Where are the police going? Originally published in 1974, Peter Evans
argues that their traditional relationship with the public was being
dangerously threatened, a situation neither the police themselves nor
the public wanted to see worsen. In his analysis of the pressures and
influences that were leading many policemen to question their role in
society, Mr Evans looks first at the immense problems created for the
police by increasingly violent and sophisticated crime, protest and
terrorism. The attitudes of the police, he says, are in keeping with
their nature. They are a minority, a semi-closed community, with
astonishing records of long-serving families, giving police forces
something of a tribal flavour. They have their own slang. Like miners,
dockers or railwaymen, their jobs were established in Victorian times
and are now faced with a rapid technological change – for the
police, a ‘revolution’. Yet there is one important difference: the
police must remain manpower intensive, otherwise precious contact with
the public is lost. They must also remain craftsmen, not become merely
technicians. Mr Evans concludes that successive governments are to
blame for not giving the police the sort of backing they deserve –
finance, for example, and not merely pious expressions of support.
This failure has widened the gap between police and public because of
shortage of men, has left London in particular dangerously
under-patrolled, and has contributed towards those pressures that
tempt some officers to err. There is nothing wrong with the traditions
of the police, although some policemen sometimes do not live up to
them. The police need more resources and more opportunity to apply
these traditions, so that the unique character of British policing is
not lost. The author felt there was both time and need for reform in
the decade before 1984. Today it can be read in its historical
context.
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Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9781000854435
Publisert
2023
Utgave
1. utgave
Utgiver
Vendor
Routledge
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter