Two: Discussing plural policing
We saw in the previous chapter how the terms ‘police’ and ‘policing’ are contested and have each developed a different meaning from their original inception. This illustrates the complexity of trying to define such ideas as ‘police’ and ‘policing’: they mean different things to different people at different times. It is much the same when discussing the idea of plural policing. Plural policing can be described as a new way of looking at policing that may now have moved away from a police-centric view of the world (Crawford, 2008), and includes a new way of viewing the social system that surrounds policing itself. In particular, this involves the growth of the non-public sector policing provision of policing activities. As we saw in Chapter One, when discussing exactly what is meant by policing, there has been a focus on policing purely from the view of the uniformed services provided by the public police organisation. However, we need to move away from the idea that ‘policing’ is associated purely with the work of the uniformed public police alone. This is an important point that needs to be reinforced, but to understand the current and ongoing trend for plural policing we need to situate the present state (and future) of police activity in an historical context.
The current structure of 43 police forces in England and Wales reflects in part the historical fear of a national police force. The historical context of this concern can be found in the period before the introduction of the Metropolitan Police Act 1829, with the popular fear that a national police could easily become puppets of the government, which could lead to anarchy and direct political control.
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