Citizens, it is said, have 'lost faith' in the English police. Opinion polls repeatedly show that trust in, and respect for, the police have declined precipitously from the historically high levels achieved during the 'golden age' of the 1950s. Successive decades of rising crime, political violence and urban disorder, miscarriages of justice, and declining effectiveness have left the police in what seems like a permanent crisis of legitimation. A once revered national institution has become thoroughly profane.
In this major new work on the relationship between English policing and...

This book provides an account and analysis of the RUC (Royal Ulster Constabulary) from the start of the troubles in the 1960s to the early 1990s, through the uneasy peace that followed the 1994 paramilitary ceasefires (1994-1998), and then its transformation into the Police Service of Northern Ireland following the 1999 Patten Report. A major concern is with the reform process and the way that the RUC has faced and sought to remedy a situation where it faced a chronic legitimacy deficit. Policing Northern Ireland focuses on three key aspects of the police legitimation process: reform measures...