Policing order: Assessments of effectiveness and efficiency

In recent years the police have been increasingly channelled towards measures of effectiveness and efficiency. Within society there exists widespread desires for the policing of a universal, unitary form of order. In the arena of public order policing, however, these desires are obstructed by the pluralism of values, beliefs and interests contained within that same society. Members of the public are attracted towards the protection of their own specific and concrete interests, although they nonetheless attempt to invoke a universal and generalisable order to which ‘others’ should conform. In reality such a generalisable form of order is not possible. The police, when they engage in the actual maintenance of order, respond to these contradictory demands by attempting to produce orderliness by invoking concrete and pragmatic solutions which are informed by the specific circumstances. The consequent reality is a ‘good enough’ level of order which is viewed as workable and sufficient for the majority of the p...