The re-professionalization of the police in England and Wales

Introduction

I suppose you could sum it all up by saying that in Britain certainly, and I have no doubt elsewhere, the time has come when the police are abandoning their artisan status and are achieving by our ever-increasing variety of services, our integrity, our accountability and our dedication to the public good, a status no less admirable than that of the most learned and distinguished professions. (Mark, 1977: 42)

The designation of the police as a profession is not a contemporary idea. During a period when he dealt with serious corruption in his force Robert Mark, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, argued that the 1970s was a decade of change from artisan to professional police status. Mark’s assertion was by no means the first claim of professional standing for the police. ¹ In his history of English and Welsh constabularies, for example, Critchley (1967: 267) described changes to policing during the 1960s as evidence of their professional standing and a return to fundamental, Peelian principles. Most recently, in his 2011 report about police leadership and training, commissioned and accepted by the Home Secretary as the rationale for the establishment of a professional body for policing in England and Wales, former chief constable Peter Neyroud reiterated police claims to professionalism. He put it that, ‘wide-ranging developments over the last two decades secure the police as a profession’ (Neyroud, 2011: 45). The establishment of a professional body for the police of England and Wales in 2013 reflects long-standing comment about and assertions that they are a profession. Rather than engaged with novelty, the police of England and Wales are currently re-professionalizing their occupation. ²

‘Re-professionalization’ refers to periodic, authoritative, public claims that the police are a profession. Mark’s claim, first made in a 1973 televised lecture, challenged what he regarded as the uncontested corrupt, unethical behaviour of ‘professional’ criminal lawyers who defended high profile criminals, contrasting it to the ethical practices of police officers (SirRobertMark.co.uk, 1973). When making this claim he was engaged in a somewhat successful anti-corruption drive within his constabulary. That was an indicator of how a profession acts.

Later during the same decade, police claims to be a profession focused more upon the educational qualifications and managerial prowess of senior officers and fast track, direct entrants to officer rank (Holdaway, 1977). These declarations coincided with increasing police collaboration with local and national agencies and an emphasis on skilled management practised in the public sector. As a profession, the police employed senior officers with similar qualifications and managerial skills.

Peter Neyroud’s 2011 report, advocating the establishment of a professional body for the police of England and Wales, emphasized very different professional characteristics, which he traced from the 1980s. He defines the police as a profession akin to medicine, the law and other bodies because they share their classical traits, a code of ethics, accredited qualifications, a foundation of systematic ‘scientific’ research and more.

Claims to professional status for the police emphasize existing or introduce at different times new occupational characteristics as evidence of professional standing. The meaning of the police as a profession has changed over the years, something the extensive literature about the sociology of the professions has long debated more generally (Cain, 1972; Evetts, 2011; Greenwood, 1957; Wilensky, 1964). ³ When the police describe their work routinely as professional in common-sense, everyday language they afford it a particular status. The notion of ‘re-professionalization’, however, captures a different, public declaration in which particular attributes of a profession are emphasized and related, implicitly or explicitly, to the social context within which they are articulated. ‘Re-professionalization’ and the contemporary context within which it is manifested are the main subjects of this article. It is argued that, among other matters, a lack of trust in police integrity and new government policies intended to distance ministers from the regulation of constabularies are key aspects of a renewed emphasis on the idea that the police are a profession.

Academics commenting on the police as a profession have not investigated either the meaning of the idea or its social context. They have not questioned police claims through engagement with the extensive sociological literature on the professions, seeming to prefer an implicit acceptance that the police might be and probably are a profession, exhibiting traditional traits associated with such an institution. David Sklansky (2014), Jenny Fleming (2014) and Nick Tilley and Gloria Laycock (2014), for example, in recent essays published in a collection to inform ‘the Commission on the Future of Policing’, considered the professional status of police in the UK and the USA. Their analyses do not consider definitions of a profession. Neither do they consider why different meanings of the police as a profession have been fostered at different times; analyse them with reference to the sociology of the professions; or consider how social theory might illuminate their conclusions. Further, professional claims are not located historically or related to wider social and, more particularly, policy change. The notion of the police as a profession has found broad, uncritical acceptance within academe, government and the police.

This article begins from a distinct analytical standpoint, questioning the taken for granted status of the police as a profession. Contemporary claims to professional status are probed to identify the contexts within which they are made; meanings ascribed to actions establishing the police as a profession are analysed; and the intended and unintended consequences of such meanings and related actions are scrutinized. First, the policy context within which a renewed interest in the police as a profession has developed is discussed. Next, the article applies insights from the sociology of the professions to the re-professionalization of the police, to understand professionalization as processes that invoke particular, authoritative meanings. The article ends with consideration of re-professionalization as a key aspect of a new structure of police governance and regulation in England and Wales. ⁴ This loosely coupled system is analysed, the police as a profession being central to it. As the article progresses, a distinct theoretical perspective on police regulation and its study will be charted.

The contemporary developments in police policy analysed here replace a relatively harmonious, institutional structure of police regulation in which the Home Office set or, more recently, agreed constabulary annual plans, articulated Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary’s (HMIC) work and were virtually dependent on the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) for setting many standards of police practice. Although occasional tensions within and between these actors were evident, formal relationships cohered around a clear, government-led system of police regulation and accountability. The argument here is that the Home Office centred organization of police regulation has been reformed, replaced by a loosely coupled system in which the notion of a professional police is vital (Weick, 1976).

Some reforms discussed have distanced central government from local police policy and accountability, suggesting a strategy of ‘steering not rowing’ (Rhodes, 2000). Importantly, changes related to the emergence of these conditions have drawn on third party, ‘independent’ recommendations for reform, to some extent distancing further the government from responsibility for both national and local police policies. Accompanying these reforms, significant, direct intervention in the constabularies of England and Wales has also been re-calibrated through the work of HMIC and the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC). These conditions suggest a hybrid, fragmented form of regulatory governance of the police in England and Wales, articulated significantly but not exclusively through processes of professionalization.

The Contemporary Context of Police Professionalization

The Police as a Profession

The status of the police as a profession is integral to the framework of regulation created by the changes outlined. Indeed, at its 2015 annual conference, the College of Policing’s chief executive, Alex Marshall, stated that work completed to establish a body of knowledge about ‘what works’ in policing, the publication of a code of ethics for the police, a programme of continuous professional development and the licensing and accreditation of officers have secured the police as a classic profession (College of Policing, 2015a).

Understanding the (Re-)Professionalization of the Police and Regulation

The evidence presented so far suggests that a loosely coupled structure (Weick, 1976) including a number of new actors has replaced a closely coupled framework of police regulation in which the government was the central actor. Loose coupling serves as a sensitizing notion that directs research attention away from, ‘rationalized, tidy, efficient, coordinated structures […] to some of the attractive and unexpected properties of less rationalized and less tightly related clusters of events’ (Weick, 1976: 3). The implication is that it is necessary to describe and analyse a web of relationships constructed by events – acts of regulation – that both bring together and separate organizations with regulatory authority. As Weick (1976: 3, emphasis in original) put it, ‘coupled events are responsive, but each event also preserves its own identity and some evidence of its physical or logical separateness’. One important implication of this perspective for research draws attention to the description and analysis of when, how and what is done by a regulatory actor using their regulatory authority symbolically or instrumentally. It also begs analysis of relationships between actions by one or more actors. They might harmonize or conflict to some extent; they might be discrete. From this perspective it would be inadvisable to understand regulatory actions as if they are irregular, deviations within a more tightly bound system. To return to Weick (1976: 3), ‘regulatory activity and systems are not best conceptualized as, ‘rationalized, tidy, efficient, coordinated’.

In the new framework for police regulation, authority is given to existing and new organizations, HMIC, the IPCC, PCCs and the College of Policing, for example. Each actor is at a distance from government and the Home Office. Each has a formal regulatory objective for distinct areas of policing. PCCs, for example, ensure chief constables implement public priorities for local policing in policy and practice and render chief constables accountable for the management of the force budget. As a professional body, the College of Policing has a duty to establish a corpus of knowledge about what works in policing and ensure that the accreditation of its members includes education about and assessment of their understanding of it. Further, the College has an obligation to ensure that its Code of Ethics pervades police practice, which assumes a regulatory role through the work of chief constables and, indeed, all supervisory officers. HMIC and the IPCC have their own, enhanced areas of regulatory responsibility. Some responsibilities may overlap and be unclear; contradictions of who has responsibility for regulating particular areas of policing may be apparent. This, however, does not mean that research should assume loosely coupled regulatory actions are deviations from an ideal of formal rationality that is essential to the notion of a system.

When a PCC questions a chief constable about force performance and requires specific actions to improve policy and/or practice, regulatory work very similar to that undertaken by HMIC during an inspection is apparent. As Weick reminds us, each action nevertheless retains its own identity and is distinct. Each intervention is understood appropriately as the contribution of a single actor within a ‘loosely coupled system’ in which other actors might or might not respond. ¹¹ Similarly, when the College of Policing sets strategy for an area of policing it is undertaking work that is loosely coupled to that of a PCC establishing local strategy, based on the views of a constabulary’s population. The PCC may give a priority to public rather than ‘professional’ views expressed by the College. There will also be times when a PCC follows ‘what works’ and implements advice from the College. In both cases HMIC can inspect and give mandatory, remedial advice to constabularies that do not implement what-works guidance in policy and practice.

As the professional body, the College of Policing is an important actor in this regulatory system. At times the College’s professional standing and advice will place them in the ascendency; at other times similar events will not ensure their authority. Crucially, their claim to professional standing and to the police as members of a profession affords them status and, more importantly, a regulatory function within the system now created in England and Wales. Professional status does not guarantee authority and power, however. There will be times, for example, when the College of Policing and PCCs take a different view of public priorities and best practice for a constabulary. HMIC might challenge the professional competence of a chief constable and the adequacy of a PCC’s regulation of him or her. A straightforward rebuttal by the College or a chief officer, arguing that their professional standing and competence is sufficient to justify their action, would be inadequate. As Evetts (2003) points out, a profession is best understood as constituted by a dynamic process, with claims made to sustain its security as it vies with and yields to the regulatory claims of other actors.

Marianna Valverde’s (2011, 2012) work on ‘security’ is pertinent to this point, reminding us that the notions of ‘a profession’, ‘professional’, ‘regulation’ and, implicitly, ‘system’ are vibrant. She points out that ‘security’ is not a normative notion and, following William James’s understanding of religion, ‘all that we can know about security is what people do in its name and, therefore, our focus should be on practices of governance that appeal to “security”’ (Valverde, 2011: 5). So it is with the notion of a profession and of regulation. To understand the ways in which the idea of the police as a profession and of claims made on its basis requires the analysis of moments when declarations of professionalism are made and regulatory tasks are undertaken on the basis of its authoritative foundations. This approach reveals the flux and flow of professional and regulatory processes related to the College and, of course, each of the other actors working within the hybrid system described. In particular, and following Valverde’s argument, the logic, rationale and objectives of professional, regulatory projects; their scope, both temporal and spatial; their claimed jurisdiction to regulate action; and the techniques to translate professional discourses into everyday policing actions, especially through management practices, should be incorporated into analyses of the professionalism of policing.

Valverde also prompts us to consider how her own and Weick’s ideas are of relevance to the socio-legal literature about regulation, where one finds notions of ‘plural regulation’ and ‘de-centred regulation’ (Black, 2001, 2002a, 2002b; Parker, 2008). These approaches consider to different extents how regulatory functions have involved, ‘a shift (and recognition of such a shift) in the locus of the activity of “regulating” from the state to other, multiple, locations, and the adoption on the part of the state of particular strategies of regulation’ (Black, 2001: 112). The problem, as Ayres and Braithwaite (1992) put it, is now one of enforced regulation beyond state organizations and how to regulate the regulators.

With Valverde’s work in mind, important differences between many approaches to regulation found in the socio-legal literature and that suggested by the argument presented here are apparent. First, much of the relevant literature is concerned with considering possible, effective reforms to regulatory structures suited to new legal and quasi-legal conditions (e.g. Braithwaite, 2002, 2013). The approach proposed here, however, is not about required reform of police regulatory structures. It is largely about the development of an analytical perspective to probe the contemporary regulation of the police in England and Wales. Second, law is frequently given considerable weight as a solution to problems of plural and other diverse forms of regulation. Considering regulation in multi-cultural societies, Christine Parker (2008), for example, seeks to define ‘the conceptual tools to identify a type of emergent, pluralistic law, without or beyond the state’. This ambition is too narrow to consider the wider regulation of law, rules, actions and, as far as police ethics and professionalization are concerned, sentiments and attitudes. Third, actors within the current police, loosely coupled system of regulation are to some extent autonomous but nevertheless closer to the state than those working within the wide body of organizations considered by analysts of plural and de-centred regulatory bodies.

One relevant insight from the socio-legal literature, however, is the notion of a ‘regulatory space’, developed by Colin Scott (2001: 1) and used metaphorically to analyse different resources available to actors who, ‘draw our attention to the need to conceive of strategies of regulation as consisting of a wide range of negotiated processes, of which rule formation and enforcement are but two’. Different actors use resources – finance, the ability to shame publicly, information, authority to warn, and to punish, for example – differently at different times. Regulators and regulatees, however, are not restricted to state actors within Scott’s argument, which again tends to focus his discussion upon a much wider range of regulators than those within contemporary police arrangements.

Scott’s approach is helpful because it identifies the wide range of resources available to a regulator and argues that regulation is not to be understood as a formally rational, hierarchical system. Rather, it is to be conceptualized as ‘complex, dynamic and horizontal’ processes that require an understanding of the limits of law in regulation and the dispersal of authority to act as a regulator (Scott, 2001: 1). Scott goes on to give attention to problems of institutional design that are raised by this situation and to the regulation of the financial sector. They are not the concern of this article but the way in which Scott frames research about regulation is certainly of relevance.

Discussion

The analytical approach outlined so far has considerable implications for research. Meanings of the police as a profession and of related regulatory organizations are placed within their policy and wider social contexts; opportunities to describe and analyse relationships between those meanings and actions become possible. The parsing of claims and counter-claims made by actors can be analysed. Disputes about which actor has authority to regulate particular aspects of policing reveal the flux and flow of regulatory jurisdictions, techniques and claims based on professional and other competences. The social topography of what might seem like a discrete set of regulatory organizations can be charted. These features distinguish the approach advocated from existing criminological accounts of the police as a profession.

The notion of a loosely coupled system sensitizes us to these and related data about professionalism and regulation. It abandons the notion of an implicit, formally rational structure lying behind apparent fragmentation. Research about regulatory systems is not adequate if it compares loosely coupled structures to an implied ideal, normative, closely coupled system. Each organization within a loosely coupled regulatory system has formal purposes and functions. People working within them act discretely and, to different extents, in relationship with colleagues and with employees in associated organizations (Bittner, 1967). Regulatory systems are constructed and sustained continually by their action. The apparent fragmentation of loosely coupled systems does not mean that they are inherently unstable, wholly unpredictable or dysfunctional. Valverde’s understanding of security, Evett’s notion of professionalism and Weick’s consideration of loose coupling help us to keep in mind that, as quoted earlier, ‘coupled events are responsive, but each event also preserves its own identity and some evidence of its physical or logical separateness’ (Weick, 1976: 3, emphasis in original).

The contemporary notion of police professionalism analysed suggests that the longstanding argument that written policy and law are to be distinguished from law and policy in action is pertinent to understanding the police as a profession (Pound, 1910). To compare characteristics of the police in England and Wales to a list of professional traits could be an indicative starting point for research but the sociology of the professions warns convincingly that the analytic strength of the trait approach is weak. Importantly, Johnson’s argument that professional status masks an ideology of freedom for professional bodies to regulate autonomously with greater authority and power draws our attention to the relationship between professionals and regulation. It needs considerable tempering in the current context of policing, however. Checks and balances to autonomous regulation by police professionals have been identified.

There will be times when police make authoritative judgements on the basis of their authority as professionals. An implication of the theoretical argument presented implies, however, that professionalism is accomplished rather than a realist, descriptive category. Research needs to give attention to strategies and tactics police use to promote it as a taken-for-granted phenomenon. The ways in which it is framed – promoted, expressed, communicated, acted-out and parsed through discourse, performances and symbolic action – can be described and analysed (Brubaker et al., 2004).

The foundations of ambitious research about professionalism and regulation within a loosely coupled system have been set out. Some caution about the efficacy of ‘loose structure’ as a key concept should nevertheless be expressed. A point, made by Weick himself, is the need to demonstrate precisely how loose parts of a regulatory system relate to each other, the consequences of their relationships, and the contexts within which the parts are more or less aligned. Without that stipulation any assemblage of structure can be conceptualized as ‘loosely coupled’ and become an analytical catch-all rather than a sensitizing concept drawing attention to relationships and meanings.

The final point is obvious but one too often absent from contemporary research about the police: the social world does not describe itself through the re-presentation of qualitative or quantitative research data (Atkinson, 2015). This is why a central feature of the analysis presented draws on theoretical work about professions and about regulation. A theoretical architecture of structure determining social life has no place within it. The central concern is the (often small) ideas and related actions that construct and sustain a regulatory system and the notion of the police as a profession.

Conclusion

Police claims to professional status are recurring, not new. It has been established that, once situated within their social context and viewed through a theoretical lens, the re-professionalization of the police is understood as a central facet of a new, hybrid, loosely coupled system of police regulation.

The current professionalization of the police is a key feature of wider changes distancing the Home Office from the regulation of constabularies. The College of Policing, the police professional body, has central regulatory functions developed alongside other important changes in the organization of police regulation.

The notion of loose coupling sensitizes us to a novel research perspective on police regulation in England and Wales. Drawing on appropriate theoretical arguments, it becomes possible to document empirically how and within which contexts the regulatory functions of each agency vie with and yield to each other. Authoritative claims to an area of jurisdiction and related actions that may cut across the work of other regulatory agencies can be examined. A new, dynamic landscape of police regulation affording a central place to professionalism can be described and analysed.