NCJ Number
138806
Date Published
1992
Length
74 pages
Annotation
This essay reviews and summarizes the voluminous police research of the past decade in response to a crisis of confidence in British policing.
Abstract
The essay provides a brief account of research on policing in Britain up to the 1980's, considers the main constituencies and bodies responsible for generating police research in the 1980's, and presents the themes and results of recent work by addressing a series of questions about police performance and the public's expectations. Current police research is primarily policy-oriented and evaluative and much is limited in scope to immediate managerial concerns in contrast to a previous focus on issues derived from a variety of social theories. A danger exists that the quantitative explosion of police research in the 1980's is not matched by a qualitative expansion of understanding. Also evident is a lack of effort to situate particular police research in the wider context of social, political, and economic change at national and international levels. Needed now is more synthesis of research both in general texts and in projects that relate to broader theoretical issues and other empirical work. 22 footnotes and 405 references