2: The contemporary context of police leadership

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Policing in England and Wales is undergoing significant and relentless change across a range of domains. The last decade has witnessed unprecedented reforms to police governance and accountability, education and recruitment, and pay and conditions – all of which challenge traditional working practices in the police. This chapter situates the understanding and practice of police leadership within such a context. Set against a backdrop of concerns over leadership standards and integrity, the chapter begins by critically exploring the meanings of professionalisation. It provides an examination of changes to police education and training, evidence-based policing (EBP), ethics, and recruitment practices as illustrative of the contemporary narrative of police professionalisation. The chapter then outlines the radically altered landscape within which contemporary police leaders now operate through an appreciation of the arrival of the police and crime commissioner and the attendant changes in the governance of policing. Through a consideration of such reforms, this chapter demonstrates that the contemporary professionalisation agenda is celebrated as a solution to the ‘problem’ of police leadership.

A series of high-profile leadership failings in recent years has increased the scrutiny of leadership in the police in England and Wales. The inquest into the 96 deaths at Hillsborough Football Stadium, Sheffield in 1989 signalled the most significant exposure of the systematic failings of the police system for a generation. The standards and ethics of police practices have been exposed in the Leveson Inquiry and the Inquiry into Undercover Policing, and the priorities of and decision- making in the police have been criticised following the failure of the police to adequately investigate child sexual abuse allegations.

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