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The purpose of this paper is to compare the job satisfaction of police officers in metropolitan cities with that of officers in smaller areas in a rapidly developing nation. It also assesses the difference in the factors that affect the job satisfaction of officers in metropolitan cities and smaller areas.

The research used survey data collected from 1,500 police officers throughout South Korea. Ordinal logistic (ordered logit) regression was the main method of analysis considering the ordinal response in the dependent variable.

The findings revealed no difference in job satisfaction between officers in metropolitan cities and those in smaller cities and rural areas, but certain factors, especially length of service and rank, negatively affected officers' job satisfaction in metropolitan cities; this was not the case in smaller cities and rural areas.

Although findings from police survey data of a non‐random sample of officers should be generalized with caution, the findings provide police administrators with some evidence that certain factors are necessary to minimize the likelihood of job dissatisfaction among senior and supervisory officers in metropolitan cities.

Few researchers have compared the level of and predictors of officers' job satisfaction in large and small cities, especially in non‐Western contexts. The study intends to fill this void.

The purpose of this paper is to consider what the impact of the first six months of the Freedom of Information Act has been on archives and records management services in UK public services. The UK Freedom of Information Act was passed in 2000 and came into full operation on 1 January 2005. It gives people, regardless of nationality, a right to be told whether public bodies hold information and to be provided with that information. Similar legislation exists in over 50 countries including the USA, Canada, Australia and Ireland.

The project undertook interviews with four case study organisations: University College London, the Metropolitan Police, Peterborough City Council and Soham Village College. Using the Department for Constitutional Affairs Model Action Plan, the researchers examined leadership and policy, training and awareness, information and records management, customers and stakeholders and systems and procedures.

The research showed that the four case study organisations coped well with the requests they received in the first six months of 2005. However, the systems would not have been robust enough had request levels been higher.

Archives and records management services are a key part of FOI and should take an active role in research to establish best practice.

The case was written from secondary materials.

This case is designed to support learning objectives in a Human Relations class of a university management course. The case explores how the UK Metropolitan police, working with the Girls’ Network, piloted a reverse mentoring programme for six months in 2021. Three senior officers were mentored by a trio of teenage girls from disadvantaged London boroughs. The aim of the programme was to address falling trust in the police by creating more understanding and empathy in the mentees for the issues facing the communities where the mentors lived, and to give the mentors more confidence from the experience of representing their communities. Each mentor–mentee pair focused on a specific policing issue that was relevant to the mentor’s neighbourhood: knife crime, domestic abuse or social inequality. Through the process, the senior Met police officers gained a deeper understanding of the challenges in the communities they served. Now that the pilot had been completed, the Met faced a decision point. Should the programme be spread further through the Met?Through reading and discussing the case, students are expected to explore the importance of empathy in the workplace and how reverse mentoring, when having the right support and overall intent, could be used in organisations.

This case is appropriate for university management courses. This case has a difficulty level appropriate for undergraduate and postgraduate courses. This case could be incorporated into a unit on human behaviour, leadership or coaching.

It is common for police services to set mandatory retirement ages at relatively young ages. This paper seeks to discuss the reasons for, and workforce planning implications of, mandatory retirement within the context of the London Metropolitan Police Service (MPS).

In‐depth interviews were carried out with seven senior human resource managers and two trade union representatives in the MPS.

Workforce planning issues shaped managers' perceptions on the need for a mandatory retirement age of 60 for police constables. On the one hand, they were under pressure to increase the number of constables, and the possibility of extending working life was seen as one means to that end. On the other, it was feared that the retention of older police officers would lead to career blockages for younger police constables rising through the ranks.

Owing to labour and skills shortages, MPS managers were looking for ways to encourage older police officers to delay retirement. Innovative practices, such as offering flexible working hours, mentoring roles and pension incentives as alternatives to retirement were identified.

The qualitative data put the discussion of mandatory retirement in police services within the context of workforce planning rather than capability. For police authorities that maintain mandatory retirement policies, raising or abolishing retirement age would change the workforce planning paradigm in which police officers are recruited from, and retire at, young ages.

The aim of the current study is three‐fold: it aims to empirically investigates the relationship between officers' perceptions on organizational structure and preventive policing practices (PPP) in the South Korean context; it attempts to find what aspects of organizational characteristics will be influential in police officers' day‐to‐day activities;, utilizing structural equation modeling (SEM), it aims to identitify the complex networks of influences among various organizational aspects.

The current study utilizes data collected from two different samples: a total of 146 randomly selected police officers in a metropolitan police agency, and 60 police officers who were attending a community policing training course. Overall response rate was 73.6 percent. The organizational characteristics investigated include strategic direction, decentralization of authority, system flexibility, reward system, and open‐system feedback mechanism.

The results of SEM indicate that officers' perceptions on organizational structure (except open‐system feedback mechanism) of Korean police agency do not influence an individual police officer's preventive policing activity. The study found a significant relationship between officers' perceptions on open‐system structure and preventive policing practice. Finally, the study also identified a complex network of organizational traits on preventive policing: strategic direction influences all other organizational factors; system flexibility is a prerequisite for the open system; and decentralization of authority influences the open system structure.

Although this study uniquely utilized organizational factors measured at the individual level, one may criticize the lack of a more direct organizational measure, such as organizational size, age, task scope, or number of ranks. Future study on this topic will benefit from employing both direct and indirect organizational measures.

The current study enhances the understanding of individual perception of organizational characteristics on police officers' day‐to‐day preventive policing activities.

This paper contextualizes the political/economic environment in which Toronto attempted to implement community‐based policing. The analysis examines two specific restructuring projects, the Robbery Reduction Initiative and Central Field Command’s implementation of Crime Management. These projects reveal the service’s use of community policing as both a vehicle for and philosophy by which to underpin structural and operational reform. Moreover, they are clear examples of the manner in which reform initiatives, and particularly the imperative to implement community policing, were woven together in an effort to operationalize an effective policing model.

It is common for police services to set mandatory retirement ages at a relatively young level. The aim of this paper is to discuss the reasons for, and workforce planning implications of, mandatory retirement within the context of the London Metropolitan Police Service (MPS).

This research is based on in‐depth interviews with seven senior human resource managers and two trade union representatives in the MPS.

Workforce planning issues shaped managers' perceptions of the need for a mandatory retirement age of 60 for police constables. On the one hand, they were under pressure to increase the number of constables, and the possibility of extending working life was seen as one means to that end. On the other, it was feared that the retention of older police officers would lead to career blockages for younger police constables rising through the ranks.

Owing to labour and skills shortages, MPS managers were looking for ways to encourage older police officers to delay retirement. Innovative practices, such as offering flexible working hours, mentoring roles and pension incentives as alternatives to retirement were identified.

The qualitative data put the discussion of mandatory retirement in police services within the context of workforce planning rather than capability. For police authorities that maintain mandatory retirement policies, raising or abolishing retirement age would change the workforce planning paradigm in which police officers are recruited from, and retire at, young ages.

Expanding on earlier research, this paper aims to develop a more complete understanding of military experience as it relates to stress and burnout in law enforcement. The current study examines whether influences on stress and burnout vary between officers with military experience and officers without a military background.

Data for this study were obtained from earlier research on police staff at a Northeastern metropolitan city. A combination of analytic methods, including t‐tests and multivariate regression analysis, were used to explore the effects of variables on stress and burnout among military and non‐military officers.

The results indicate that negative exposures to demanding events influenced burnout for all officers. In contrast, negative exposures affected stress levels for those officers with no military experience. Coping techniques were important predictors of stress and burnout for both groups; however, contrary to expectations, police experience in years was not significant in any model. Demographic controls had no influence on stress and burnout for either group, with the exception of gender, which was a significant predictor of stress only for the non‐military group.

This research has implications for police departments interested in developing group‐based strategies for reducing stress and burnout among officers. The findings are limited in their capacity for wide geographical generalization, however, because this study represents the views of only one department.

In contrast with previous empirical work, the findings here demonstrate that military experience can have a favorable influence on the work outcomes of police officers. This study suggests that officers with military backgrounds are less stressed when faced with demanding situations and that military experience provides female officers with an edge in handling work‐related stressors.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the inter-relationship between target setting, racial categories and racism via the case of a race employment target set for the police. Drawing on and extending public administration and governmentality perspectives, the work explores the shifting politics of enumeration and categorisation within a set of organisational manoeuvres.

The data are qualitative and mainly based on interviews with senior figures involved in managing the organisational response to the target, as well as some documentary sources.

The discussion reveals that both racial enumeration and categorisation are contested rather than fixed, but that debates about it ebb and flow in variable and uneven ways. They are the subject of manoeuvring around the number itself and of what counts as race. This indicates the complexity of governing race targets, which appear set but are made fluid in various ways.

The research is based on interviews with senior and prominent figures involved in governance who spoke “off the record”, as described in the paper. These conversations are not in the public domain and the justification for using them is that they reveal the thinking behind the public debate about the black and minority ethnic (BME) target, as well as a process of negotiation and manoeuvring.

The BME target has been the subject of considerable media and political attention, plus some academic research. The paper presents a new and unique account of the target as it was implemented. It is of value to researchers interested in racism and policing interested in the organisational background that shaped the public debates about the target.