Comparative Policing Review

Editors
Jenny Fleming
Sebastian Roché

Comparative Policing Review aims to further develop a comparative approach in the field of policing with a focus on comparison of police forces, police cultures and policing policies across various domains. For example, police-government relations, performance management, and training. Comparative Policing Review revives the role of politics and policy in the study of policing, and considers the relationship between citizens and the government and indeed, the forces themselves.

As a high profile (and often armed) bureaucracy that operates within a state under more or less strict regulation, it is unlikely that police can be understood in isolation. Social and political macro-determinants of police policies have been subject to limited enquiry, although there is reason to believe that they could be critically significant to broader understandings of police practice. An understanding of the politics of police within a societal context is required to grasp their function and their relation to civil society. Comparative Policing Review wishes to expand research along these lines and go beyond the few countries where the study of policing invariably takes place.

A global policing and police studies agenda necessarily enhances the importance of exploration of societal, i.e. socio-economic, cultural and political contexts. It will increase our ability to formulate generalizations and to produce global and cogent policing studies and theories. Incorporating contextual variation will help us to study larger influences and causes that potentially affect police organization and disorganization, the broader community, and the cultural and political environment that produce particular policing patterns and influence police legitimacy as well as effectiveness.