Social, Organisational and Cultural Change: Contemporary Challenges for Policing

Contemporary policing is often perceived as being in a state of change. Discourse on such matters largely focuses upon changes to the challenges facing the police in terms of operational complexities of law enforcement, the harshening of the financial landscape and the demands of providing legitimate policing to increasingly complex communities. Such issues are undoubtedly significant, and this paper will adopt a slightly different focus with which to engage with them. Taking as its starting point the concept of late modernity, it will explore the growth of neo-liberalism as a driver for wholesale changes in the way that police organisations orientate themselves to both the state and wider society. In doing so, it will detail changes to the remit of policing, the organisational structure of policing and the new cultural context in which it exists. In doing so, it will pay particular attention to the growth of broadly managerialist functions within policing and the increasing influence of professionalisation agendas.