Intelligence led policing, managerialism and community engagement: competing priorities and the role of the national intelligence model in the UK

Citation

Webster, B.K. and Childress Webster, J. (2006), "Intelligence led policing, managerialism and community engagement: competing priorities and the role of the national intelligence model in the UK", Policing: An International Journal, Vol. 29 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/pijpsm.2006.18129baf.001

Intelligence led policing, managerialism and community engagement: competing priorities and the role of the national intelligence model in the UK

Mike Maguire and John TimPolicing and SocietyVol. 16 No. 12006pp.67-85

Maguire and John present a paper arguing that policing (especially in the UK) is moving toward a proactive approach to identifying and “managing” recurring “problems”. The authors see this approach as the unsurprising result of the various pressures placed on individuals and public agencies in modern society. Further, intelligence led policing, argue Maguire and John, is the result of the growing requirement that whatever action taken by state agencies be “efficient and effective”.

It is important to note one key difference between policing in the UK and the USA. The former has a much more centralized government, making countrywide initiatives like England’s National Intelligence Model (NIM) a compulsory policy rather than a guide from one level of government to another. Indeed, NIM, which became mandatory for all of England and Wale’s 43 police forces, was able to be implemented in just four years from its conception.

The core elements of NIM are managing crime, criminals, localized disorder, and community issues, as well as reducing opportunities for crime. This distinguishes NIM from other approaches that focus solely on proactive measures taken against repeat offenders. NIM did not develop in a theoretical or practical vacuum in the UK; it has been integrated to varying degrees with POP (problem oriented policing) and SARA (scanning, analysis, response, assessment) approaches.

Other, more reactive models, such as COP (community oriented policing) may be seen as based on “conflicting principles” of NIM. COP’s chief goals are often identified as allaying citizens’ fear of crime, concerns about anti-social behavior, and the lack of trust by community residents in the police. Often, COP measures seek to change the attitudes of law-abiding citizens rather than the actions of law breaking citizens.

However, Maguire and John claim that “customer led” and “consumerist” focused policing need not be in contradiction with the “objective” crime trend approach of NIM. The authors argue that COP’s goal of greater trust between citizens and police will yield much more intelligence for police to operate on. Thus, accurate intelligence about a community and its problems are essential to proper policing of that community.

Traditional performance measures of counts of crimes, investigations, arrests, or convictions seem to be incompatible with NIM. But since these means of measuring a policing program’s success are not likely to be abandoned anytime soon, supporters of NIM have tried to fit their program into this framework. For example, intelligence management such as NIM can add value to crime aggregates by identifying crime trends and linking criminal acts through forensics.

Maguire and John conclude by saying that it is not surprising that policing has undergone such rapid change recently when the larger society it is a part of has changed so much itself. Indeed the authors say the rapid swing from one management philosophy to another is predictable. The secret of NIM, the philosophy they support, is the rational collection and use of intelligence relating to crime and disorder.

Brandon K. Webster, Jennifer Childress Webster