1. Policing and Public Management: Governance, Vices and Virtues
Professor Kevin Morrell, Durham University & Professor Ben Bradford, UCL

2. “Governance”
HIERARCHIES
MARKETS
NETWORKS

3. “Good” Governance DUTIES
Obey the law, enforce the law, follow policies, standard operating procedures
OUTCOMES
Reduce harm, harm index, sentencing, reduce crime
maximise efficiency and effectiveness of resource allocation
VIRTUES
Not act-centred but Agent–centred
Character, Virtues, Flourishing, Public Good, Citizen/State

4. Book Outline 1 Governance 2 The public good 3 Legitimacy 4 Identity
5 Work
6 Training
7 Disorder
8 Evidence

5. Holy Grail problem (it can't be reached)
(Chapters 3 and 4) Public virtues mean continually aiming for proximate goals exhibiting virtues like competence, fairness and legitimacy.
Good policing is not an outcome but an activity.

6. Operationalisation (public good is context-specific)
(Chapters 5 and 6) Character is expressed through an ongoing individual obligation to serve the public and learned through becoming a police officer.
Individual Virtues.

7. Public good is about enhancing not just limiting harm
(Chapters 7 and 8) The police are the public and the public are the police.
Good policing and the good person (and the good society) are defined relationally.

8. Institute for Global City Policing
What is good policing?
Ben Bradford
Institute for Global City Policing
UCL

9. Policing and the prevention of crime
Situational Action Theory suggest that both deterrent threat (and/or guardianship etc.) and a structure of ’moral norms’ influence offending behaviour
We tend to think about police activity in relation to the former
But it may also affect people’s normative values and the ties created by trusted, legitimate institutions.
Source: Wikström 2017:511

10. Policing and deterrence – the case of stop and search
Does stop and search - and similar activities, have a deterrent effect on crime?

11. Does stop and search deter crime?
Retrospective evaluation of Op Blunt 2 (large increase in s.60 searches in some boroughs) identified no effect on police recorded crime or on ambulance calls (McCandless et al. 2016)
Similar study assessing Operation Impact in New York (increase in SQF in hotspot zones) (MacDonald et al. 2016): “probable cause” SQFs had a positive effect, but this was of “little practical importance” due to small effect sizes
Recent study of ten year’s worth of London data (Tiratelli et al. 2018) found S&S only really had an effect on drug offences, and overall results were at the “the outer margins of statistical and social significance”
BUT consistent effects from hotspots interventions …

12. Policing and ‘the structure of moral norms’
We need also to think about the effect of police activity on the ‘moral climate’ within which individuals operate
Some of this concerns e.g. general deterrence (i.e. knowing there is a police organization and that it does things)
But we more commonly refer to questions of trust and legitimacy and how people’s relations with police shapes their attitudes and behaviour

13. Procedural justice theory
What is procedural justice?
Respect and dignity
Neutrality and unbiased decision-making
Openness
‘Voice’
What does procedural justice do?
Generates trust
Indicates shared group membership
Indicates that police are behaving in a normatively justifiable way (that they are ‘doing’ justice)
Generates legitimacy

14. What is trust and what does it do?
Trust is a willingness to be vulnerable that is premised in beliefs about competency and good intentions – i.e. trust is a process
Trusted institutions constitute positive moral frameworks, towards which we orient values and actions
Trust generates a sense of ‘secure belonging’ based on common - and binding – shared norms and values

15. Stop and search, trust and legitimacy
One of the most widely replicated findings in criminology is that, on average, stop and search undermine trust and legitimacy

16. Learning about power
Encounters with police officers are marked by power imbalance
Procedural justice is power used in the right way. Interactions with police are moments in which young people, in particular, learn about how they should treat others - particularly those over whom they have power
On-going work in London links trust in police fairness to normative attitudes concerning gender and relationships - i.e. situations were power is a relevant factor
‘Wrong but not illegal’
‘Deceitful and controlling

17. What is good policing?
Good policing does present a deterrent threat (and problem solve, etc.)
But it also attends to the relationship between police and policed
And thinks much more clearly about balance
Fairness, trust, legitimacy, shared identities constitute positive moral climates that shape attitudes and behaviours – and contribute towards the good society
This is also the most ethically desirable way to do policing!