justice

Discuss, with the use of examples drawn from the research literature, the extent to which ‘the old administrative police force’, which worked to the principle that effective crime control was dependent on the amount of public money spent on the police has been transformed into a new, professional, managerialised police service based on principles of flexibility, diversity, equity, transparency, representativeness and cost-effectiveness’ (the bureaucratic model)

As long as criminal activity exists within the world, there will be a demand from society to control and alleviate it.

Traditional methods of policing rely heavily on deterrence through a visible presence of the police on patrol. However, many social changes have occurred over the decades and traditional policing methods may not be as effective in addressing the needs of the communities. Communities have become more diverse and the problems have changed as drugs and violent crimes have become more prevalent in urban communities. Additionally, the budget deficits of the early 1990s prompted law enforcement administrators to seek out more creative solutions for providing law enforcement services to the community. This had led to the re-organisation of the police services offered to the public, inevitably leading to the more direct, managerialised approach.

Over the last few decades there have often been changes to the structural model that the police forces within England and Wales adhere to. However, the present state of the police can be strongly related to the ‘control function’, that Stevens (2000) highlights, leading to the ideas of the ‘bureaucratic model’ of policing.

The bureaucratic model of policing emerged during the turn of the century in America in an effort to reduce the amount of political influence found in policing. The model stressed a hierarchical structure for police organisations with a centralised authority largely responsible for generating organisational policies and procedures (http://db.bbc.co.uk/crime/fighters/policeforce, 2004). The scientific principles of organisational theory were applied to police organisations in an effort to improve the efficiency. The police became formalised in their structure and an emphasis was placed on professionalism. The primary function of the police was crime control and the enforcement of the law (www.police.uk). This is the model of policing which is largely applied in the modern day world. There is an emphasis upon order maintenance and the management of policing issues.

Many problems and issues can be raised about both the community based administrative approach and that of the professional, controlled form of policing. The police work with the community in identifying problems and employing strategies, often focuses enforcement efforts on specific problems such as drug hot spots, to reduce both crime and the fear of crime in the community. However, community policing programs also stress a very different administrative style than previous models of policing. The implications for a community based program are far broader than merely reducing crime in the community; there is also a fundamental change in policing organisations and administrative