Policing and Public Management

Book excerpt: Policing and Public Management takes a new perspective on the challenges and problems facing the governance of police forces across the UK and the developed world. Complementing existing texts in criminology and police studies, Morrell and Bradford draw on ideas from the neighbouring fields of public management and virtue ethics to open the field up to a broader audience. This forms the basis for an imaginative reframing of policing as something that either enhances or diminishes "the public good" in society. The text focuses on two cross-cutting aspects of the relationship between the police and the public: public confidence and public order. Extending award-winning work in public management, and drawing on extensive and varied data sources, Policing and Public Management offers new ways of seeing the police and of understanding police governance. This text will be valuable supplementary reading for students of public management, policing and criminology, as well as others who want to be better informed about contemporary policing.