Contemporary Issues in Policing - Term Paper Example

Contemporary Issues in Policing s Submitted by s: Introduction Law enforcement s are provided with various tasks that need a high level of integrity as far as the police agencies and oversight are concerned. In the event that this does not function well, the officers may develop a vulnerability to acting in a manner that is not lawful and one that is not within their sphere of activity (CJH SERIES, 2011, p. 1). In post-conflict environments and several non-conflict situations and the mediations that deal with police reforms are critically necessary especially in terms of reinstruction of the officers with precise attention to the values of civil liberties. Additionally, an endeavour that takes a more time is needed to develop an outline that will guide police oversight and accountability to ensure uprightness in the structures of the police force is reinforced. Accountability denotes a range of definitions that include the state of answerability, openness, efficient management and responsiveness (Newburn, 2008). Police accountability entails holding individual police officers together with law enforcement agencies responsible for efficiently delivering fundamental services that involve the control of crime while maintaining order (Calderon and Hernandez-Figueroa, 2013). This should be done while treating the people fairly and within the confines of the law. The police are supposed to maintain laws that deal with the due process, searches as well as seizures, arrest of offenders, discrimination and the laws that are associated with equal employment, sexual harassment and so on. In a society that is of a democratic nature, the political processes together with the officials who are elected are supposed to make sure the police are accountable and they represent the will of the people. The process of making sure the police maintain a certain level of accountability is vital as far as the maintaining of the faith the public has in the system is concerned (Kagari and Thomas, 2006, p. 41). The police themselves can be considered as core players as far restoring and maintaining the integrity of the police is concerned and their accountability is not limited to the police as well as the independent police agencies (Prenzler, 2009, p. 93). The different bodies which form the state all play a particular role while the role of the public is more than being clients that have the ability to share their concerns since they are supposed to share responsibility that will allow for fair and efficient policing. 2. How oversight has increased police accountability The police are guided by the rule of law as well as legislation that comes from parliament and even though judicial processes and case laws may have an effect on the interpretation of various legislation and different recommendations may be issued by the executive, the police derive their powers from the executive (Leicht and Jenkins, 2010, p. 99). Although this makes them subordinate to the law, the main powers of the government are held by the ministers who serve the Crown. Police also pledge loyalty to the Crown that acts as an organizing principle of the government. The engagements that are linked to the answerability of the police are not included in the ones that constitute the subordinations to the administration since a more intricate system of answerability is applied. The present system of holding the forty-three services that exist in the United Kingdom accountable is identified as the Tripartite Structure of Police accountability and it remains the basis of the force’s governance which allocates responsibilities to the Home Office, the authority of the police as well as the chief constable (Gray and Stockbridge, 2004, p. 102). This system provides accountability to parliament through the Home Secretary while also providing accountability to the local populations through the local police authorities that include the elected local councillors, magistrates as well as the business representatives who are chosen by a central panel. a. Police Performance Assessment Framework PPAF was started in April 2004 by the Home Office in partnership with the Association of Chief Police Officers as well as the Association of Police Authorities and it introduced a number of performance measures and targets to provide an efficient performance management (Eterno and Silverman, 2012, p. 91). It is developed as a means holding particular police forces accountable for performances associated with them and a way of comparing the performance of different forces. Apart from addressing operational efficiency, the framework provides processes of satisfaction as well as overall trust and confidence in the police alongside the measures that address performance in terms of efficiency and the capacity of the organization. According to the government’s wish to improve policing accountability at the local level, performance that is against national and local priorities is seen in the framework. The initial baseline evaluation of each of the forces in the United Kingdom was published in 2004 and this generated a lot of discourse that was concerned with the comparative performance of the forces as well as the media assumption on if the chief constables of the poorly rated forces would be discharged. This type of public information was considered as a core mechanism that could be used to inspire more public examination of the police. b. Financial Accountability The 1980s saw the application of the Financial Management Initiative to the police service by the government and it dealt with business management strategies as well as audit methods while relating to financial accountability as far as public money was concerned (Ellis and Savage, 2012, p. 65). When the Police and Magistrates Courts Acts 1994 was enacted, the system that was concerned with police funding experienced changes in a manner that allowed more control to the local police authority and a bigger devolution of the process of making budgets in the police force. From then on, each police authority collects cash limited contribution from the Home Office which is complemented by some financial assistance from the local authority that has been collected through income support contribution, the non-domestic charges as well as council taxes. Devolution of the procedure of budgeting is thus encouraged but not with any particular national strategy that may be over-arching and this is taking place at a rate and implementation that is suitable for the individual forces. These measures that are taken through the codes of practice inspire a greater degree of local managerial freedom as well as allocation of financial responsibilities in the police institution and this can be useful in supporting the objective of achieving local priorities and in the process increasing accountability. c. Organizational accountability At the level of the organization, accountability is achieved through a tiered rank framework which is a pseudo-military framework that seeks to create a well-organized and responsible service. Additionally, the officers of the police force are guided by a disciplinary code that has the capacity to punish offences such as dishonourable misconduct, insubordination, behaviour that is racially discriminatory as well as untruthful behaviour (Mawby and Wright, 2005, p. 8). The investigation of offenses occurs internally and disciplinary hearings are tasked with the judgments with the punishments varying from warnings to fines or discharge. Breaking the code may be considered as a criminal offense and the officers who go through the court process may also have to deal with the disciplinary boards. d. The police complaints system Most of the complaints raised against officers of the police force are progressively investigated through internal investigation in the confines of the police force as per the regulations of the Home Office. The police force observes the complaint patterns that are associated with particular officers and those with instances that are higher than normal or patterns that are extraordinary are pointed out and their conducts looked into (Mawby and Wright, 2005, p. 9). The history of the complaints system in the United Kingdom has been characterized by the endeavour to achieve integrity as well as public confidence (Prenzler and Ransley, 2002, p. 195). A high standard of proof is needed to highlight the independence of the bodies which are tasked with overseeing the investigation of the complaints against police officers. The Independent Police Complaints Commission was established in 2004 through the Police Reform Acts of 2002 and it was as a result of many calls for change from the police service, the community as well as other complainants groups. The independence of this commission is based on the commission being not a part of the any department of the government, it is a separate public body and it is independent from the police service commission. 3. Challenges to police accountability The mechanisms and agencies that are associated with police accountability in the United Kingdom are of an intricate structure (Davis and Martin, 2008, p. 143). Regardless of this complicated web of accountability that involves checks and balances as well as the separation of powers, police accountability has always been perceived to be an antagonistic issue as far as public and political discourse is concerned. a. Power balance in the tripartite agreement The structure is founded on the decentralization of power but there exists continued discourses about the power balances existing among the three parties. When the Police and Magistrates’ Courts Act 1994 was enacted, there was the general acknowledgement that it was important to reinforce the relative status of the local police authority. Nonetheless, this and other legislations that followed such as the Police Reform act of 2002 have underscored the relative status of the Home Secretary and this has been a source of detriment for the local democratic accountability. While the government has shifted the balance of power in the direction of the centre, it has also condemned the absence of involvement by the community in policing and this is considered an important component in relation to enhancing confidence of communities, especially ethnic minority communities in their local police. b. Independence of accountability agencies and mechanisms Regardless of the numerous mechanisms that are meant to address police accountability, there is still some criticism directed at the main attributes of the system since they do not have real independence which challenges the accountability of the police (Greener, 2009, p. 74). The clearest example is the police complaints system which in history has not had the ability to gain confidence from the communities, especially the minority ones. The IPCC that was set up recently, seeks to address this setback by putting strong emphasis on its independent status. At a different level, the inspectorate’s independent nature has not helped in the reduction of criticism that in practice HMIC has in some instances operated within the confines that are prescribed by the Home Secretary or the officials who work for the Home Office. This condemnation has to be balanced by the observation that up to the time lay officers were appointed in 1993, the recruitment of inspectors was done from the ranks of senior police officers and they continued to don uniforms that could not be differentiated from the uniforms the chief constables wore. c. Continuing human rights issues Issues linked to human rights still challenge the systems of accountability in the United Kingdom and recently, disquiet has increased over a number of issues such as people being shot by police officers in circumstance that are not within the law, investigation of deaths that occur while people are in police custody and the dubious accuracy and ability of investigations into murders of people who belong to ethnic minority groups. The problem of connections to race is seen in majority of these areas that are considered problematic and regardless of the number of government and police reforms that are self-imposed that were taken up after Macpherson Inquiry stated that the police was institutionally racist, it is evident that matters dealing with human rights will continually test the systems of police accountability in the United Kingdom (Mawby and Wright, 2005, p. 10). In relation to efficiency and clarity of the accountability systems and frameworks, the Chief Inspector o Constabulary comes up with two points that have to be considered at length. The first point is that while the accepting the policy reform program that is instigated by the government that focuses on accountability matters, there is the risk that overly bureaucratic actions may not support these ideas. The second point is that the increase in agencies that deal with policing contributes to substitution of the environment of accountability which is harmful if it complicates the role of the chief constable as the operational commander in which accountability is supposed to be vibrant and unambiguous. In this kind of environment, the clarity associated with accountability has not maintained its purity and the chief constables must make a distinction between accountability and a wider demand for information (Mawby and Wright, 2005, p. 10). 4. Conclusion Policing in the United Kingdom has faced a lot of pressure since the Police Act was enacted in 1964 and failures in the police have kept it in the limelight over the years. The number therefore had to come up with several structures to address the need for change and there is likelihood that more will be instigated. The creation of other agencies that are meant to deal with investigation and enforcement also means that the police are not the sole agency that is tasked with policing. Even though a lot of focus will continue to be directed on the public police in the United Kingdom, accountability as far as the other policing agencies are concerned should be the subject of constant review. Perchance, the best approach that can be adopted by all the police agencies when they are faced with the pressure to remain open to constructive criticism is to become comfortable with scrutiny and develop accessibility to the ideas that come from the public. Though this may prove to be a difficult and painful process, it will lead to a more robust community based policing that will have the ability to retain the respect and to secure the assistance of the public. Bibliography Calderon, E. and Hernandez-Figueroa, M. 2013, Citizen Oversight Committees in Law Enforcement. CJH SERIES, 2011, Handbook on police accountability, oversight and integrity. Davis, H. and Martin, S. 2008, Public Services Inspection in the UK, 1st ed. Jessica Kingsley Publishers, London. Ellis, T. and Savage, S. 2012, Debates in criminal justice, 1st ed. Routledge, London. Eterno, J. and Silverman, E. 2012, The crime numbers game, 1st ed. CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL. Gray, D. and Stockbridge, D. 2004, BTEC national public services (uniformed), 1st ed. Heinemann Educational, Oxford. Greener, B. 2009, The new international policing, 1st ed. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. Kagari, M. and Thomas, S. 2006, The police, the people, the politics, 1st ed. 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