The Ideology of Internal Recruitment. The Selection of Chief Constables and Changes within the Tripartite Arrangment
As the Government's recent White Paper and the Sheehy Report look to place greater control over the police in the hands of fewer individuals the current debate over police accountability will heighten. However, discussion is locked within the current paradigm of police management and an explana...
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| Format: | Print Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
1994
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| In: |
The British journal of criminology
Year: 1994, Volume: 34, Issue: 3, Pages: 322-338 |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Availability in Tübingen: | Present in Tübingen. IFK: In: Z 7 |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
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| Summary: | As the Government's recent White Paper and the Sheehy Report look to place greater control over the police in the hands of fewer individuals the current debate over police accountability will heighten. However, discussion is locked within the current paradigm of police management and an explanation is needed of the processes by which the current situation developed in order to establish a full understanding of the nature of these wide-ranging proposals. This article examines the historical process by which the Home Office, denied direct control by statute, has increased its control over the police by controlling the type of person who becomes a police manager. Drawing upon an analysis of the career patterns of chief constables between 1835 and 1985 it charts changes in selection policies from the external, towards the internal recruitment of police managers and illustrates how two very different traditions of policing, upon which today's police are built, were brought together. The development of an ideology of internal recruitment has turned chief constables into a very special, internally accountable, professional elite with direct links to central government. The shift in control over the police towards the chief constable and the Home Office has taken place at the expense of the police authority whose effective powers have been considerably weakened. However, the recent proposals suggest that a further shift within the tripartite arrangement is about to take place as the current logic of bureaucracy and its demand for a new type of police manager, the super-bureaucrat, would appear to prescribe a reversal of the ideology of internal recruitment |
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| ISSN: | 0007-0955 |