The Police

Abstract

A generation ago, the phrase ‘law and order’ had little political resonance. Although crime was then, as now and for centuries beforehand, a major source of newspaper headlines and a public preoccupation, crime policy was not an issue at elections, or generally between or even within parties. By the 1980s, however, it is clear that this is no longer so. While law and order is still far from being the dominant political issue of the era, it has certainly become part of the political vernacular in a new and significant way. One sign of this change is that political parties are now building up detailed policies on a range of law-and-order issues — public order, penal questions, criminal procedure, civil liberties and policing, for example — which have hitherto been uncontested within the political process. A tradition of consensus and non-engagement is undergoing a sustained, if unco-ordinated, challenge.