NCJ Number
194826
Journal
The British Journal of Criminology Volume: 42 Issue: 1 Dated: Winter 2002 Pages: 129-146
Date Published
2002
Length
18 pages
Annotation
This paper considers David Bayley's and Clifford Shearing's (1996) argument that policing systems in developed economies are currently undergoing radical change.
Abstract
Bayley and Shearing are concerned with "the watershed in the evolution" of the systems of crime control and law enforcement in the United States, Britain, and Canada. This perceived epochal change is characterized by the pluralizing of policing, which involves the end of the monopoly of crime control by the public police, and the search for identity by the public police, characterized by growing doubts about the effectiveness of traditional policing strategies in safeguarding the public from crime. This paper questions the degree to which current developments in policing should be interpreted as a sharp qualitative break with the past. By focusing on change, the risk is that the significant consistencies and continuities that are equally important in understanding historical trends are overlooked. The authors also question the extent to which the developments highlighted within the Bayley and Shearing transformation thesis can be viewed as global. This paper argues that the transformation thesis fails to take sufficient account of important differences between the nature and form of policing in North America and that of other countries such as Great Britain. The paper concludes by arguing that it is helpful to locate the changes within the framework of policing in a wider context. Rather than viewing current developments as a fragmentation of policing, this paper perceives them as part of a long-term process of formalization of social control. The key development that apparently has occurred in policing concerns shifts between primary and secondary social control activities. 1 figure, 1 table, and 52 references