Four: Neighbourhood policing teams
It is tempting to think of plural policing as a relatively recent concept, brought about by austerity measures and recent political philosophy changes in government. Moreover, the pluralised approach tends to be associated with a reliance on the private sector. However, the delivery of policing services by unsworn officers – those who are not constables, in other words – has been a feature of the policing landscape for some time, particularly at the local level. Indeed, one approach, known as neighbourhood policing, has apparently been so successful that it is considered to be the bedrock of community policing in England and Wales, albeit now in decline as a result of austerity measures. This public-oriented approach to pluralised policing is therefore worthy of attention as it may provide us with lessons for the future of plural policing involving private policing organisations.
The UK has a long tradition of ‘consensus’ policing as encapsulated in the famous principle ‘the police are the public and the public are the police’ (see Peak and Glensor, 1996, for example). During the second half of the 20th century, the gap between the police and the communities they served began to widen, as car patrols replaced foot patrols and police stations began to work on reduced opening hours or were permanently closed. In the UK, it has been suggested that the introduction of unit beat policing contributed to this negative perception (Rogers, 2004). As a response to this widening gap, community policing began to emerge in a number of forces across the UK.
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