Policing UK 2013 - Police Federation

OVERVIEW
A different
trajectory?
Professor Nicholas Fyfe looks
at police reform in Scotland
Professor Nicholas Fyfe
is Director of the Scottish
Institute for Policing Research
& School of the Environment,
University of Dundee
Few interested in the policing of
the UK will forget the summer of
2011. In England it will largely be
remembered for the riots that followed
the fatal shooting of a man by police in
north London. Violent clashes between
police and young people quickly spread
to other areas of London and on to other
cities, including Manchester, Birmingham
and Liverpool.
Initial descriptions of the riots as
occurring in ‘UK’ or ‘British’ cities were,
however, quickly re-labelled as ‘English’
cities following the intervention of
Scotland’s First Minister, Alex Salmond.
He complained about broadcasters
headlining the coverage of urban unrest as
“UK riots” and claimed “Scottish society
was different from that in England, and
that similar riots were much less likely in
Scotland,” (The Guardian, 10 August 2011).
Whatever the credibility of Salmond’s
claims, his intervention usefully highlights
that the UK is far from being a ‘united’
kingdom. This is particularly apparent in
relation to the divergent trajectories of
police reform within the UK.
In addition to the riots, the summer
of 2011 will also be remembered for
major political announcements regarding
the future structure and governance
of policing in England and Wales and
in Scotland, revealing very different
approaches to policing north and south
of the border.
In Scotland, the Justice Minister
set out a package of radical changes
(contained within the Police and Fire
Reform (Scotland) Bill) that will sweep
away local police forces (of which there
are currently eight), replacing them with
a new national police organisation, the
Police Service of Scotland.
This new national service will be
accountable to a new national body, the
Scottish Police Authority, comprising
appointed, rather than elected, members
and with responsibility for maintaining
an efficient and effective force and for
developing a national policing plan.
Local policing
Although these developments appear to
herald a move towards greater centralism,
local policing is to be made a statutory
requirement in Scotland, with the creation
of 32 police districts aligned with the
boundaries of the 32 local authorities,
each with a local police commander
required to draw up a local policing plan.
Local police boards made up of elected
councillors will disappear and it will be up
to local authorities to determine how they
engage with local police commanders.
What lies behind the most radical
shake up to policing in Scotland for a
generation? The political narrative has
focused overwhelmingly on the economic
rationale for reform. Confronted with
cuts in public spending determined in
Westminster, the Justice Secretary has
argued that “the status quo” in policing
is now “unsustainable” and that the
only way “to protect and improve local
16 | POLICING UK