BRITISH CHIEF CONSTABLES: THE AMERICANIZATION OF A ROLE?

Stuart Morris

Political Studies, 1981, vol. 29, issue 3, 352-364

Abstract: type="main" xml:lang="en">

Abstract. The accountability of the police has become momentarily as live a political issue in Britain as it has always been in the United States. The relationship implied in the term accountability is essentially one of agency, and presupposes the demonstrability and regularity of the relationship. In both the United States and Britain, the corporate accountability of the police has come to be exercised and articulated through chiefs of police and chief constables. In the United States, however, the professional autonomy of chiefs of police owes much to a strategy of reform designed to free urban police forces from the corrupting influence of partisan politics, whereas in Britain what has been called the‘uncontrolled authority’of chief constables is the result of an oblique approach to the entire question of the accountability of the police. While rejecting‘politics’chief constables are assuming a more prominent politico-administrative role and are endeavouring to establish a more direct relationship with public wlopinion.

Date: 1981
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/j.1467-9248.1981.tb00501.x (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:polstu:v:29:y:1981:i:3:p:352-364

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0032-3217

Access Statistics for this article

Political Studies is currently edited by Matthew Festenstein and Martin Smith

More articles in Political Studies from Political Studies Association
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().