Author: Edited by Tim Newburn
ISBN No: 1-843923-23-8
Review date: 13/12/2025
No of pages: 875
Publisher: Willan
Year of publication: 11/09/2012
Brief:
The second edition of a Handbook of Policing is as colossal and wide-ranging as the first, but private security readers might wonder where they fit in.
Five years ago, reviewing the first edition, I suggested the book did not give enough credit to private policing, and that most UK policing, as you read this, is not done by police constables but private security. If the book title was ‘handbook of police’, it wouldn’t be such a niggle. That said, the book remains an awesome door-stopper that must be a first stop for a student or anyone else trying to learn about the policing landscape. Yes, some of the 30 chapters do bow to political correctness (gender; and restorative justice). Otherwise, the chapters are meaty and by authorities in the field – fraud and organised crime by Prof Michael Levi, for instance. It’s welcome to see a mix of police and academic authors, sometimes sharing chapters – PAJ Waddington, and West Midlands Insp Dr Martin Wright on use of force, firearms and riot control for instance. They end with the point that unsworn auxiliaries are ever more doing the routine patrols, and sown constables are doing (often forceful) enforcement. Where does this leave the unsigned contract between police and the citizens they serve? The book editor, Prof Tim Newburn, does conclude: “The increasing visibility of a plurality of providers of security will mean, one way or another, that we will be forced to consider once again what it is we want policing in general, and the police service in particular, to achieve, and in what way we feel that it is appropriate to achieve these things.” New to this edition are chapters on Scotland and Northern Ireland. On NI, Dublin academic Aogan Mulcahy points out the future looks ‘immesurably brighter’ yet there are mundane challenges – such as organised crime. To repeat, ex-police readers may be interested in former colleagues who have carved out second careers in academia and consultancy – Bob Golding of the University of Portsmouth for instance, a former Warwickshire assistant chief constable; and former Thames Valley chief constable Peter Neyroud, now the National Policing Improvement Agency chief exec. As his CV shows, policing has rather fragmented into regulators and agencies, for instance in the ‘new’ crimes to do with computers and counter-terror.
