Accountability of Policing

Accountability of Policing provides a contemporary and wide-ranging examination of the accountability and governance of ‘police’ and ‘policing’. Debates about ‘who guards the guards’ are among the oldest and most protracted in the history of democracy, but over the last decade we have witnessed important changes in how policing and security agencies are governed, regulated and held to account. Against a backdrop of increasing complexity in the local, national and transnational landscapes of ‘policing’, political, legal, administrative and technological developments have served to alter regimes of accountability. The extent and pace of these changes raises a pressing need for ongoing academic research, analysis and debate.

Bringing together contributions from a range of leading scholars, this book offers an authoritative and comprehensive analysis of the shifting themes of accountability within policing. The contributions explore questions of accountability across a range of dimensions, including those ‘individuals’ and ‘institutions’ responsible for its delivery, within and between the ‘public’ and ‘private’ sectors, and at ‘local’, ‘national’ and ‘transnational’ scales of jurisdiction. They also engage with the concept of ‘accountability’ in a broad sense, bringing to the surface the various meanings that have become associated with it and demonstrating how it is invoked and interpreted in different contexts.

Accountability of Policing is essential reading for academics and students involved in the study of policing, criminal justice and criminology and will also be of great interest to practitioners and policymakers.

Stuart Lister is Senior Lecturer in Criminal Justice at the University of Leeds. His research interests focus on exploring the changes and continuities in the arrangement, provision, accountability and effectiveness of contemporary policing and security endeavours. He has worked previously at the Universities of Durham and Keele.

Michael Rowe is Professor of Criminology at Northumbria University. His research interests focus on the ethics and governance of policing, diversity in criminal justice, and offender desistance. He has taught at Victoria University, Wellington and at the University of Leicester.