This chapter adds to the argument in this book by critically considering interviewees’ claims about their belief in the importance of consensual policing. It identifies how policing by consent contributes to interviewees’ understandings of the right of police to exercise power and it assesses their accounts about building consent, establishing its extent and recognising its loss. Policing by consent was the second of three broad categories of legitimating accounts provided by interviewees. Tensions are identified between these narratives of consensual policing and the first category of legitimating accounts scrutinised in the previous chapter, which were founded on a personal and normative duty (rather than a legal requirement) to protect people, particularly the most vulnerable in society, as the recent priority placed on vulnerability may be resented by many people who feel their concerns are no longer receiving the attention they deserve. This risks consent being withdrawn. Similarities in both categories of legitimating narratives are found, in the degree of confusion and ambiguity that was apparent when chief officers talked about ‘vulnerability’ and ‘consent’. And a concern is raised that both forms of legitimation may conveniently obscure and gloss over the inevitable use of coercion by police. Links are also made to the next chapter, which examines the third category of justification of the use of police power, founded on the law and the oversight and political direction (or governance), of police, where the narrative is also arguably confused and convenient, with chief officers asserting that law and governance are essential for legitimacy, whilst also resenting the manner and methods of oversight. The inter-relationship between the three categories of legitimating narratives is highlighted, as they were all used by interviewees, and none was claimed as a sufficient stand-alone justification of the right to exercise power.

The concept of policing by consent is important, as it is an enduring theme in historical legitimating narratives about British police, and its ongoing significance can be seen in assertions made by the Home Office (2012) and HMICFRS (2021). This chapter will suggest that policing by consent is a concept that is too often taken for granted, and that it is based on myths about British police, which take insufficient account of the ability of police to resort to coercion in the absence of consent (Reiner, 2010). It will also be argued that policing by consent is based on dubious assumptions about a broadly consensual society (Emsley, 2014). Consequently, claims to legitimacy founded on consent should be rigorously examined (Murray & Harkin, 2017). And scrutinising chief police officers’ claims to legitimacy based on consensual policing is the central function of this chapter.

To achieve the aims set out above, this chapter is structured in the following way. First, to frame this discussion, the meaning and endurance of a discourse of policing by consent are explored. Second, interviewees’ accounts of what they mean by policing by consent are examined to identify how they conceptualise consent and its component parts, and consent’s symbolic and practical significance for chief officers is assessed. Third, to establish if these accounts are evidence-based and to assess if the methods described include listening to people who tend to be more policed than protected, interviewees’ explanations of engagement with their publics to construct consent and to gauge if consent is more than ‘dull compulsion’ (Carrabine, 2004, p. 180) are scrutinised. Fourth, the influence of procedural justice theory within interviewees’ constructions of consent is examined to see how this prevalent theory influences their understandings about the construction of consent and legitimacy. Fifth, further insights into chief officers’ conceptualisations of policing by consent are obtained by examining their examples of withdrawn consent; this identifies their ostensible construction of a more coercive ‘then’ and a relatively consensual ‘now’. These insights matter as they illuminate (and can be used to challenge) legitimating narratives that tend to emphasise the importance of consent, which is a concept that was ambiguously and broadly set out by the interviewees. And it will be argued that these narratives under-state the coercive nature of police activity. An additional aspect of interviewees’ accounts was the role that they saw law and formal governance mechanisms playing in ensuring that consent endures; these features, it is contended, are sufficiently distinctive to be considered as a third category of understanding of the right of police to exercise power, and they are addressed in the next chapter.

The Endurance and Meaning of ‘Policing by Consent’

The use of policing by consent as a legitimating narrative can arguably be traced back to the establishment of the Metropolitan Police Service in 1829 (Bowling et al., 2019, p. 78 ; Emsley, 2014; Reiner, 2010). Indeed, this was directly claimed by the Home Office (2012) and linked to ‘Robert Peel’s 9 Principles of Policing’, which the Home Office asserted were included in the first General Instructions to the Metropolitan Police. However, the principles appear to be a rhetorical myth invented in the mid-twentieth century, which were based on the work of the police historian Charles Reith (1956) (Emsley, 2014; Lentz & Chaires, 2007). An argument that not only Peelian principles but also policing by consent are legitimating constructs, which understate the use of coercive police power, is supported by the everyday and inevitable resort to coercion by police in the absence of consent, as a key police function is to intervene in social conflict, which inevitably often requires recourse to coercion, including violence (Bittner, 1974; Brodeur, 2007; Reiner, 2010). But policing by consent is an enduring legitimating narrative and it was a key element of the majority ‘broad view’ of policing amongst chief constables interviewed by Reiner (1991, p. 110). These chief constables were influenced by the Scarman Inquiry (1981), which identified the need for police to moderate enforcement and to support social cohesion, to secure consent to the use of police power. The Inquiry advocated the development of community policing to support this endeavour. Savage et al. (2000) found that consensual policing continued as a legitimating narrative invoked by chief officers. And Loader and Mulcahy (2001a) interpreted the development of a more considered and coherent chief officer voice as, partly, a demonstration of how policing by consent continued to play a role in how chief police officers understood legitimacy and acted to sustain it. Caless (2011) reported that chief officers still emphasised policing by consent but they, the Home Office and HMIC, were concerned about an apparently growing gap between public expectations and police delivery that threatened public confidence and consent (HMIC, 2005). Anxieties about this lacuna led to the introduction of neighbourhood policing (Home Office, 2008) arguably a more prescriptive version of earlier iterations of community policing. The Independent Police Commission (2013) developed the narrative of consent with a proposal for New Peelian Principles. And Roycroft (2016) reported the continued use of a discourse of consent by chief officers. Consent remains embedded within policing rhetoric in England and Wales, as illustrated by the emphasis placed on it by HMICFRS (2021, p. 35) and by the Policing Vision 2025 (Association of Police and Crime Commissioners’ [APCC] and National Police Chiefs’ Council [NPCC ], 2016, p. 4).

Emsley (2014, p. 17) observed that the concept of policing by consent is problematic, as it is founded on dubious assumptions about societal consensus in Britain. Narratives of consent are also difficult to categorise, as they are part of the police’s continuing quest for legitimacy, which takes different forms at different times (Reiner, 2010). Arguably accounts of consent, and the actions required to construct consent, need to adapt to accommodate a more questioning society (Giddens, 1994), declining trust in more diverse societies (Cook, 2001), recurring policing scandals, austerity, new governance mechanisms and altered demands (Police Foundation, 2020).

Bowling et al. (2019, p. 78) argue that policing is inevitably coercive and is done not only for people but to people, consequently consent cannot mean complete support for the police across the population, rather, ‘those at the sharp end of police practices do not extend resentment of specific actions into a withdrawal of legitimacy from the institution of policing per se’. They also identify the elements of the construction of consent as the bureaucratic and disciplined nature of the police, the rule of law, minimal force, non-partisanship, accountability, the service role and preventative policing (ibid., pp. 77–81). Earlier influential chief officers (Mark, 1977; Alderson, 1984; Oliver, 1987) also did not envisage consent as the explicit agreement of people to specific powers being exercised over them. Rather they perceived a normative police duty to take account of the many views held by people, coupled with a commitment to use coercion sparingly, with a reified public responding by mostly accepting the exercise of police power. They also emphasised the importance of the rule of law and accountability mechanisms in maintaining consent.

Reiner (1991, p. 108) found that some chief constables had expanded the concept of consent to include securing public mandates, and sometimes active support, for specific police activities and objectives. Manning (2014, p. 31) highlights the difficulty of police negotiating a mandate from ‘the several publics they serve not a reified “public” … The mandate in a democracy is fraught with contradictions because of the various expectations of police’. Earlier , Jefferson and Grimshaw (1984, pp. 67–68) identified that police had started using public relations to ‘construct a broad, non-partisan “consensual” public constituency’, although they were concerned that the views of ‘the policed’ were often dismissed by chief constables as partisan. Yet, they did not dismiss policing by consent as a ‘mere myth’ and noted that it had practical consequences and helped explain the attachment of chief officers to minimal use of force.

Policing by consent has not only been a legitimating narrative used by police. As Home Secretary Theresa May stressed the importance of policing by consent and Peelian principles (Home Office, 2012) and HMICFRS (2021) also drew directly on Peelian principles in providing its interpretation of policing by consent.

The key issues arising from this section are that policing by consent can reasonably be described as a legitimating myth, but the myth encompasses a wide range of features and lacks clarity. Further, policing by consent ‘does not mean the consent of an individual’ (Home Office, 2012), rather it refers to the assumed broad acceptance by a reified public of the right of police to use power. But its status as a myth does not mean that it is not important, as policing by consent continues to shape chief police officers’ understandings of the right of police to exercise power, which, it is contended, should influence how they use power and consequently how power is used by more junior officers, and how police act is a key determinant of legitimacy (Loader, 2020). The chief police officers who were interviewed for this book in 2016 all called on the foundation stories of modern policing in England and Wales, with five of the 16 directly referencing Peelian principles when explaining the right of police to use power. And interviewees’ accounts about consent are examined next.

Chief Police Officers’ Accounts of Policing by Consent

All the accounts assessed in this chapter are from the chief officers interviewed in 2016, as the 2020 interviews focused on protecting vulnerable people, not consent. Policing by consent was invoked by all the 2016 interviewees to explain the right of police to use power. The responses indicate that these chief officers associated policing by consent with minimising coercion, operating within a set of values broadly shared with their publics, and the importance of symbolism and trust in constructing consent. They also saw the law and police governance as being crucial for consent, but this aspect was sufficiently distinctive to be assessed separately, which is achieved in the next chapter.

Minimising coercion was a key point of consensus amongst interviewees, as shown by Chief Constable (CC) CO14A who also stressed links to a reified ‘community’, which highlights a difficulty for the concept of consent in a diverse society.

[policing by consent] means that the … public understand why they [the police] are there and accept their authority … the police are part of the community, not an occupation army. (CO14A)

Another CC (CO6A) implicitly related consent to low levels of coercion and contended that police could not exercise effective control through coercion, as widespread resistance was likely as ‘if society decided it didn’t want to be policed, it wouldn’t be policed’. These views were, in various ways, voiced by all interviewees and appeared to be based on more than instrumental choices about the benefits of consent over coercion. This reflects the liberal leanings that were consistently expressed by interviewees, which, as was discussed in Chap. 3, were probably influenced by their social and educational backgrounds and career socialisation processes. Although how these seemingly normative opinions translate into operational policing is not tested by this research. A wish to minimise coercion is not necessarily incompatible with the role that police play in maintaining order (Reiner, 2010, pp. 141–173), but there is a tension, given the role that coercion, including the use or threat of force, inevitably plays in maintaining order (Bittner, 1974; Brodeur, 2007). Van Dijk et al. (2015) argued that there is a false dichotomy of two competing paradigms of policing, of ‘consent’ and ‘control’ and that the consent paradigm is threatened by the practice of policing, which inevitably involves control. Similarly, there is a tension between the models of ‘force’ and ‘service’, which featured heavily in the cultural change programme instituted by Commissioner Sir Peter (later Lord) Imbert in the Metropolitan Police in the late 1980s, which sought to shift the emphasis and image of the police organisation from that of being a ‘force’ to a more benevolent ‘service’ (Wolff Olins, 1988). This theme continues in discussions of policing, and the service role of police has played a function in legitimating narratives since the nineteenth century (Bowling et al., 2019, p. 80). Although the service and force models may also be viewed as a false dichotomy, as Reiner (2010, pp. 141–173) argues force is necessarily part of the service.

Five of the 16 interviewees identified a conflict between coercion and consent, when using arguments that are reminiscent of Hobbes (1968 [1651]) in maintaining that the police have the right to exercise power to maintain order and protect people, irrespective of an absence of consent, at least from some of those over whom power is being directly exercised and potentially from wider groups empathising with them. This also illustrates the inter-relationship between the categories of understanding of the right to exercise power based on protecting people and those founded on consensual policing. As represented by one CC (CO1A) who asserted that ‘without some element of force and control, then you end up with anarchy’. Similarly CC CO14A focused on the police’s order maintenance role to explain the right to exercise power:

[when] something terrible has happened and the police usually come into that chaos, and they bring order out of chaos. (CO14A)

These comments recognised the coercive facets of police power. However, most accounts emphasised more benign and ambiguous notions of protecting the vulnerable and consensual policing. As represented by an Assistant Chief Constable (ACC) (CO15A), who inferred that policing by consent is connected to using power within the law, the first of Beetham’s (1991, pp. 15–16) three dimensions of legitimacy. This ACC’s implicit reference to the supposed seventh Peelian principle (Home Office, 2012) also reflects Beetham’s (1991, pp. 15–16) second dimension of legitimacy, a link between the dominant and the subordinate, strengthened by their shared experiences and values:

We are absolutely impartial, absolutely here to enforce the law and I love that saying that we often rely on around ‘the public are the police, and the police are the public’. (CO15A)

A CC (CO14A) contended that police must act within the law, but within parameters widely accepted by people and the reference to the police as professional citizens again alludes to the importance of shared experiences and values in building consent:

I am very much a believer of the professional citizen … but it is based on rule of law and based on consent … the power comes from the public and their consent. (CO14A)

A Deputy Chief Constable (DCC) (CO16A) discussed consent in terms of behaviours that indicated its presence, and these observations reflect the third of Beetham’s (1991, pp. 15–16) dimensions of legitimacy, evidence of the consent of the subordinate to the exercise of power. These comments show the importance placed by interviewees on tradition and trust and on the symbolic role of police in demonstrating the state’s commitment to protecting people (Manning, 2014, p. 26). This DCC was also anxious about the fragility of consent:

If I cordon off some of these chairs, when you go in the room, nobody would go in … you trust that it’s got ‘Police’ on it, we are making the decision to do something for your best interest … and therefore you allow something to happen to you as a result … and I think the trust is very hard won over lots of years and also rooted in tradition and it is very easily lost. (CO16A)

Similarly , HMICFRS (2021) raised concerns about the fragility of trust and consent in their inspection of the policing of the vigil for Sarah Everard. Another CC (CO13A) also emphasised the importance of trust in building consent and recognised the necessarily coercive role of the police and, like CC CO16A and HMICFRS (2021), was concerned that consent could crumble:

you have to be worthy of the trust of communities because if you are not, that’s where it all starts to unravel. Because they are trusting us to have coercive powers and invasive powers … they are doing that because generally they think we are doing it to look after them. (CO13A)

Another CC (CO3A) also sought evidence of consent in people’s interaction with and trust in police, seemingly reflecting interviewees’ awareness of procedural justice theory (Sunshine & Tyler, 2003), which is returned to later. Additionally, CO3A related consent and legitimacy to law, a democratic mandate and accountability structures. This comment again highlights the symbolic importance for chief officers of Peelian legitimating narratives:

Do they [the public] trust us? Will they call for help when they need us? … does legitimacy come from what we do or how we do it? And in my opinion, it is the latter. Legitimacy comes from our relationship with the public … We act on their behalf, and we are accountable to them … a Parliament that passes legislation … the tripartite structure … of the Home Office, the PCC and the Chief Constable … they are all mechanisms for dealing with the public will … that’s the principle of modern policing that is laid out by Peel. (CO3A)

These accounts of policing by consent have common features particularly, minimal coercion, values shared with wider society, trust and the symbolic role of police, appeals to Peelian myths and the importance of the rule of law and of police accountability and governance. However, there are complexities, ambiguities and differences, which are examined next.

Hazy Consent

Peelian principles were widely referenced by interviewees, and they all used policing by consent to justify the right to exercise power, but they were less clear about what they meant by Peelian principles or consensual policing, beyond broad observations about minimal coercion, acting within the law, shared values and trust. Two CCs observed that identifying what consent is, what is being consented to, who is consenting and measuring it is problematic. CC CO3A commented that consent is ‘really difficult to measure and describe’ and CC C02A noted the difficulty in ‘the determination of what is consent … what are they consenting to?’

Another CC’s (CO7A) comments (below) chime with the previous two observations and can be read as a recognition that policing by consent is difficult to describe and is an ambiguous concept. CO7A reflects other interviewees in picking up themes of minimal coercion and trust. Whilst CO7A’s inference that there is something particular to England and Wales in the notion of policing by consent has echoes of the rose-tinted and nationalistic interpretation of British Police history presented by Reith (1943, 1956) that Emsley (2014) argues played a significant role in developing a Peelian myth about policing by consent. CO7A also recognises that reliance on the symbolism of unarmed police might become tenuous as police in England and Wales appear more militarised, a tendency that Brewer et al. (1996) identified as developing during the 1980s:

We talk about it [policing by consent] a lot … What we really mean—we are probably pretty hazy about that … in part I would link it to being a largely unarmed police service … since you and I joined, our officers are equipped with much more … [but they] still spend the vast majority of their time going around their business without having to use force … policing by consent is more than that—it means that when something bad happens people do ring us or contact us … they do trust us to act, I suppose, in the public interest. They do trust us to protect—it sounds quite grandiose, but I guess there are police services in the world where you don’t call them if you can possibly avoid it. (CO7A)

Another CC (CO4A) was more explicit in describing consensual policing in a way which resonates with Reith’s (1943, 1956) version, although CO4A did not offer evidence to support this assertion about the quality of British policing:

I would just go back to your Peelian Principles … I think these principles were as sound today as they were then. You hear a number of people say this, that the British Police service is the best in the world. I absolutely think it is. (CO4A)

Peelian principles and policing by consent were symbolically important to interviewees but the meaning behind the myth was unclear; however, this does not mean that their views do not have practical consequences. They were asked to expand on how they developed consensual policing and these accounts are examined next.

Communicating, Conversations and Accountability

Interviewees commonly emphasised the importance of accountability and of communicating with people, to understand what they want of police, to build trust and bolster consent. Formal accountability structures and the oversight and political direction, or governance, of police are returned to in more detail in the next chapter, as the accounts are sufficiently distinctive to be considered as a third category of explanation of the right to exercise power. But accountability that does not depend on formal oversight structures and political direction is dealt with in this chapter. Communicating encompassed chief officers holding effective conversations with their various publics, in which police listened as well as talked, whether this was in person or by other means. The difficulties encountered in this engagement and its efficacy will be turned to but first the claims are set out. CC CO7A’s comments are representative of the emphasis put on accountability and explanation:

[the public] deserve to know the police are on their side … How do you do that? Well, you have got to have accountability, transparency—you’ve, kind of, got to get to know each other again. (C07A)

And CC CO5A stressed the importance of being open, particularly when things had gone wrong:

retaining the reassurance of the public, sometimes referred to as the ‘consent’ behind policing. And to me in that, transparency is absolutely key. And it is not transparency around the things that we do well, it’s about the things that we do badly. (CO5A)

An ACC (CO15A) underlined the need to hold conversations with a range of people to provide parameters within which police should use power and this ACC contended that a more representative police work force might improve these conversations:

We will always have difference and difference in how we apply the law … the only way we can ask about those things is by inviting the community into policing much more and for having a diverse—diverse representation in policing … the right to exercise power, is that we have to constantly walk a fine line between when that’s the right thing to do and when our community feels it’s over-powering or when there’s a perception that it is targeting a certain community … If we haven’t done the right thing, that we have a dialogue and are transparent and that we consider our practices and the impact that it has. (CO15A)

And CC CO14A’s account (below) has echoes of Jefferson and Grimshaw’s (1984, p. 64) notion of police chiefs listening to ‘democratic audiences’ (the policed), the ‘statutory’ audience of the law, Home Office and police authorities (now PCCs) but also to an audience of police ‘occupational opinion’.

I will go to local councils and deal with any question or scrutiny from them. So that they can reflect from their different areas, issues back to me. But I will also visit police stations and go walkabout and get a feel myself. (CO14A)

Along with accountability and transparency interviewees claimed that dialogue was crucial in building public consent to the exercise of power, reflecting Bottoms and Tankebe’s (2012) account of dialogic legitimacy. And these chief officers, as is discussed next, viewed local policing as a crucial component in this dialogue.

Neighbourhood/Community Policing

When describing how dialogue with their publics was developed 14 of the 16 interviewees emphasised the role of community or neighbourhood policing. CC CO14A’s view was typical:

It’s more about that embedding of neighbourhood policing into those areas so that—so that, actually, we can understand the community and then reflect those concerns … I mean there are different communities, whether they are geographical, linguistic … our PCs and PCSOs in those communities—you get a feel from them. (CO14A)

CC CO4A stressed the importance for consent of Peelian principles and of the role that neighbourhood policing plays in communicating with local people. Although, in common with other interviewees’ accounts, how Peelian principles guided police actions was not made clear:

it [policing by consent] goes back to Peelian principles … neighbourhood policing is the jewel in the crown … It is about connectivity. (CO4A)

Interviewees asserted that neighbourhood officers play an important practical and symbolic role and interviewees’ emphasis on the importance of local officers engaging with their publics to construct consent chimes with findings from the Independent Police Commission (2013). Yet, neighbourhood policing was being eroded whilst these interviews were being conducted, and HMIC (2017) warned that the number of officers and staff dedicated to neighbourhood policing was falling. This decline related not only to the number of officers and staff allocated to neighbourhoods but also to what they did (ibid .). Higgins (2018) found that there had been a shift from a focus on locality, engagement and problem solving, towards response policing and managing individuals. In part these changes can be seen as a response to the reductions in police funding introduced by the coalition government in 2010 following the financial crash in 2008. However, where these reductions fall within a police force and which aspects of police activity are given high or low priority are decisions for chief constables and PCCs, and both are likely to be influenced by the priorities of the UK government, and in Wales also by the Welsh government (although policing is not a devolved matter in Wales). Therefore, different choices could have been made by chief officers and PCCs and these choices could have been influenced by the UK government and to a lesser extent by the Welsh government. In practice neighbourhood policing appeared to have been given a lower priority than had been the case before 2010. This contrasts with the greater priority and increased resources that were being allocated to protecting vulnerable people, who as victims and/or offenders would often be those being ‘managed’ or policed (as was discussed in the previous chapter). And some of this management of vulnerable people (who it is contended could alternatively be framed as problem people) was being undertaken by the remaining neighbourhood officers and staff, at the expense of their previous focus on locality and public engagement (Higgins, 2018). Therefore, it is argued, the weakening of neighbourhood policing was a choice made by chief officers, PCCs and the Home Secretary. Arguably this poses a challenge to the rhetoric and practice of policing by consent, because, as was argued in the previous chapter, the semi-visible and ambiguous task of protecting the most vulnerable seems to be increasingly prioritised over some traditional and visible policing activities, such as local policing, road policing and dealing with acquisitive crime. These functions are symbolically important in dramatising the commitment of the state to maintaining order (Walker, 1996, p. 68; Wells, 2016) and hence to the construction of consent. This again illustrates a tension between justifications of the right to exercise police power based on a duty to protect people, particularly the most vulnerable, and explanations rooted in consensual policing. But consent is not only measured and constructed by neighbourhood police, and the next section outlines and assesses interviewees’ accounts about other methods that they said they used to establish levels of consent, communicate with their publics and build consent.

Gauging and Building Consent

All interviewees maintained that effective communication and consultation with their publics was a broad process that was not confined to local officers. There was a broad recognition that judgements about levels of consent and people’s requirements of police were often subjective. As DCC CO12A observed:

the only real way you get a sense of that [people’s wants of police and levels of consent] is through your engagement. Both your personal engagement … [and] the quality of engagement that happens through your bit of business … It’s a very imperfect way of doing it because it is … a subjective judgement. (CO12A)

An ACC (CO10A) emphasised the use of mediated indicators of people’s concerns when making judgements about whether consent was being given:

[consent to] the use of power … you’re testing the water, listening constantly to the mood music, you read the papers every day, listen to the radio … The key bit at the moment is, are you actually tackling the issues they want you to tackle. (CO10A)

Another ACC (CO8A) stressed the importance of independent scrutiny, in conjunction with engagement, to construct consent and measure consent to the use of power:

we’ve got an ethics committee that independently scrutinise our stop-searches …we’ve got a ride-along scheme [which was seldom used, checked by examining an HMIC report] … all that is about seeking to build our relationship with the public, so they are confident about what they do and trust that we can do it on their behalf. (CO8A)

Two interviewees suggested that independent advisory groups (IAGs) helped gauge consent and judge whether the use of police power was proportionate and legitimate. DCC CO9A highlighted the IAG’s role in reviewing police use of force by repeating a remark reportedly made by the chair of the IAG:

You are the State and I need to ensure that you exercise all these vast range of powers that you have in a fair and proportionate way. (CO9A, quoting the IAG chair in the chief officer’s force)

Similarly, an ACC (CO11A) and a DCC (CO16A) reported that ‘Gold’ groups supporting the management of major events, involving senior police officers but also often representatives of partner agencies and sometimes other advisers, were used to check on the acceptability, not just legality, of the use of police power. Sometimes public panels could play a role in such scrutiny, and PCCs could facilitate this:

We ask outsiders, as it were, to Gold meetings and to some of our planning meetings around public order events. We get that sense around what is acceptable. (CO11A)

some of the fracking demonstrations that we’ve had recently … then XXX [the PCC] has brought in a public panel for us to explain that to—to scrutinise our plans. (CO16A)

Inevitably the quality of this advice will be influenced by who is asked to provide it and by the objectivity and expertise of the adviser. However, a CC (CO6A) suggested that some objectivity can be achieved in gauging consent and understanding people’s requirements of police if systematic methods are used. This CC described how the force was trying to communicate more clearly with its publics, supported by a university, which helped design the approach and analyse the data:

We are trialing … different styles of communication, so we use [name of software] to understand the demographic of our area … we are trialing, sort of, Facebook, Twitter, right down to low-tech post … I have the analysis of what’s the best way of finding out what is important to people and then telling them what’s been done and what has been the impact. (CO6A)

As CO6A indicates social media and digital methods seem to be playing an increasing role in the conversations that chief officers hope help build consent. And an ACC (CO10A) claimed:

we are more able … to communicate with a wider public than we were ever able to do and that’s around the social media piece. (CO10A)

How much digital channels facilitate meaningful dialogue is unclear, although the same can arguably be said of more traditional consultative mechanisms. The extent to which the growth of digital conversations is motivated by effectiveness, rather than convenience and cost, was not clarified by this research. Increasing use of social media and digital communication may also, as Lee and McGovern (2014) argue, not simply be a benign attempt to engage with many people, it could represent an attempt to bypass the scrutiny of journalists to present a glossed and unmediated image of policing.

Several interviewees sought to demonstrate the advantages of social media engagement by reference to the number of digital interactions. And quantitative attempts to gauge consent were not confined to analysis of social media. Surveys of public attitudes and other information about police/public interactions, which might provide partial and proxy measures of consent, were also used. Some limitations of these approaches were recognised by a DCC (CO12A) and a CC (CO3A):

Public attitude surveys—all this sort of stuff around public confidence. There’s satisfaction, which is not about consent but there are things which you can use as proxy measures … sometimes they become over weighted—the number of times you see people talking about complaints numbers as an indicator of confidence in police. Frankly, complaints numbers—the whole complaints process is so unsatisfactory, for the public as well as for us, that—how would you ever use that as a measure? (CO12A)

there are all sorts of scientific ways with service users to determine [consent]—they do surveys, they do ‘you said—we did’ … they only capture well… where we have had a customer-supplier relationship with them—so a transactional type thing, not the general public. (CO3A)

Overall interviewees recognised that there are limits to the reliance that can be placed on the measures of consent they referenced, but most underplayed the difficulties in interpreting such data. Including problems associated with the relevance and reliability of surveys, most of which were victim surveys—which can be problematic and open to challenge, partly due to potential bias related to sampling, non-response, the respondent and the coder (Schwartz, 2000; Lyn & Elliot, 2000, p. 8). And general confidence data was largely gathered from people who may have had little, if any, recent contact with police. And where data was gathered from those who had contact with the police, as with the complaints data referenced by DCC CO12A, this is largely limited to people with the confidence to engage with the system. At best, it is contended, these metrics are problematic, partial and proxy measures of consent.

These problems persist, it is suggested, if the concept of consent is stretched to include garnering mandates for specific police actions and uses of power, a development that Reiner (1991, p. 108) identified as starting to happen in the 1980s. This quest for specific mandates appears to have continued, as described by a DCC (CO12A) in relation to gaining consent for the increased use of stop and search powers:

the only way we really get into issues of consent and the use of police powers is by actively engaging with, and listening to, the people it affects … if you take a broad view across the country, you’ll probably find stop and search is pretty well accepted … You go into some parts of any city, certainly, and you talk to some communities and their experience of stop and search is very different … We talked about ‘we are going to increase the use of stop and search’ … [but local police commanders] must gain a community mandate to do so. So, … we are actively seeking the consent of the community most affected, both in terms of the suspect population and the victim population, for our increased use of the tactic. (CO12A)

The public mandate that could be argued to underpin consent was sometimes linked with an appeal for the affected population to support the use of police power to protect people, coupled with assurances that such powers would be used ethically, as CC CO4A argued:

Legitimacy is really about that mandate that you are given by those who you serve to do what you need to do to keep them safe … It is about attitudes and behaviours; it is about culture; it is about understanding that we have to be very professional in the way that we conduct ourselves. (CO4A)

Interviewees presented an array of options for gauging and developing consent to the exercise of police power. However, despite their overwhelming use of consensual policing as a justification for the use of police power, the impression was of subjective and ad hoc approaches to gauging and constructing consent, which may be increasingly inadequate if policing by consent extends to encompass a quest for explicit mandates for the use of power. It is arguably hard to see how, using the methods described by interviewees, meaningful assessments are made about whether supposed consent amounts to an informed mandate for uses of police power, or even to judge whether consent amounts to more than an absence of active and obvious resistance to the use of police power. Some interviewees were conscious of the difficulty of distinguishing informed consent from coerced compliance, and this problem is discussed next.

Informed Consent or Coerced Compliance?

Four of the 16 interviewees considered that compliance born of habit, disinterest or fear of the potentially damaging consequences of active resistance risked being misinterpreted as active and informed consent. These accounts of compliance are like the ‘dull compulsion’ described by Carrabine (2004). These interviewees highlighted the potential for complacency amongst chief officers, induced by interpreting silence as consent, as ACC CO8A contended:

you could argue that the absence of complaint and crisis is by implication a consent—it’s not is it because it doesn’t go far enough, does it? (CO8A)

Although another ACC (CO11A) appeared less concerned and seemed to be interpreting an absence of resistance and complaint as consent:

you work on the basis that you probably won’t get a lot of feedback if it is okay because people don’t tend to. (CO11A)

DCC CO12A’s comments about how intimidating police can be and concerning the dynamics involved in stop and search suggest that dull compulsion or coerced compliance might be common:

you have a murder somewhere and there is a community impact assessment and so often you see the thing says ‘yeah, no community issues—no community concerns.’ And you, kind of, go and say: ‘Okay, really, how do you know that?’ … ‘No-one has rung up and told me they are worried about it.’ Or ‘I’ve had a meeting with the great and the good across here and I’ve said this has happened and they say: “Okay, thanks for telling us”’… often we assume that we feel accessible because we are very happy to talk to anyone—anyone can pick up the phone and talk to us, which doesn’t necessarily recognise how impenetrable we are, often, how intimidating we can be … stop and search is difficult here because it is always … I don’t mean active resistance, but it is always unwelcome …That tells you something about the level of consent, even if it is amongst a relatively distinct part of the population—i.e., youth, usually—often minority youth. (CO12A)

A CC (CO7A) suggested that compliance could result from fear; this may augment an argument to reinterpret a story of silent consent as partly one of coerced compliance:

the test [of consent] then is if those people who don’t see us as legitimate, or we are concerned about their level of consent, so part of it is: do they ring 999 or 111; do they give physical resistance when we do need to arrest them? And actually, those rates are pretty low, even for people who have, probably, good personal reasons for not—not trusting us. And I guess some of that might be fear. (CO7A)

CC CO13A’s comment that people ‘just probably grow up here and accept it’ can be framed as compliance arising from habit, apathy or coercion—a prosaic version of Blake’s (1977) vision of ‘mind forg’d manacles’. The invocation of Peel and of the benevolent fictional police officer Dixon of Dock Green,Footnote 1 who was rooted in his local community, alludes to the myth making involved with narratives of consent, which the CC wryly juxtaposed with the frequently disappointing experience of police/public contact:

I want to say, you know, it’s society that gives us the right to do that [use power] because they have signed up to—but then I think that’s probably far too active because most people just probably grow up here and accept it … you are brought up with the Dixon of Dock Green image of we are—Peel’s Principles … most people think we’re great, until they have a contact with us. (CO13A)

It was not clear how interviewees distinguished consent from dull compulsion or coerced compliance. In seeking to do so, debatably, the police should try hardest to understand those that they have the most adversarial contacts with, and it is how this is, or is not, achieved that is turned to next.

Listening to People with Little Power

Several interviewees expressed significant concerns about the quality and extent of police engagement with people over whom power is frequently exercised, who might fall into the category of ‘police property’ (Lee, 1981, pp. 53–54), including marginalised people who may not attract much sympathy or support from wider groups within society; indeed, many people may approve of this exercise in control. Examples of those subject to these uses of police power include disadvantaged young men and minorities who are disproportionately arrested or stopped on the streets, who tend to be policed more than they are protected (Loader, 1996). CC CO14A said that the consent of people in these categories was not assessed:

I am not sure we really test that consent [of those over whom power is frequently exercised] … there is some more way to go. (CO14A)

CC CO2A’s views were similar, and the CC noted that the PCC’s consultation did not fill this gap. CO2A’s observations suggest that chief officers and PCCs predominantly listen to the voices of the ‘great and the good’ and ‘deserving’ victims, or ‘us’ in terms of the dichotomy suggested by Girling et al. (2000), whilst those whom police power is commonly directed at, ‘them’, are largely unheard:

I think we’re very poor at that. I don’t think, as an organisation, we tend to seek to consult with the groups that you are referring to [those over whom power is more frequently exercised] and I don’t think [the PCC’s] consultation tends to get near that either, because very few of those people will turn up to the forums that he’s—he’s conducting … I can’t think of how we do that in any form of meaningful way … we tend to consult with the great and the good and those … that come into contact with us largely as victims. (CO2A)

Most interviewees suggested that engaging in these conversations was hard and some felt that it could be fruitless, as CC CO3A remarked:

there are some sections of the public in a city like this—you are never going to get their consent. They are very challenging communities. So, none of it is simple. (CO3A)

Whilst most interviewees recognised that there was more to do in listening to those over whom power tends to be exercised, four of the 16 suggested that the police service had been on a journey, and more was being done to hear the voice of ‘them’. However, the examples provided mainly appeared to be improvised activities which would benefit from being part of a coherent and evidence-based approach. The initiatives also arguably fail to address Habermas’ (1976) critique of legitimating discourses where there is an inequality of arms in the conversation between people with power and their subordinates, which at best results in a false and fragile legitimacy. The following comments illustrate the type of initiatives raised. The example of listening to ‘them’ cited by ACC CO8A seemed to be a by-product of a one-off instrumental crime reduction initiative. CC CO6A’s example of a survey of detained people alludes to the resistance, within and without policing, to listening to ‘them’ but also hints at a legitimating narrative that distinguishes policing ‘now’ from policing ‘then’.

I think we do do some stuff about young people … going back about two or three years … the PCC held a seminar of the public with young people. (CO8A).

there’s been uproar about an exit survey in custody suites and sort of, what was the experience like for you? I joined an organisation that couldn’t—in the 1980s—that couldn’t care what that experience was like for you. (CO6A)

Most interviewees recognised that many conversations police hold, ostensibly to gauge or build consent, are shallow and that it is arguable whether widespread active consent can be identified. More focused and informed activities, such as those ‘based on principles of deliberative democracy and citizen participation’ (Virta & Branders, 2016, p. 1146), and a range of qualitative and quantitative techniques that are informed by credible research, might provide a better foundation for building consent to the right of police to exercise power. But, other than CC CO6A (who provided an example of his force working with a local university to try to understand what people wanted from local police), no other examples of such approaches were mentioned by interviewees.Footnote 2 It is contended that the work being done with a university in CO6A’s force, and similar initiatives, would benefit from being part of a wider evidence-based approach to gauging the extent to which there is consent to the use of police power, particularly amongst people who may consider themselves more often policed than protected. The chief officers who were interviewed also identified that fair processes were important in promoting consent to the use of police power, and these accounts are examined next.

Procedural Justice

Procedural justice theory (Sunshine & Tyler, 2003; Hough & Maffei, 2013) was drawn on by half of the 16 interviewees, largely implicitly, as a process for building consent to the use of police power. CC CO7A emphasised the importance of consensual policing of police acting fairly and respectfully:

being treated with respect at some level, treated fairly … even people who have ended up in the prison service, can recognise police officers as being ‘good’ people in a sense, in terms of the stuff that we would now talk about, in terms of procedural justice. (CO7A)

CC CO2A’s comment about the need for two-way communication with those over whom police power is exercised was also typical of the influence that procedural justice appeared to be having on interviewees’ understandings of the right to exercise power:

[in the context of trying to reduce dangerous motorcycling] It was just about, we’re here to enforce the law and it was not about: let’s have a conversation with these people and understand what their motivations are, whether they want us to be doing this and how and also, how they feel about some of their colleagues [other motor cyclists] who are clearly giving them a bad name. (CO2A)

Seven of the 16 interviewees made a clear connection between fair use of power within police forces and how power is exercised over their publics, which is reminiscent of Greenberg’s (1987) discussion of organisational justice. And three interviewees referred approvingly to a study of organisational justice and its effects in Durham Constabulary (Bradford et al., 2014). CC CO5A emphasised the need to treat his staff fairly, not only as a good itself but also to encourage officers to act fairly and respectfully:

I cannot expect my staff to behave differently with the public to how they are treated by the organisation. So, if they feel downtrodden, unfair, bullied that is the way that they will treat the public … behaviour breeds behaviour. (CO5A)

Procedural justice research alone does not provide a template for securing legitimacy and a right to exercise power and it can be challenged, as it may not work in low-trust environments where security is a significant concern for many people (Goldsmith, 2005). It can also be counterproductive when working with minority groups, who may see it as insincere (Murphy & Cherney, 2012). However, the influence of procedural justice research on chief officers’ understandings of the right of police to exercise power might be viewed as benign and has the virtue of having an evidence base, although the concerns of Goldsmith (2005) and Murphy and Cherney (2012) need to be weighed in the balance, as do the reservations expressed about the limitations of the survey data supporting the research (Sindall et al., 2012) and concerning causality (Jackson et al., 2012). And Vitale (2017) argues that procedural justice approaches can be pointless, if it amounts to politicians telling the police to be friendly, whilst the political direction given to the police leads to them inappropriately coercing their publics. Yet, interviewees voiced support for the key principles of procedural justice, emphasising respect, fair treatment, conversations and trust.

So far, this chapter has considered what consensual policing means to chief officers, how they gauge consent and listen to the voices of their publics and how they treat people to construct consent. This research also sought to gain insights into chief officers’ understandings of the right of police to exercise power by examining their accounts of withdrawn consent, and these are turned to next.

Withdrawn Consent

All interviewees provided accounts of withdrawn consent and most considered that consent is a precious but precarious asset. Most interviewees emphasised delegitimating issues that had arisen early in their careers before they had risen to senior rank and a few examples predated them joining the police. But some chief officers also expressed anxieties about aspects of contemporary policing that might undermine consent.

Three of the 16 interviewees raised current concerns about the consequences for consent of how police have maintained order and protected companies engaged in hydraulic fracturing to extract shale gas (fracking). This could be construed as police supporting the economic priorities of some powerful companies and the government, at the expense of the environmental concerns of many people with less power. These concerns arguably reflect a misalignment of values and priorities between people with power and their subordinates, which Beetham (1991) contends undermines legitimacy. The policing of fracking protests can also be argued to challenge interviewees’ assertions that police are prioritising the protection of the vulnerable, as using significant resources to, in effect, protect companies involved in fracking (although the stated aim might be to maintain order) does not readily fit this narrative. ACC CO8A was concerned about the potentially delegitimating consequences of the policing of fracking protests:

I do have some underlying concerns about policing protests and—and, you know, if—the stuff that we are doing nationally around fracking … Because … I’m pretty confident you would get a high return to say it’s bad for the environment. Yet, we are seen as central to enabling it to happen. (CO8A)

CC CO7A was anxious about the quasi-military impression given by some officers. CC CO13A was also concerned about the protective equipment now routinely carried by police, which could also be viewed as offensive, and the implications this has for consent. These comments have echoes of Sir Robert Mark’s (1977) stress on the symbolic importance of a largely unarmed police force and on minimising coercion when building consent:

when you see a photograph of six black lads being searched by ten white cops, it just looks like an army of occupation. (CO7A)

the whole use of force thing and the arming, and their Taser and … more of us are wearing guns … people don’t feel comfortable with it. (CO13A)

CC CO14A was anxious about the consequences of some features of contemporary policing and argued that in constructing consent there were lessons to be learned from earlier examples of withdrawn consent, particularly when dealing with competing interests and the associated delegitimating consequences of some sectors of the population feeling that they are not being served by the police:

in more recent times, wind farm developments in XXXX—how that still might play out in terms of what is our role in doing this and then, of course, we have issues, generally in other areas, in industrial disputes and employer relations. And we only have to cast our minds back to things like the miners’ strike … the whole policing by consent thing can break down if … there is a distinct feeling there that the police were not their police. (CO14A)

The impact of withdrawn consent resulting from the 1984 to 1985 miners’ strike also worried other interviewees. CC CO1A and DCC CO12A spoke about the miners’ strike and CO12A also commented on the delegitimating consequences of another 1980s industrial dispute, during which, CO12A contended, police were inappropriately used by the government, although CO12A considered the police were complicit in the coercion (details of the dispute are withheld to protect anonymity):

I had no concept of the damage we were doing to communities during that miners’ strike. I was solely focused on the fact that my salary, which was £300 a month was going up to £800 … nobody ever talked to me about social policy, social interaction … with very little consideration by sergeants, inspectors or even more senior, about the social impact. (CO1A)

Miners’ strike—that’s hugely symbolic for me—I was a PC then. I think it was shameful … did a couple of tours … hated it. … XXXX [industrial dispute], I was a Sergeant then … the way we were used in that, I didn’t like. … but we were willingly used. (CO12A)

The miners’ strike was only one example of interviewees’ anxieties about withdrawn consent and the potential for the past to haunt the present. The policing of disorder and industrial disputes was a recurring theme. The examples below highlight interviewees’ concerns about managing competing interests and maintaining legitimacy. They were particularly anxious about police as agents of state power in conflict with the interests of local people. However, they tended to distance policing now from earlier crises of consent. Some continuing controversies were positioned as products of the past, as DCC CO9A did in relation to abuses of power involving undercover policing, to failures to investigate child abuse and to protect victims of such abuse. CC CO4A and CC CO2A emphasised examples of withdrawn consent from the 1980s—which they contended involved police being used illegitimately as an instrument of coercive state power—rather than providing more recent examples.

We are, as a service, having to deal with a lot of legacy issues: undercover policing, child abuse enquiries. (CO9A)

One of the few times in my career—1981 and 1985 [disorders]—when I felt like we had not got things right and actually I did feel like we were a bit of a ‘tool of the state’ … we were in a very unsavoury conflict sort of relationship with the communities. (CO4A)

In the miners’ strike or some of the [industrial dispute] protests … the notion of having consent for what we were doing, was long out of the window in my view and we were there to suppress people. (CO2A)

Public order policing, including the policing of industrial disputes, was a common concern. However, five of the 16 interviewees suggested that there had been improvements in public order policing, in part based on greater engagement with the public through neighbourhood policing but also in improved planning and tactics. This reflects Waddington’s (2017) finding that relatively new approaches, such as use of police liaison teams, have improved public order policing. The comments from CC CO7A and CC CO4A are representative of the interviewees claiming improvements in approaches to policing disorder and to building bridges with some disengaged and distrusting publics through local policing:

we went through an era where we saw public order policing as successfully dealing with mass outbreaks of disorder, rather than planning, negotiating so that we didn’t have any mass disorder … there has been a mind-shift and some people have left, which has enabled change. (CO7A)

the riots [1981 and 1985] and the miners’ dispute … we were moving away from what a service would want to have by having a relationship with these communities which is based on consent, which does engender trust and confidence and I just felt it was so confrontational … it was going to take a long time for those wounds to heal … it took, I think, the introduction of neighbourhood policing, round about 2005-6-7, to really begin to build those bridges again. (CO4A)

The 2011 disorders were not identified by any interviewees as withdrawals of consent, indeed CC CO3A suggested that the policing of these disorders could be seen as evidence of many people’s consent to and support for the use of police power:

when the riots broke out in 2011, the public at XXXX mobilised in our support. They came out and tried to mediate with youths, they took to the streets alongside us, they fed and watered our staff. (CO3A)

There were also elements of what might be considered routine local policing where interviewees identified a break down in consent to the use of police power, but again these were distanced in time, as illustrated by CC CO7A:

years ago, in XXXX, I had had a couple of days off and had come back to find them [more junior police officers] planning this, kind of, major operation to basically, kind of, harass and then evict some travellers from a site—which was basically because local residents had rung up and said that they didn’t like them there because they are all thieves. I don’t think we had had any crime reported but you looked at it and I went ‘Whoa’ because that was racially motivated use of police powers in my view. (CO7A)

CO7A’s example from ‘years ago’ fits what appears to be a broadly shared construction of the past and present amongst interviewees. ‘Then’ was generally framed as an era where there was less consent and more coercion, and these examples predate the periods when interviewees held senior rank. ‘Now’ was portrayed more benignly, with police tending to act with greater consent and legitimacy.

Three of the 16 interviewees mentioned the influence of roads policing enforcement on consent, perhaps surprisingly few given that it is an exercise of power that affects many people and frequently involves adversarial contacts with people who might otherwise be categorised as members of a generally law-abiding ‘us’ (Corbett, 2008). DCC CO9A seemed bemused by the intensity of the negative reaction to an enforcement approach that seemed to save lives, again illustrating tensions between narratives of consent and protection:

the force’s reputation was damaged by some of that about whether that [roads policing enforcement] was proportionate. I look back and when I was [earlier rank] XX–XX people died on roads in [Force area]. It is now XX—it is a lot less … We did change behaviour out there but there was a lot of damage. (CO9A)

Withdrawn consent can relate to the failure to use power effectively, as well as to contested use of power, although this issue was only directly raised by DCC CO12A, who used the failed investigation into the murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1993 as an example. CO12A’s comments also point to the part that incompetence, corruption and racism can play in undermining police legitimacy:

an utterly failure of investigation that let [it] down—so it was the non-exercise of power, wasn’t it? There is still a debate around what role corruption played in that—absolutely glossed over in the Lawrence Inquiry … it was so focused on racism; I don’t think they wanted to get distracted anywhere else. (CO12A)

A quarter of the interviewees described the relatively recent delegitimating behaviours of some former chief officers, which along with examples about the policing of fracking and windfarms, did not fit the pattern of painting a positive picture of ‘now’. The comments from CC CO6A and DCC CO12A are representative.

I can think of a chief that is no longer working … who blurred the lines between probably what wasn’t acceptable in your private life anyway with—and they forget that we are in a very privileged position in society and that comes with constraints on—on you [referring to the author’s former position as a chief officer], me and our families. And because you are in the public spotlight, to think that you can act in a way—an inappropriate way, then you are just naïve in extreme. (CO6A)

The feeling of invulnerability that grew up—the feeling that ‘because of who I am, or what I am—and/or what I am, I can do this and who is going to question me?’ Whether that’s ‘I choose to go there’ with ‘whatever arrangements are made for payment’, ‘I choose to accept this’, ‘I make this decision’, ‘I listen to these people’, ‘I don’t listen to these people’ … clearly was not sustainable. … That, kind of, living in a bubble thing and becoming out of touch with the rest of the world really—the rest of the organisation. (CO12A)

CO12’s comments on a sense of invulnerability and entitlement echo the concerns that Young (1958) raised in his vision of a riven society resulting from the dominance of arrogant meritocrats (meritocracy was a term coined by Young, which was intended to be pejorative), who not only had power but felt that they were entitled to their positions and privileges due to their success in passing exams and jumping through hoops to reach the top. Consequently, they resented and rejected challenge, leading to conflict and dystopian consequences. A similar argument has been made much more recently by Wooldridge (2021), who proposes that contemporary meritocracy is effectively an illusion, with parental influence and resources and consequent educational and career opportunities, being more important determinants of success than any worth based on talent, intellect or hard work; yet those who are successful tend to feel they are deserving and entitled. And their powerful positions are entrenched by a tendency to mix with and marry people of similar social backgrounds . Caless (2011) describes the many obstacles that chief officers negotiate to reach the top. And, as shown in Chap. 3, contemporary chief officers tend to be academic high achievers from socially advantaged backgrounds. But the risks of meritocratic arrogance may have been mitigated by many chief officers recognising the delegitimating consequences of the unacceptable behaviour of some of their peers, including the mistaken feelings of invulnerability that DCC CO12 described. This, alongside a wider history of withdrawn consent, may have contributed to interviewees being increasingly careful about the use of power. This could partly explain the possible re-emergence of a more measured approach amongst chief officers, like the transition from outspoken chief officers in the 1980s to more cautious chief officers in the 1990s, as described by Loader and Mulcahy (2001a, 2001b). Scandals involving chief officers may also have fuelled interviewees’ anxieties about their legitimacy and personal precariousness, which are returned to in the next chapter.

Interviewees’ accounts of withdrawn consent tended to emphasise examples that were distanced by time and there was a pattern of constructing a more coercive ‘then’ and a more consensual ‘now’. Strong themes related to the delegitimating consequences of the policing of disorder and industrial disputes. However, some more recent anxieties about legitimacy were raised, including concerns about the policing of fracking, and more strongly about the poor behaviour of some officers, including chief officers. Interviewees also expressed concerns about chief officers’ involvement in aspects of performance management, which arguably led to the use of power that undermined consent, and these accounts are examined next.

Police Performance Management and Consent

Interviewees were asked about the relationship between police performance management and consent; this led to 13 of the 16 providing more reports of withdrawn consent. There are similarities between these accounts and those that Caless (2011) uncovered, which revealed damaged relationships between chief officers, the Home Office and HMIC, which were associated with New Public Management. New Public Management was introduced to the public sector, including the police, in the 1980s to improve organisations’ performance by using techniques more widely employed in the private sector, including an emphasis on performance as measured against centrally imposed quantitative targets (Stallion & Wall, 1999). As with Caless’ (2011) interviewees, some of those interviewed for this book saw central government as being at least as culpable as chief officers in failing to control the negative consequences of this form of management, as CC CO3A noted:

it all came from Government. You know, the Centre tells you what to do, when to do it, how to do it, now we’re going to measure you, now we’re going to put you in a league table: ‘Ooh look, you’re bottom—now we’re going to kick you’. That’s the way the system worked. And that had a direct impact on the public. (CO3A)

Another CC (CO14A) suggested that the aim of the government-led performance approach was to benefit the public, but the consequences were to distance the police from their publics, an observation also made by Cooper (2021):

the intention behind the numbers was right, the use of them, I think, was not right and took the police officers—police service away from the public. (CO14A)

An example provided by some interviewees was New Labour Government’s Street Crime Initiative, launched in 2002, which aimed to reduce street robbery in areas with the highest levels of these crimes. Machin and Olivier (2011) found that robbery did fall in street crime initiative sites, compared with similar places that did not attract the additional funding and focus. However, three interviewees suggested that this initiative partly undermined policing by consent. CC CO13A associated it with disproportionate use of police powers:

The Street Crime [Initiative] example is a really good example where there was immense and incredible pressure around one particular crime type, which definitely drove a certain approach and certain types of behaviour … how driven that was through Government and Section 60 [a contentious stop and search power provided by the Public Order Act 1986] usage and things. So, very indiscriminate, invasive use of policing powers and the kind of pressure being applied that clearly impacted significantly on the XXXX community [a minority group] … we ended up with … significant disorder because of that. (CO13A)

Interviewees did not confine their comments about quantitative and target-based performance management approaches to specific initiatives. CC CO6A noted the potential delegitimating effects:

in the pursuit of raw numbers, you can end up completely distancing yourself from the population that you are there to police. (CO6A)

Another CC (CO5A) identified the potentially perverse influence of these performance regimes on police management styles, and consequently on the exercise of police discretion and on how police power is used:

We have been through the Dennis O’Connor [former HMCIC and CC] years of the reds and greens and where are our targets and what are our percentages and are we hitting the target or not. And I think what is now universally accepted is it leads to some really perverse behaviours, such as we’ll put a filter cordon across the High Street on a Friday night until we have got ten cannabis hits and then we don’t have to do it for the rest of the month because we have hit our quota. That’s not healthy, that’s not good, that’s not discretion. We have seen bullying performance management of—and a phraseology, certainly in this force before my time was ‘blood on the carpet’—type language, around ‘driving’ performance and growth. (CO5A)

Despite the tendency to distance in time most of the examples of lost consent, some interviewees did recognise that they had contributed to these types of performance regime. CC CO2A reflected on his/her career and on the damage that he/she thought his/her earlier forceful performance management style had inflicted:

at different points in my tenure as Deputy Chief Constable, [I was] very, very robust at managing performance, in a way that was not, on occasion, constructive … I left—left some casualties behind. (CO2A)

Some interviewees claimed this approach that had largely gone, as DCC CO9A noted:

ten years ago, we were in a very different regime where behaviours were impacted adversely by the targets. (CO9A)

The predominant view was that performance management has evolved positively and that many of the negative aspects and perverse behaviours have been mitigated. This may indicate a potential change in the approach of chief officers to the exercise of power and a recognition that more cautious and considered styles are needed to build consent. However, it can also be interpreted as contributing to a narrative of better ‘now’ than ‘then’. But some interviewees were concerned that the negative features of blunt quantitative approaches performance management could return, particularly due to the influence of the Crime and Police Monitoring Group at the Home Office (now, in effect, replaced by the scrutiny applied by the Home Secretary and HMICFRS through the National Policing Board), and the associated process of engagement with the Home Office and HMIC, including the ladder of interventions used to put pressure on chief officers and PCCs, in forces that were perceived—by the Home Office and HMIC—to be in danger of failing. As CC CO6A warned:

A few colleagues, sort of, said: ‘We’re not going to look at performance.’ But HMIC were and the Home Office were, and they ended up on the naughty step and the ladder of interventions. (CO6A)

Developments since the interviews were conducted suggested that a similarly potentially damaging form of centralised performance management and measures is re-emerging, which will lead to police forces being ranked (Higgins, 2021). This might lead to illiberal and coercive policing activity, in pursuit of the Home Secretary’s agenda of a ‘relentless focus on cutting crime’, which includes tracking progress against a basket of government set performance measures (Hamilton & Dathan, 2021). But it may also be naïve to think that there might have been earlier periods of sophisticated and enlightened performance management prior to the emergence of New Public Management, as CC CO1A recalled:

when I joined, my sergeant expected me to have a dozen bookings a day. … So, I used to stand on XXXX in XXXX and book everyone that came out of the no left turn. They were people like me and you who had made a mistake. I booked them all. My sergeant got his 12 bookings. And I became quite ruthless. Is that what we want from our police? (CO1A)

This example pre-dated New public Management, so it is reasonable to ask to what extent this is a persistent adverse aspect of police management culture or cultures, although this is a question left for future research. However, not all interviewees were overly critical of quantitative and target-based performance management. Half talked in some detail about a journey, from a blunt quantitative style, which had benefits as well as problems, to a more sophisticated approach, which uses qualitative methods in conjunction with carefully considered quantitative indicators, rather than targets. As DCC CO12A asserted, ‘it was a journey we needed to make’. CC CO1A was typical of these interviewees, noting that despite the problems some benefits had come from a heavily quantitative approach, although the claim linking crime reduction with New Public Management is not tested here:

In the 1990s, we moved to New Public Management, which was league tables, targets, numbers … We got completely driven by a numbers game, not all bad because actually, crime did come down. (CO1A)

The extent to which the apparent evolution in managing performance from a quantitative to more qualitative approach was the result of the Home Office setting an agendaFootnote 3 that chief officers followed, as opposed to the Home Office facilitating changes that chief officers wished to make, is not clear. And the role played by police authorities or PCCs in this process is also indistinct and was rarely mentioned in the interviews. CC CO2A linked these changes to the claimed new emphasis on vulnerability:

In terms of performance reviews that we do, therefore there is more focus around vulnerability and risk and what—what the areas are doing to, for example, support the focus around child sexual exploitation. (CO2A)

Performance management approaches associated with New Public Management were identified, by most interviewees, as contributing to withdrawals of consent to the use of police power. Recent reported changes to styles of performance management may indicate that chief officers are adopting a more cautious approach to the use of power both within and outside the police organisation. But it could also be part of a construction of a largely consensual ‘now’, in contrast to a less legitimate ‘then’. The main elements of all these accounts of how consent is won and withheld are now drawn together to illuminate how chief police officers understand the right of police to exercise power.

Conclusion

Interviewees used the arguably amorphous concept of policing by consent to justify the right of police to exercise power. In explaining consent, they stressed the importance of minimal coercion, the rule of law and values police share with wider society. Most of their accounts of consensual policing also encompassed a symbolic commitment to protect people. This was evident in the Peelian myths they called on, which are partly based on questionable assumptions about societal consensus, and this reflects a broader challenge for consensual policing (Emsley, 2014, p. 17). These legitimating narratives conveniently minimise the inevitably controlling and coercive functions of the police (Bittner, 1974; Brodeur, 2007). Broad themes were set out but, overall, interviewees’ explanations of consensual policing and of how it contributed to or explained the right of police to exercise power appeared unclear. This was partly due to the range of issues that they covered when talking about policing by consent, which may reflect the wide and indistinct scope of the concept. But it was also because they struggled to explain how they identified if consent was present and how this differed from coerced compliance. Some chief officers recognised the challenges posed to narratives of consent by the increased display of defensive equipment by police, by anxieties about managing competing demands and recurring crises of legitimacy, notably those provoked by the behaviour of police officers, including chief officers.

Interviewees agreed that dialogue with their publics was crucial to continued consent and that neighbourhood officers played an important role in this; yet, as the research was being conducted, the number of these officers reduced and concerns were being expressed about the future of neighbourhood policing (HMIC, 2017; Higgins, 2018). Dialogue with the publics the police serve is not confined to neighbourhood officers. But when interviewees were asked how these conversations were conducted and how consent was gauged and built, the approaches described largely seemed ad hoc and inadequate, notably when the notion of consensual policing was expanded to include seeking mandates for specific exercises of police power. Some interviewees recognised that there was a risk of an absence of obvious resistance being interpreted as consent. Yet it was not clear how these chief officers distinguished active consent from coerced compliance, or ‘dull compulsion’ rooted in habit, apathy or fear (Carrabine, 2004, p. 180). And most interviewees recognised that processes used to listen to the voices of ‘them’ (marginalised people over whom police power is frequently exercised) were inadequate and that the voices of ‘them’ tended to be drowned out by the clamour of ‘us’, or of ‘deserving victims’ and the ‘great and the good’.

Issues relating to the fair use of power, respect and constructive conversations were raised when interviewees deployed, sometimes explicitly, the main tenets of procedural justice theory to explain how consent could be won. Procedural justice seems to have influenced chief officers’ understandings of the right to exercise, and its emphasis on fairness, respect and dialogue may resonate with their generally liberal tendencies, which were discussed in Chap. 3.

Accounts of withdrawn consent were provided by interviewees and the mishandled policing of disorder and industrial disputes were common themes. Underlying such accounts were anxieties about misalignment of values and priorities between the police and the public. Ideological concerns about police being used as coercive tools of the state were also voiced, though this tension may be inevitable, as police embody the power of the state to protect and control. In accounts of the policing of contentious recent issues, such as fracking and windfarms, the threat posed to consent by competing interests was in the foreground. The emergence of a narrative of protecting the most vulnerable as a justification for the right to use power might also pose a challenge to consensual policing, as many people may have alternative priorities for the use of police power. Another strand of accounts of withdrawn consent related to the adverse effects on legitimacy of quantitative performance management approaches associated with New Public Management. Most interviewees contended that perverse outcomes often flowed from this style of management and consequently consent was diminished. However, many interviewees claimed that performance management was now, generally, more sophisticated and that this contributed to a more considered approach to the use of power, inside and outside the police organisation. But concerns were expressed about the potential for the re-emergence of blunt quantitative performance regimes, which could encourage excessively coercive police conduct, potentially leading to widespread withdrawals of consent. Recent developments in Home Office–led police performance management arguably reinforce these concerns (Hamilton & Dathan, 2021; Higgins, 2021). The discussions of withdrawn consent, including performance management, seemed to reveal a construction, by most interviewees, of a relatively benign consensual and cohesive ‘now’ contrasting with a more coercive ‘then’, when these chief police officers would not have held the command positions that they occupied when interviewed.

It can be argued that policing by consent is a manufactured legitimating myth but that does not mean that it has no consequences for how chief police officers, and other police ranks and grades, think and behave, which in turn affects wider society (Jefferson & Grimshaw, 1984, pp. 67–68). Policing by consent clearly influenced the understandings of the right to exercise power held by interviewees. However, the concept is challenged by the difficulty of achieving consensus on policing issues. Demands on the use of police power compete and chief officers are unable to escape the role of police in representing the power of the state, particularly its coercive capacity. Recurring concerns about legitimacy also bring into question the extent of public consent, and it is contended that chief officers should do more to gauge and increase the levels of consent to the use of police power, particularly amongst people who may be more policed than protected. However, policing by consent should not be viewed in isolation. And interviewees deployed policing by consent as a justification for the use of power alongside arguments about protecting people, particularly the most vulnerable, as was shown in the last chapter. They also emphasised the importance of law and of the formal oversight and political direction of police in bolstering legitimacy, and these accounts are addressed in the next chapter.