Policing, Modernity and Postmodernity

Abstract

This paper seeks to assess the relationship between contemporary policing and postmodernity, and to argue that police leaders and policy makers should develop a postmodern sensibility in relation to social change and policing. Official discourse about police reform and policing developments is overwhelmingly couched in terms of modernization; following Gibbins (1998) it is suggested here that a postmodernization agenda should form part of the discourse surrounding the police service and its ''reform''. The paper identifies how some police leaders and agencies in the UK have considered the challenges and development of policing in an increasingly fragmented, diverse and eclectic society; whilst such consideration has generally not occurred within a framework of postmodern analysis, it is argued that police leaders, and some initiatives, have paved the way to postmodern policing. The extent to which the modernist project still dominates the policing (and wider criminal justice) agenda is also reviewed.

Disembodied police practice: “Keep a lid on it so you can function”

“…This empirical research is qualitative, using narrative methodology and multiple theoretical lenses – deconstructive, post-structural and critical – to disrupt police officers’ conceptions of their professional practice (Ryan, 2016). A central reason for adopting qualitative methodology is the nature of policing, which is imbued with modernist ideas of law and order, reflecting scientific, rational thinking, and evidence-based practices (Waters, 2007). A compelling reason for adopting narrative methodology and semi-structured interviews was the deep-seated oral history of police culture.…”

Institutional hybridity and cultural isomorphism in contemporary policing

“…A paper by Waters (2007) develops further some of Reiner's ideas of the impact of late modernity on policing, notably by exploring the relationship between modernity, postmodernity and police reform. In particular, he draws attention to the question of whether or not a modernist agenda for reform can affect meaningful change in the postmodern police.…”

“…Waters notes that,Ongoing police reforms are invariably mooted in a modernist light, with a firm belief that changes to procedures will yield improvement in services and efficiency. Discourse is overwhelmingly modernist…(2007: 263).Waters’ work acknowledges that while the police reform agenda is unfailingly modernist in outlook, the postmodern era is increasingly distrusting of reason and subject to perpetual change, a perception of incompleteness and an overall pessimism about future success. Against this backdrop, Waters draws attention to a number of weaknesses in the modernist police agenda, not least in respect of the validity of ongoing police reform, the embedded assumption that progress will be achieved and, ultimately, the orthodoxy that a singular model of policing can either exist or work under current conditions.…”

“…Ongoing police reforms are invariably mooted in a modernist light, with a firm belief that changes to procedures will yield improvement in services and efficiency. Discourse is overwhelmingly modernist…(2007: 263).…”

Indigeneity-Grounded Analysis (IGA) as Policy(-Making) Lens: New Zealand Models, Canadian Realities

“…We prefer the Greek term, autochthonous (meaning springing from the earth) peoples but have difficulty envisioning narratives that embrace autochthoneity as discourse and politics, despite Indigenous continuity to land (Xanthaki 2008). (4) Policy making continues to informed by a modernist approach with its connotation of rationality, planned intervention, binaries of right and wrong, and assumptions of progress and perceptions of linear improvement as demonstrated by measurable performance indicators (Waters 2007). This commitment would appear to be inconsistent with fragmented, diverse, discontinuities, changing, and contested world of indigeneity.…”