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Modern Policing

NCJ Number
88605
Editor(s)
D W Pope, N L Weiner
Date Published
1981
Length
271 pages
Annotation
This description and critical analysis of policing in Britain today presents a series of papers under the general topics of the nature of policing, the environment of policing, and managing police organizations.
Abstract
The opening paper in the section on the nature of policing focuses on the police role in containing public disorder and the growing difficulties of policing the inner-city areas, especially where race relations is a central issue. Subsequent papers in this section deal with preventive policing based in positive police-community relations, the need for police accountability, professionalism in the police service, and policing in America, which identifies the disadvantages of the American emphasis on absolute local control of policing. The section on the environment of policing opens with a perspective on the value of sociology in policing. Reasons for the conflict between the police and sociology researchers are identified, and a cooperative relationship between the police and researchers, based upon the sociologists' explanations of how research can benefit the police as individuals and an organization, is urged. Other papers consider the dynamics of police pessimism about the direction of social change in Great Britain, the importance of political awareness in policing, understanding human behavior, the police personality, and social services and the police. Topics discussed under the section on managing police organizations are developing effective police managers, management skill in communications, applications of computers in policing, and making sense of crime statistics. In addition to notes provided with each paper, a subject index is included. For individual entries, see NCJ-88606-14.