Professor Nick Fyfe Director of SIPR

Policing Research in Scotland:

back to the future?

• Origins: ‘The Policeman in the Community’

• New beginnings: The Hedderman Review and the establishment of SIPR

• Moving forward: challenges, strategy, benefits

Origins: Michael Banton’s The Policeman in the Community (1964)

‘Pathbreaking study …’ (Robert Reiner)

‘A foundation stone…’ (Simon Holdaway)

‘A classic…’ (Eugene McLaughlin)

Michael Banton’s The Policeman in the Community (1964)

• Background: understanding institutions that appear to

work well… ‘This study of the police is intended as a small contribution

to the understanding of a very important institution in modern life; one which hitherto has not attracted sufficient attention in the analysis of society; and one which, given the continuance of present trends, is going to become more important still’

Michael Banton’s The Policeman in the Community (1964)

• Background: policing in an era of rapid social change• The increasing role of technological progress moves more

and more of the population out of the small communities in which people have an active sense of the communal good … into larger industrial communities in which people seem to be more oriented to private ends. If this is the case it may well make the individual member of the public less inclined to go out of his way to help the police (1964: ix)

Michael Banton’s The Policeman in the Community (1964)

• Key messages…• The police as one element in the maintenance of order and

regulation of deviance…..• Uniformed officers as multi-tasked peace officers rather

than crime fighters and law enforcers….

• Key principles of policing research…

Michael Banton’s The Policeman in the Community (1964)

1. Theoretically-informed and methodologically innovative

• Durkheim and the sacred character of policing• ‘I have had a great advantage in being able to compare

patrol work in two countries in which the conception of the police officer’s role remains fundamentally similar, although social conditions show considerable differences’ …. and thus ‘to see Scottish police work in a new light’

Michael Banton’s The Policeman in the Community (1964)

2. Recognition of the particularities of policing research• Were I to aim at a complete description and analysis of

the policeman’s role I fear that I should commit myself to a lifetime’s labour. One of the difficulties is that the police service is a little world of its own in which almost everything is related to everything else and it is impossible to isolate a single aspect for separate examination (xii).

Michael Banton’s The Policeman in the Community (1964)

3. Recommendations for reform• Police forces must improve the quality of recruits and

training, particularly in race relations;• Police management needs to include civilians appointed

to senior positions:• ‘Police forces as organizations .. have to be administered

just as hospitals, industrial concerns, public services and other organizations. The special character of police work should not conceal the fact that problems of the allocation of resources … are administrative problems requiring abilities that are not developed by pounding a beat’.

New beginnings: The Hedderman Review and the establishment of SIPR

• A demand-led SRDG proposal….• Key conclusions of the Hedderman Review:• High quality, police-focused and police-related research

but…• Research was fragmented and scattered across Scottish

HEIs;• Relations between the academic community and Scottish

police forces were ‘ad hoc and infrequent’; • Extent to which ‘research results are being fed directly into

practice by its originators was negligible’.

New beginnings: The Hedderman Review and the establishment of SIPR

• Building a case for support….

• There is a pressing need to provide a much richer analysis and understanding of the distinctiveness of policing in Scotland …as well as a sense of the place of ‘Scottish policing’ within broader national and international trends in policing.

SIPR’s Structure

A collaborative, network based approach

involving staff from 12 universities

from 16 different disciplines…

Police Organization

Evidence and Investigation

Police-community relations

Moving forward: challenges, strategy, benefits

• A step change in research capacity….• Significant investment in knowledge exchange…• Working collaboratively with Scotland’s police

forces on relevant research…• Building alliances with the Scottish Centre for

Crime and Justice Research, BSC and ESC

Challenges….

• Embedding a culture of engagement between academic, practitioner and policy communities

• Research ‘users’ and ‘providers’ are involved at all levels of SIPR’s management structure…

• Development of practitioner fellowships, collaborative research proposals between police and academic staff, Graduate Programme…

• Memorandum of Understanding between ACPOS and SIPR

Strategy…

• Invest in knowledge transfer/exchange as well as research….

• KT is recognised as a key responsibility within SIPR via investment in a KT Manager and appointment Network KT Co-ordinators

• Develop a range of KT mechanisms…

• Think of KT as a process not an event…

Forum

A Knowledge Exchange Strategy…

Benefits…

• Opportunities to act locally… to provide an evidence-base for policing policy and practice, build research capacity, critical mass and social capital (in the form of trust, reciprocity and networks)

• and to think and act globally…by providing a platform for Scotland’s research community to engage with UK, European and global initiatives

Back to the future?

• Both the police and the public would benefit if there were more informed and independent opinion in the universities and among the public at large about the police and their duties (Michael Banton, 1964, The Policeman in the Community)