Abstract
It appears that police leaders are under unprecedented pressure: austerity has bitten deep, resulting in a divesting of service, resources, staff numbers, infrastructure and delayering of rank. The requirement to do more for less will endure, regardless of whether the concept of austerity morphs into something new or fades away. Against this background, demands upon police are both changing and multiplying rapidly, not least through an expanding, networked and global population. Similarly, the technological revolution has created an ever-increasing plethora of opportunity for those with nefarious intent, while exposing police frailties to an instant and critical audience. No wonder the police seem to lurch from crisis to crisis. It is therefore highly apposite to consider how police leadership operates within this changing – indeed arguably unstable – environment. Against this background, Police Leadership Changing Landscapes edited by Pauline Ramshaw, Marisa Silvestri and Mark Simpson sets out to ‘develop the knowledge basis on police leadership, particularly in relation to developing understandings of shifts and continuities in leadership styles, practice, and performance over time, in the UK and beyond’. This is a broad aim which, with some significant caveats, the authors tend to meet.
The book is an edited volume which is divided into three sections. The first section aims to provide the contextual backdrop to current thinking and the primary challenges facing leaders in police service. Peter Neyroud presents a convincing case for a leadership framework which is both evidenced-based and ethical. Tom Cockcroft then considers police leadership in a broader way, particularly the way different forms of leadership emerge in response to variation in environmental and societal context. He also provides a useful discussion about perceived tension within police leadership. The following chapter by Pauline Ramshaw and Mark Simpson which contrasts the transactional and transformation models of leadership and posits that ‘effective leaders “flex” between the two models according to circumstance’. The last chapter of the section, provided by Claire Davis, seeks to move away from leader-centric analysis by considering leadership as a social construct.
The second part of the book is subtitled The Changing Face of Police Leadership: New Directions. It comprises of three chapters. The first is by Marisa Silvestri who considers the relationship between diversity and leadership, in particular the more traditional representations of diversity focusing upon its ‘embodied aspects’. The chapter is based upon the argument that police leaders are a homogenous group, centred upon a narrative of the ‘heroic male’. Pauline Ramshaw then considers leadership, volunteering and the Special Constabulary. After presenting a brief history of the Special Constabulary, Ramshaw explains how Specials are divided on the issue of rank and how different perspectives might shape views of reward, incentivisation and impact upon relationships with regular officers. Samantha Scott and Emma William provide a thought-provoking chapter that considers the impact of direct entry officers upon existing leadership norms.
The final section of Police Leadership Changing Landscapes comprises of five chapters that examine police leadership beyond England and Wales. Kath Murray and Ali Malik argue that Police Scotland was the product of, and was born into, contested political space which has stymied the development of strategic leadership. Joanne Murphy explores the unique challenges faced by leaders in the Police Service of Northern Ireland, which she argues is operating in a liminal space between conflict and peace. The next chapter considers leadership and modernisation in the Hellenic Police. Georgios Papanicolaou explains how the force labours under a history of political partisanship, militarism and bureaucratism. In the penultimate chapter, Joseph Schafer reviews police leadership in the United States. He laments the ‘minimal evidence validating that any American police leadership development courses or experiences results in tangible outcomes in terms of improved competence of participants’. The final chapter considers the value of social capital within policing in Australia.
Police Leadership Changing Landscapes provides both academics and practitioners with a useful primer for some key leadership themes within contemporary policing. It is perhaps surprising, however, that the book did not lead with a more contextual piece that could explore in some depth the structural challenges faced by police forces and the potential impact upon existing leadership models. Charting the ‘changing landscapes’ more clearly and more fully at the beginning of the discussion would have provided a clear ‘operating’ context and help define a direction of travel. Further, it would have been beneficial to have had a more defined discussion about the intersection of leadership and structure, particularly the bureaucratical organisational models that still determine the shape of our police forces and leadership, whether those models are fit for purpose and what that might say about leadership in the future.
While there are useful discussions in the second part of Police Leadership Changing Landscapes, it feels underdeveloped. This part of the book is designed to highlight ‘the changing face of leadership through an exploration of the call for greater diversity with the ranks of police leadership’. The chapter by Silvestri acknowledges that by focusing on race and gender only a partial insight is presented. There are undoubted limitations to the existing data but by taking a narrow approach, the reader is left wanting a more rounded discussion about the relationship between diversity, equality and police leadership. Similarly, the chapter by Ramshaw feels incomplete. The focus upon the Special Constabulary is welcome – there is clearly a lacuna in the literature. However, the Special Constabulary is only one facet of volunteering within the police service: non-warranted volunteers work within many departments of the police service and members of community serve on forums such as Safer Neighbourhood Boards and Independent Advisory Groups, and Neighbourhood Watch. Each of these constructs intersects, influences and is influenced by police leadership and a broader discussion would have been welcome.
The third and final section of the book is perhaps the most limited. Intended to broaden the discussion of police leadership beyond England and Wales, it in fact provides only three chapters that focus beyond the United Kingdom. This section would have really benefited from a more determined effort to draw out thematic link between chapters. This is symptomatic of the book as a whole – it reads as a series of articles, albeit useful articles, rather than a coherent study with a clearly defined central narrative. Dame Sarah Thornton concludes the postscript to Police Leadership Changing Landscapes by arguing that the current structure of 43 forces in England and Wales is not fit for purpose and that she ‘suspects until we have a new structure that we will not have the leadership that the service and public deserve’. This leads back to the lack of a clear topography at the beginning of this work. Such an exposition might have revealed the need for police forces to be infinitely more connected and agile, combining local focus with global perspective (thus mirroring the communities they serve). Police services, whether in England and Wales or elsewhere, will not have effective leadership in the midst of the current technology revolution, while clinging to hierarchies and structures developed in, and arguably best suited for, the previous century.
