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The last number of years has seen a growing importance placed on media relations by police forces throughout the UK. This has resulted in an increased concern with public relations practice and in particular that area focused on media relations. This study centres on Strathclyde Police, the largest force in Scotland and among the largest in the UK. Outside of the Metroplitan Police, Strathclyde, has been throughout the 1990s at the forefront in developing more pro‐active media relations strategies. This paper examines the development of the Spotlight Intiative which attempted to tackle low level, quality of life crime (in some quarters associated with the phrase “zero tolerance”). Central to Spotlight has been the development of a more systematic and structured approach to public relations focused on the role of the media, specifically local and Scottish national newspapers, in communicating with local communities. This research argues that the growing importance of media relations at the Strathclyde force has broader implications for police‐media relations throughout the UK.

Questions a sample of criminal justice students to show that when officer competence is evaluated in terms of professionalism rather than confrontational issues, bias against women is not found, whereas evaluation variables based on potentially violent situations promote the belief that women are not as well fitted as men for constant exposure to violent confrontation. Cautions against the danger of presenting discrete images of a male “brute force” and a female “professional force”. Finds indications that increased recruitment of women, gender sensitivity training and a higher level of officers’ education may change existing attitudes toward the police.

Focuses on the issue of force by the police and points out differences between police brutality and police torture. Discusses the factors which can affect the levels of police brutality.

This paper seeks to critique the Winfree and Taylor report on rural, small town, and metropolitan police in New Zealand.

Compares and contrasts the conclusions to some earlier findings of Jaeger in her research on increasing the diversity of the New Zealand police. The question asked is: “Can universal research methodology on classical policing and community policing be applied carte blanche to organizational studies in New Zealand without ‘local’ input?”.

Jaeger's research, through in‐depth interviews of twenty ethnic police officers, suggested possible alternative conclusions that were not apparent when Winfree and Taylor, reporting from a distance, applied detailed statistical analysis to a 1996 dataset. The paper suggests that a combination of the two approaches might lead to a more complete and truthful representation of the reality.

Critiques an earlier report on the police in New Zealand published in Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies & Management.

The delivery of neighbourhood policing across England and Wales relies heavily on the increasing number of police community support officers (PCSOs). This study focused on the residents' perceptions of PCSOs and on their views of the impact these officers had on the level of crime and antisocial behaviour (ASB) within the Halton Borough Council area, a unitary local authority in the northwest of England. It used a self‐completion postal questionnaire, which was distributed to 2,100 randomly selected, residential addresses across the borough. In the main, the residents who responded did not know their local PCSO, and felt that locally, crime was not as big an issue as that identified in the British Crime Survey (BCS) 2007‐08 (Kershaw et al, 2008:10). They did feel, however, that six of the seven quality of life issues surveyed by this local survey were worse in Halton than the national picture portrayed by the BCS. The residents did not know that PCSOs impacted on the issues concerning them locally, or perceived that they did not. Despite these perceptions, the vast majority of the respondents would welcome greater numbers of PCSOs.

The touted benefits of inter-governmental contracting are cost savings and simplicity when compared to shared service agreements. Some managers and public officials resist contracting given the assumption that there may be a drop-off in service quality. However, inter-governmental contracting introduces market forces which theoretically would improve performance while keeping costs per unit of output low (Boyne, 1998). This paperexamines municipal police contracting in the State of New Jersey, the purpose of which is to determine if there are statistically significant differences in non-violent crime rates among municipalities that maintain their own police force versus those that contract with neighboring municipalities for police services. Contracting costs are also explored. While summary statistics indicate lower non-violent crime rates among municipalities that maintain their own police force compared to those that contract for police services, multiple regression results indicate that contracting does not predict higher non-violent crime rates at the .05 level. Therefore, contracting for police services should be explored as an alternative municipal policing model.

The recommendations of the recent Crime and Disorder Act Review will shape the evolution of neighbourhood policing. This article explains how neighbourhood policing in the UK has developed, including milestones such as the National Reassurance Policing Programme. Now, as neighbourhood policing is rolled out more widely, there is not one model in use, rather ten principles that forces are expected to apply. Early lessons from the roll out of neighbourhood policing suggest that much has been achieved and that the key to success is effective partnership working, particularly with local governments.

Locally based policing ‐ involving co‐operation with local residents and agencies, is a key requirement of the government's police reform agenda. This article reports the findings of an evaluation of one such initiative that involved residents in determining policing strategy on two urban housing estates. On one estate there were positive outcomes, but there was little change in the other. This appeared to be related to the range of skills possessed by the officers on the two sites.

The common survey instrument for police integrity consists of case descriptions that are mainly concerned with corruption. However, the diversity in police criminal acts calls for a revision of this survey instrument. Based on cases of convicted police officers in Norway, this paper aims to propose a new survey.

Content analysis of 57 court cases in Norway was carried out.

Rather than focusing mainly on police corruption, a diversity of police criminal acts was identified in the content analysis.

Court cases in other countries should be analysed to improve the proposed questionnaire in future iterations. Rather than measuring police integrity only in terms of corruption, future empirical studies of police integrity should focus on the variety of police criminal acts found in court cases.

The paper focusses on an empirically based survey instrument.

In Cady v. Dombrowski (1973), the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of a warrantless search for a weapon in a wrecked car driven by a police officer who had been taken to the hospital, even though the police lacked probable cause to believe there was a weapon in the car. In so ruling, the Supreme Court seemed to establish an exception to the warrant requirement that has been referred to as the community caretaking function. This paper examines lower court treatment of the community caretaking function and proposes a clearer statement of the contours of this exception to the warrant requirement.