163

Commentary

The Complexities of 21st Century Policing

David H. Bayley

Abstract This article examines the changes made in the context of policing during the last 30 years that make its
management today hugely more complex. These changes are discussed under tasks, public demands, strategies,
technology, accountability, and resources. These changes have three significant implications for police policy,
namely, that the division between politics and policing has vanished, that policing with ‘consent’ must be rethought,
and that the traditional notion of police professionalism is dead. The article concludes by suggesting three courses of
action for dealing with these complexities and their attendant implications: (1) new institutions are needed for
regularizing the input of the public into police policy; (2) senior police officers must be better prepared for assuming
the responsibilities of chief officer and (3) a new professionalism is needed that relies more on rigorous evaluation of
policies, both strategic and managerial, rather than personal experience.

Since the 1980s, the challenges of managing the because the increased complexity requires pro-
police have become dramatically more complex in found changes in management, especially in the
ways that are not recognized either by the police or relations of the police with the communities they
the public. That the public hasn’t noticed is not serve. Police managers are like the proverbially
surprising. Management is a technical subject and frogs in the slowly warming stew-pot: when it be-
policing, although fundamental to government, is a comes serious enough to be felt, it may be too late to
specialist concern except when ethical or legal do anything to about it.
problems arise. That police managers have not The purpose of this essay is to describe the
recognized the increased complexity is also under- increased complexity of policing—its unrecognized
standable. It has occurred in a relatively short ‘heat’—and then examine its implications for man-
period of time historically, but would appear grad- agement and suggest ways to deal with its chal-
ual in the lifetime of particular officers. This is true lenges. The analysis will draw primarily on
even for the most senior officers who are preoccu- experience in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the
pied with operational matters, including internal UK, and the USA. These countries are sufficiently
administration, for most of their careers. They similar, especially being democratic, so that com-
have not had the opportunity to consider their parison is meaningful and from which lessons may
changing environment. Their lack of perspective be drawn and shared. My conclusion is that it isn’t
on their own responsibilities is a cause for concern too late for police managers and attendant


School of Criminal Justice, State University of New York, Albany, NY, USA. E-mail: [email protected]

Advance Access publication: 9 June 2016

Policing, Volume 10, Number 3, pp. 163–170
doi:10.1093/police/paw019
ß The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
For permissions please e-mail: [email protected]
164 Policing Commentary D. H. Bayley

policy-makers to jump out of the stew-pot, but it philosophy and raises new issues about the reach
won’t be easy. of government.

Public demands
Dimensions of complexity Until recently police agendas were set primarily by
Policing has become dramatically more complex in politicians often prodded by the press. Now there
six ways: its tasks, public demands, strategies, tech- are new well-organized interest communities whose
nology, accountability, and resources. I will dem- needs and opinions impact the police agenda:
onstrate the changes that have occurred in each  Victims
domain by contrasting the old reality with the new.  Schools
 Families, especially abuse of wives and children
Tasks
 Gays, lesbians, and the transgender
Thirty years ago the police mandate was simple—to
maintain public order and deter ordinary crime,  Ethnic minorities
primarily murder, rape, assault, and burglary.  Elderly people living alone, especially those
Now the tasks of the police include deterring and suffering from dementia
dealing with the consequences of the following:  Communities empowered for self-defense,
 Terrorism often at the instigation of the police themselves
(Neighbourhood Watch).
 Illegal immigration, including sex trafficking
 Crime among new immigrants Agendas today are not set by the police according to
their own appreciation of circumstances. Instead
 Cybercrime
they are set in the public marketplace, with de-
 Pornography mands shouted out from multiple constituencies.
 Narcotics.
Strategies
Dealing with narcotics is not a new task, but it has
become hugely more complex. The old narcotics Until the early 1980s, the primary strategies of the
have become cheaper and new forms of addictive police were visible patrolling, primarily by automo-
hallucinogens, including opiate painkillers, have bile, emergency response to calls from the public,
developed. and the investigation of reported crimes. As Egon
In addition to these specific new tasks, policing Bittner famously observed, the job of the police was
has embraced an entirely new approach to crime to respond to ‘something-that-ought-not-to-be-
control, namely, to prevent crime proactively happening-and-about-which-someone-had-
rather than through reactive deterrence. This in- better-do-something-now.’ (1970) Or, as people
volves addressing the circumstances, both imma- often say, ‘Where are the cops when you need
nent and remote, that foster criminality. Police them?’
accept, as scholars have, that punishing criminals Police strategies now include:
for acts they have committed is not sufficient to  Broken windows
ensure public safety (Nagin et al., 2015). Police  Zero tolerance
must now collaborate with others to analyse the
 Community-oriented policing
conditions that lead to crime and intervene to
reduce their criminogenic effect. Proactive  Problem-oriented policing
crime prevention represents a sea-change in  Hot-spots policing
Complexities of 21st century policing Commentary Policing 165

 Preventive and intelligence-led policing Equality and Human Rights Commission, the
 Third-party policing Office of the Surveillance Commissioners and the
Information Commissioner (Personal communica-
 Reassurance policing.
tions, 2014, Peter Neyroud and Hugh Orde). Since
Although these strategies overlap, providing end- the early 1990s, the national government in the
less opportunities for arguments about definitions, USA has undertaken over 50 investigations of the
most police managers understand that they must be ‘pattern and practice’ of local police agencies and
knowledgeable about them and be prepared to use instituted consent decrees under judicial supervi-
them in dealing with crime and disorder. They con- sion in about 25 of them (U.S. Department of
stitute a ‘progressive’ agenda that has evolved in a Justice, 2016).
relatively short period of time. Altogether, they re- Oversight has also increased dramatically outside
quire a broadening of strategic thought, new of national governments. The British police, for ex-
specialisms, organizational reorganization, and ample, became accountable to the European Court
additional resources. of Human Rights under the Helsinki Declaration in
1988 and to the Independent Police Complaints
Technologies Commission in 2002. Since 1990 the USA has cre-
Standard equipment for individual police officers ated over 100 local oversight commissions with
has been batons, handcuffs, firearms (not every- varied powers and composition (Walker, 2010).
where), and portable radios. Now personal equip- Moreover, all the countries cited earlier have cre-
ment includes Tasers, pepper spray, body cameras, ated advisory/consultative committees with public
and access to mobile computer data-bases. The or- representation at various levels of police organiza-
ganizational infrastructure of policing has also been tion. Finally, non-governmental organizations have
penetrated by new technology. Police agencies now developed that undertake investigations and issue
employ CCT, DNA analysis, automatic vehicle- reports about police activity, such as Amnesty
license readers, and social media to inform and International, the American Civil Liberties Union,
warn. Reciprocally, the public now uses social and Human Rights Watch.
media to notify the police of things ‘that-ought- It is important to note that the scope of external
not-to-be-happening’, including the behaviour of oversight has expanded from the behaviour of in-
the police themselves. dividual officers to the effectiveness of the police
organization as a whole. Determining the effective-
Accountability ness of police strategies and programs has become
Because policing until the 1970s was almost entirely an organized endeavour based in academic institu-
public, it was under the direction of government tions and research think-tanks.
and accountable only to elected officials, courts, Within police organizations, too, disciplinary
and its own disciplinary processes. In the past 30 oversight has become an integral part of manage-
years, accountability has been expanded both exter- ment in the last 30 years. The ability to conduct
nally and internally. internal investigations has been strengthened and
Externally a host of government agencies have professionalized. Special attention is given during
been created with oversight of the police. In training for both recruits and in-service personnel
Britain, for example, Chief Constables report that with respect to racial profiling and, more recently,
there are now over 30 public agencies that require procedural justice. The police have developed and
information about their activities and can issue published ‘value statements’ to guide all aspects of
directions to them: among them the Audit police activity. Furthermore, police officers have
Commission, the Health and Safety Executive, the themselves organized into interest groups, notably
166 Policing Commentary D. H. Bayley

women, gays, and racial/ethnic minorities, to call a group of American chiefs, wondering aloud how
attention to unequal treatment. Finally, police they coped with it. When I suggested rhetorically
unions and federations, although not new, have that the must resort to smoke-and-mirrors, the
become better organized and more assertive in the group laughed and one shouted out, ‘You got that
interests of their members. right.’

Resources
Until the last quarter of the 20th century, policing Implications for policy
was exclusively a public, governmental responsibil-
Although the evolving complexity of policing will
ity. This is no longer the case. In the countries cited,
require many changes large and small, I believe
more security personnel are now employed, sup-
there are three broad implications that must be
ported, and directed under private than public aus-
addressed:
pices (Bayley and Shearing, 2001). The need for
coordination between the private and public sec- 1. The division between politics and policing has
tors is recognized as acute. Furthermore, police per- vanished.
sonnel are no longer exclusively sworn officers but 2. Policing with ‘consent’ must be rethought.
include civilians. In Britain, for example, fulltime 3. The traditional notion of professionalism in
civilian employees, not counting Police policing is dead.
Community Service Officers, constitute almost
54% of sworn officers; in the USA 33% (U.S. First, traditionally politicians make policy and
Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, police managers implement it. Politicians are not
Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2011; Allen and supposed to make operational decisions about the
Dempsey, 2016). Civilians are used not only for management of the organization (hiring, promo-
administrative functions but also for specialist tion, structure, discipline) or applications of law
law-enforcement tasks, such as evidence collection, to specific situations. With the rise of organized
forensic analysis, information management, and interest groups, inside and outside the police, the
crime analysis, including terrorist threat task of directing the police has expanded from pol-
assessments. iticians to the public at large. This has been facili-
When one stands back from policing and enu- tated by video surveillance of the police and by
merates the variety of changes that have occurred instant communication of pictures and opinions
along several dimensions in approximately 30 through social media. The public increasingly
years, it is obvious that the management of policing feels justified in holding the police to account
has become dramatically more complicated in ways even in operations.
that are not generally recognized. Management As a result, collaboration with communities
today requires new knowledge, new choices, new has become unavoidable in modern policing.
skills, new thinking about what the police should Tony Batts, former Chief in Oakland and
do and what they should be held responsible for. Commissioner in Baltimore, estimated that only
Contemporary policing is, as the British say, ‘Not 20% of his decisions didn’t involve consultation
the old Bill.’ Or as Americans say, ‘Not your father’s with people in the community (Personal commu-
Oldsmobile.’ nication). Bill Bratton, now Commissioner in New
The question for contemporary policing, then, is York City, has written that when he designed a pro-
how can senior managers simultaneously be effect- gram to deal with disorder from homeless persons
ive, progressive, and cost-effective confronted with near police headquarters in Los Angeles, he had to
this complexity? I once listed these complications to consult with the following ‘constituencies’—the
Complexities of 21st century policing Commentary Policing 167

Mayor, the Police Commission, an organization of and on their ability to secure and main-
homeless people, students, the city attorney, other tain public respect.
municipal departments, the American Civil To recognise always that to secure and
Liberties Union, administrators of major hospitals, maintain the respect and approval of
representatives of Business Improvement Districts, the public means also the securing of
the police union, and neighbourhood crime- the willing co-operation of the public
prevention associations (Bratton and Tumin, in the task of securing observance of
2012). laws.
While the need to involve communities beyond
Clearly Peel thought police were bound by law, as
the political establishment has grown in visibility, it
Denning later suggested, but not only by law. So the
is not entirely new. Robert Mark, former
question becomes, how can the broadly based ‘con-
Commissioner of the London Metropolitan
sent’ of Peel be obtained in today’s diversified, out-
Police, wrote almost two generations ago:
spoken, well organized, and media savvy society?
It did not take me long to appreciate Peel wanted to achieve consent through the exem-
that the only way to win was to go plary behaviour of police in one-on-one encounters
over the heads of politicians and the with citizens. Interestingly, the procedural justice
Civil Service and appeal to public movement has taken this leaf out of Peel’s book.
opinion in moderate and persuasive Procedural justice, while certainly valuable, is curi-
terms, backed up by irrefutable ously ‘back to the future’ as a strategy for obtaining
statistical evidence. (Mark, 1978, consent. But the public is not satisfied with that. It
p. 129) wants to participate visibly in shaping police policy
and overseeing behaviour.
Second, ‘policing with consent’ must be
Consent today requires new collective ways to
rethought because the public increasingly wants
involve the public in determining what police do
direct rather than representative participation in
and how they do it. This goes beyond having an
the supervision of the police. This opinion has
acknowledged voice in assessing one-on-one beha-
grown dramatically as the public’s ability to per-
viour. The new ‘consent’ implies a change in phil-
ceive shortcomings in both policy and misbeha-
osophy from explicit boundaries with respect to
viour has grown.
directing the police, on the one hand, to shared
In 1969 Lord Denning in the Blackburn case said
sense of governance between public and police,
that the police were operationally independent with
on the other hand. The challenge for policy-
respect to law enforcement. One Chief Constable
makers today is how to construct forums for col-
wryly observed that this made the police account-
laborative decision-making that preserves legality,
able only to law, the Queen, and God (Johnston,
avoids rule by unrepresentative minorities, and
1978, p. 9). Today, however, the public, led by aca-
allows operational integrity in accord with police
demics and human-rights advocates, won’t put up
expertise.
with so limited a role. They want more of the police
Third, the traditional notion of police profes-
than legal rectitude, as Sir Robert Peel implied in
sionalism was that officers had unique skills that
two of the principles attributed to him:
could only be learned, appreciated, and evaluated
To recognise always that the power of by people who had experience in law-enforcement.
the police to fulfil their functions and The police mantra was ‘leave it to us,’ implying that
duties is dependent on public approval they had experience-based perspectives that civil-
of their existence, actions and behaviour ians didn’t have. This applied to strategic as well as
168 Policing Commentary D. H. Bayley

operational decisions. By and large, the public ac- ‘police and crime panels’ composed of one elected
cepted this. No longer. The demands for direct, representative from each local governmental au-
visible, and collective accountability implicitly re- thority and at least two independent members
jects the claim of unique expertise. While the public chosen by the panels. In Canada they appear as
doesn’t necessarily believe it knows what to do, it Police Advisory Boards and in Australia and New
does want to be assured that police activity is open Zealand in a variety of consultative committees at
to inspection and that there are opportunities for various levels of police organization. The challenge
discussions about it at community levels. In short, today will be to make them an integral part of police
the public no longer accepts police professionalism decision-making rather than as perfunctory genu-
on faith. flections to political correctness.
The growing concern in the academic commu- Second, senior police managers, the frogs in the
nity with the ‘legitimacy’ of the police is a reflection hot-pot, must be better prepared for the complex-
of the loss of public confidence in representative ities they face. Governments should create schools
political supervision and growing doubts about of advanced police management that address the
police expertise. The public is not convinced that ethical and political problems of contemporary
police expertise reflects their views about police ob- policing, not simply the technical mechanics of
jectives and conduct. This is paradoxical because at management. Police colleges in Britain, Canada,
the very time that policing requires ever more spe- Australia, and New Zealand are steps in the right
cialized knowledge, its operational expertise is direction. The need is especially acute in the USA
being questioned. New mass-communication tech- due to its cumbersome and costly system of over-
nologies facilitate this, providing visible evidence lapping independent police agencies.
that makes the public skeptical about police Third, police must develop a new professional-
‘professionalism’. ism that relies less on personal experience in the
field and more on rigorous evaluation of what
standard practices achieve in the aggregate.
Strategic evaluation must be institutionalized and
Recommendations for coping
its results shared among police services. On the
Faced with this complexity, in particular the broad- model of teaching hospitals, police must be willing
based public questioning of police performance, to learn by systematic experimentation. They must
what might be done? I suggest three courses of be prepared, as Robert Mark said, ‘to appeal to
action. First, if the boundary between policing public opinion in moderate and persuasive terms,
and politics is increasingly fuzzy, institutions backed up by irrefutable statistical evidence.’ Not
must be constructed where discussions may take the presumption of special expertise, but demon-
place between public and police about the complex- strable evidence. ‘Evidence-based policing’ is on the
ities police face. They should be created at commu- right track.
nity levels within an explicit framework. The In order for policing to learn from aggregate
responsibility for doing this is governments. evaluations, evidence must be relevant to the
Inevitably, however, creating such institutions will choices police confront. It must be both operation-
challenge the authority of the very politicians ally informative and timely. Because police have
charged with creating them. other things to do—a ‘day job’, as they often
Models for such forums already exist in my sam- say—they must develop ways of working collabora-
ple of countries. They existed as Police Authorities tively with evaluators outside the police,
in Britain until 2011 when they were replaced by such as universities and think-tanks. Some police
Police and Crime Commissioners supported by forces in the USA are doing this already on a
Complexities of 21st century policing Commentary Policing 169

project-by-project basis, not yet as an on-going in- situated. New Zealand has a centralized police
stitutional arrangement. system, a national police college, and consultative
At the same time, it is important not to confuse committees at several levels of command. Although
what the police need to know with what academics Britain has 43 general-duties police services, they
want to know. Police must learn to incorporate into are increasingly subject to national standards for
practice what analysis shows is effective at achieving training, community consultation, and oversight.
safety with consent. Academics, on the other hand, It has a tradition of mandatory training for senior
must develop an operational perspective by listen- ranks, now institutionalized in the National Police
ing to police about the nature of the job they do. College of England Wales. It has also explicitly con-
Finally, evaluations of strategies and manage- sidered the accountability of police to the public
ment practices should not be based on overly de- through the enactment of legislation in 2011
manding standards of proof which may take years requiring the direct election of Police and Crime
to validate. Academics operate in terms of what has Commissioners in each police service area in
been called the ‘gold standard’ of proof, namely, place of the older representative Police
randomized-controlled experiments (Sherman et Authorities. This may not be the right solution to
al., 1997). This is too high a standard for police. the problem of community oversight, only time will
They need evaluations that address high-priority tell, but it is the right discussion.
choices with information that is more informative The USA is the worst prepared. It has a decen-
than what is customarily available. Call this the tralized police system with roughly 17,000 inde-
‘coal standard’—not as good as what academics pendent police agencies. It has no national, senior
like, but an improvement over anecdotes. This level, police college, not even a mechanism to de-
can be seen in the development of ‘data analytics’, velop curricula for one. Nor do such institutions
which uses troves of information already available exist for senior managers in the 50 states.
to police to diagnose what is working and what is Furthermore, community consultation is patchy
not. It does not rely on controlled experimentation, in geographical coverage, function, and representa-
important though that may be, but on recognizing tion. The decentralized system, complicated by fed-
information that can be used to assess the payoffs eral-state jealousies, scatters authority to respond to
from existing strategies and their attendant costs. the emerging complexities of police and ensures
that most police departments, apart from larger
cities, will be underfunded with respect to the se-
lection and training of senior managers. Attempts
Conclusion
were made in the 1970s to amalgamate police de-
The key imperative of 21st century policing is to partments in order to save money for common ad-
prepare the police, their supervising politicians, and ministrative services and improve operational
the public about its expanding complexity. The key effectiveness. The movement did not catch on and
responsibility of government is to develop new in- has few proponents now.
stitutions for deliberation and collaboration across In between the poles of New Zealand and the
society about what the police can and should do, USA are Australia and Canada, both federal systems
based upon shared knowledge about what works. like the USA, but with many fewer constituent gen-
Unfortunately, the countries in my sample eral-duties police services. Australia has seven in a
(Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK, the geographical space similar to the US; Canada has
USA) vary considerably in their ability to respond 340 general-duties police in 8 provinces, 3
to the challenges of complexity in the ways I have territories, and 150 municipalities (Bayley and
suggested. New Zealand and the UK are best Stenning, 2016). This figure includes detachments
170 Policing Commentary D. H. Bayley

of Royal Canadian Mounted Police operating on wholesale rethinking of democratic police

contract with provinces and municipalities to governance.
provide general-duties coverage. Both Australia
and Canada have police colleges and have created References
consultative committees at several command Allen, G. and Dempsey, N. (2016). Police Service Strength.
levels from states/provinces to municipalities and BRIEFING PAPER 00634. London: House of Commons
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Bayley, D. H. and Shearing, C. D. (2001). The New Structure
In short, all these countries except the USA have of Policing: Description, Conceptualization, and Research
institutions that could address the implications of Agenda. Washington, DC: National Institute of Justice.
complexity in the ways suggested. The great impon- Bayley, D. H., and Stenning, P. C. (2016). Governing the
Police: Experiences in Six Democracies. New Brunswick,
derable for all of them is whether they have the will NJ: Transaction Press.
and the imagination to expand and institutionalize Bittner, E. (1970). The Functions of the Police in Modern
the public dialogue about policing. The USA may Society. Rockville, MD: National Institute of Mental
not in fact be as hopeless at it looks. Its system of Health.
Bratton, W. and Tumin, Z. (2012). Collaborate or Perish.
local policing is built on a robust tradition of con- New York, NY: Crown Business.
sultation. The problem for the USA, then, is not Mark, S. R. (1978). In the Office of Chief Constable: An
intellectual tradition but the capacity of its Autobiography. London: William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd.
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Criminal Opportunities, and Police.’ Criminology 53(1):
needed. 74–100.
In sum, the challenges of the contemporary com- Sherman, L. W., Gottfredson, D. C., MacKenzie, D. L., Eck,
plexity in policing are real, indeed mind-boggling. J., Reuter, P., and Bushway, S. D. (1997). Preventing
They require a rethinking of police systems, man- Crime: What Works, What Doesn’t, What’s Promising.
Washington, DC: National Institute of Justice.
agement practices, training, and accountability. Of
St. Johnston, E. (1978). One Policeman’s Story. Chichester:
course these issues affect all countries to some Barry Rose.
extent, even authoritarian ones, but they are espe- U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs,
cially important and sensitive in democratic coun- Bureau of Justice Statistics. (2011). Census of State and
Local Law Enforcement Agencies, 2008. U.S. Department of
tries where the public’s consent is essential for Justice.
effective government. The public now is demand- U.S. Department of Justice. (2016). https://www.justice.gov.
ing a voice in policing at precisely the moment that Accessed March 2016.
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