Political Policing

‘Is the contemporary claim by the police that politics should be kept out of policing fair or disingenuous?’

This essay will critically assess the requirement for politics in the police and whether or not it acts as an interference which affects policing or as an essential tool in protecting individual’s human rights, maintaining law and order, meeting crime targets and improving society. It will seek to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of political policing and look to examples of this to provide an answer to the assertion that police are dishonest and unappreciative of political involvement. The essay will then discuss if there is any substance to this claim before concluding with recommendations as to why politics should or should
There is a belief amongst almost every chief constable of the U.K’s police services that there is a longstanding political scheme to abolish the established foundations of the police organisation and make an exclusive single party state (GMP Chief Constable, James Anderton cited in Baldwin and Kinsey, 1982:105/106). Baldwin and Kinsey (1982) continue to explain that it is important to differentiate between control and accountability in regards to politics in police. The idea of a politician asking a chief constable for control and explanations for their accountability in decision making would mean complete direction and regulation in the way the police service operates, which inevitably would lead to a police state. In contrast to this Scraton (1985) has identified three boundaries of political constraints which must stay in order to maintain a police service that is accountable and impartial it its application of the law. Firstly, that the police are uniformed citizens and must be subjected to the law in the same way that every other citizen is. Secondly, a police service must have some form of organisational constraints that act as a guideline to an officer’s duties and conduct in and out of uniform. Finally, the political constraints by the home secretary and
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