Conclusions

Abstract

This final chapter in a volume charting the development and implementation of Neighbourhood Policing brings together a number of aspects of this policing model that have been described and considered in depth in earlier chapters. In concluding the volume, it considers the relative decline of Neighbourhood Policing as a consequence of reductions to public spending, together with a sense of ‘moral disinvestment’ as a result of falling rates of crime and disorder. It is argued that whilst some within policing have tried to maintain the Neighbourhood Policing ‘brand’, the hollowing out of neighbourhood-based capacity means that its defining qualities have not always be retained. In its place we have a rather looser and less defined notion of local policing. Instead of doing ‘more with less’—a phrase that has been the austerity mantra of a number of senior police leaders—police need to think about ‘doing less with more’. That is, intervening less often but with more impact.