‘It’s a Profession,it Isn’t a Job’: Police Officers’ Views on the Professionalisation of Policing in England

Abstract

This article focuses on police officers’ views on the professionalisation of policing in England against a backdrop of government reforms to policing via establishment of the College of Policing, evidence-based policing, and a period of austerity. Police officers view professionalisation as linked to top-down government reforms, education and recruitment, building of an evidence-base, and ethics of policing (Peelian principles). These elements are further entangled with new public management principles, highlighting the ways in which professionalism can be used as a technology of control to discipline workers. There are tensions between the government’s top-down drive for police organisations to professionalise and officers’ bottom-up views on policing as an established profession. Data are presented from qualitative interviews with 15 police officers and staff in England.

Keywords

education ethics evidence-base police policing profession professionalisation public management qualitative

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