One of the police pledges which were put forward was to make sure they kept the public’s confidence in the way the police work and capture offenders. However as time has past the public’s confidences with the police have started to fade as the police begin to show flaws within the way they work. For example the way they treat offenders and victims, the delayed response to reported crime, the exposure of institutional racism and racial attitudes to offenders and victims. These factors were exposed by the media causing the police and government to come under heavy criticism on the way they work, even to this day the police still come under criticism on the way they deal with criminal situations. In recent events terrorism has become a major issue in today’s society as it has created much fear amongst individuals and damaging the public’s confidence with society.
Within this essay, the focus will be to explain three concepts in which influence the public’s confidence on the police. The concepts which will be analysed within this essay are media, racism and terrorism. Apart from analysing these three concepts this essay will also focus on how the police can help bring back public confidence within them and the plans which have been implemented to help restore the public faith within the police. At the end of this essay it will conclude whether the police have done much to build the public’s confidence within the police.
The first concept to be critically analysed is media and the part its plays in portraying the police to the public and influencing the public’s confidence within the police. The media has always been a prominent influence in the public’s beliefs about certain issues such as crime, the police force, and institut...
... middle of paper ...
...ws underground communications between the emergency services and London underground staff, also series of counter-terrorism exercises has also been staged to better prepare staff’ (Guardian 2009).
The metropolitan police have themselves placed in new aims into help stop terrorism by trying to work with the community. At first it seemed an impossible aim as individuals did not have much faith in the way the police worked and would not believe the police wanted to work with the community to make it safer. As new terror threats started to be published through videos the community believed it was time to work with the police and build back the police-public relation in order to combat terrorism. This started to become successful communities reported potential suicide bombers who were then discovered and arrested before their attacks could happen (Home Office 2009).
With reference to the orthodox and revisionist perspectives, assess the statement that ‘the establishment of the Metropolitan Police in 1829 was a rational solution to changes in society and the associated challenges of crime and disorder’. Use a contemporary example to demonstrate how these perspectives can be useful in interpreting modern policing activities.
Crank & Caldero (2004) discuss the notion of the noble cause that is widely used by police officers to justify their actions. Police officers feel that there are many obstacles that prevent them to do their job efficiently. They claim that courts only hinder the process of putting criminals behind bars. They also believe that they are true patriots with a noble cause of getting rid of bad guys. To further prove their point Crank & Caldero (2004) use works of many authors, who wrote about police ethics and corruption and about how the noble cause is interpreted by police officers. Each of the authors discusses a dilemma with which polices officers have to deal when deciding what action they need to take in order to deal with criminals. Cumulatively, it seems that police conduct themselves towards criminals and citizens with hostility and with actions that maybe constituted as unlawful and corruptive in nature. But to the police officers, who are seeking justice and are driven by a noble cause, all means are good to get the bad guys. There is also a philosophical twist that puts a poli...
This report will be on the Police service. It will explain who the police are and their role and function within the Criminal Justice System and society. In addition, it will talk about police misconduct and the results of police misconduct within the police, government and society.
As Nils Christie argued, crime is a property of the state (2004). As such, it can be defined by the same systems of ideals which influence the state. Crime statistics, which refer to a category of human acts that society view as deviant, can consequently be argued to be without objectivity (Dorling and Simpson, 1999). The statistics they provide are thus arguably not exact. To a certain extent one could infer they are reflections of society, of those who present the data and most importantly of those who accumulate it. The facts themselves become a socially constructed foundation for social knowledge, which inevitably become subjective. This essay aims to discuss how ideological biases within the Police and to a certain extent the media are reflected in the crime statistics.
In many years there has been a debate about procedural justice, policing community and communication in policing. Each of this topic is extremely important for the police to follow in order to maintain the community safe and build trust within the community. Police legitimacy is also important for the police to build a good relationship with the public. This essay analysis on what is procedural justice, community policing, and communication in policing and how each of this topic contribute to the legitimacy of police within the community. Each of this top is extremely important for police officer to be aware in order to effectively deal with any issue and build relationships with the community.
There is a divide between the public perception of law enforcement. Race is a recurring theme in the opinion on law enforcement. Law Enforcement officers are here to serve and protect its citizens and communities, but that is not always the case. This paper will discuss these racial perceptions, media portrayal, and what can be done to improve the relationship.
These changes have manifested both positive and negative reverberations in the way we perform our job. Police officials have contemplated for years over the key to maintaining a positive image for their organization. Unfortunately, several incidents in the past years have altered society's perception of police in some communities. Police in America are no longer strangers to innovation born of scandal.
One large factor that fuels police brutality is the media. The media is constantly showing the world what police officers are doing wrong. The book “The Politics of Force: Media and the Construction of Police Brutality”, is a book where author Regina Lawrence does an extensive study on how the media ties in with the formation of police brutality. Lawrence analyzed more than 500 incidents of police use-of-force covered by the New York Times and in the Los Angeles Times from the year 1981 to 1991. Lawrence informs readers of the structural and cultural forces that both shape the news and define when police use excessive force. Lawrence claims that police brutality incidents occur in greater numbers than those that are reported. She also explores how media is obtained, so the public can see a new perspective on policing policies. Journalists decide whether one story makes it to the news if the issues and events need light shone upon them. If it were not for the media, many issues and events would go undocumented, as police and elected officials would rather leave them unexposed. Lawrence also shows how a news event involving the police can become a tool for isolated social groups to gain access to the
While on the job, police must put all their personal opinions aside. They must provide everyone with an equal and fair chance. It is important in a democratic society for police to not know too much about the community they are policing. It allows them to ...
American law enforcement agencies are based off the English models which began in the early 1800’s. In 1829, the English Parliament passed the Metropolitan Police Act (Walker, 1983). Sir Robert Peel who has been credited as the father of modern policing introduced this act to Parliament (Walker, 1983). This act established the London Metropolitan Police which was the model for American policing. This method of policing incorpor...
In our times, the police have become the criminals. Some police are using their power to do bad things, and society has come to fear police. The law enforcement system needs change. The courts have failed the police, and the police have turn to other means of justice. We must stop the corruption in the police force.
The focus is on the issues of police accountability in modern society, and in particular why their accountability is more important than other professions. This is not surprising considering the amount of power and discretion police officers have, and the level of trust that the public holds with these civil servants. Police officers accountability is the biggest thing in their profession which has been an issue of concern they have to be accountable to the police department who want the officer to be an effective and responsible person, to people in the community who have best expectation from an officer and being accountable to themselves for their acts. An ordinary citizen of a country cannot obtain the powers that police officer’s have.
The police back then much like now were held as heroes and that they were protecting the rest of us from the bad people. However as time has passed there has always been the question on how much power the police can have, how much force is necessary for the police to use. “The use of force to effect an arrest was as conservational in the 1840s and 1840s as it is today” . From the 1840’s till now there have been little to no actual improvements made. The police have continued to become even more powerful, when the police department was created the people questioned on whether
When Sir Robert Peel established the London Metropolitan Police, he established a number of principles to follow, one these principles could be considered the start of community policing: “the police are the public and the public are the police” (Bain, 2014). For a plethora of reasons, the police began to lose sight of this relationship as the central organizing concept
In order to understand the attitudes towards police work and the actions of police officers one can make use of the Structure-agency debate which has three distinct perspectives; structure, agency and structuration. This essay shall argue which position is best to apply by drawing on sociological theories and concepts.