Centralizing forces?

Police organizations in several Northern and Western European countries

have recently witnessed fundamental reforms to their structures as well as to

their relationships with governments.

Many (but not all) of these macro-level reforms can be understood as forms

of centralization. New or strengthened national police organizations have

been created, with new territorial arrangements for delivering police

services, involving the establishment of new structures of police governance

and accountability. Written by highly experienced researchers, the essays in

Centralizing Forces? reveal intriguing similarities and differences in police

reform in eight European countries: France, Denmark, Finland, Belgium,

England and Wales, Scotland, the Netherlands and Sweden.

The chapters examine the nature and dimensions of police reform and the

importance of the political, cultural, social and economic contexts in which

reform is happening. Despite some significant similarities in the reform

process, the book also illustrates that there are important differences in the

backgrounds, nature and consequences of police reform. Police reform is

therefore strongly context dependent, not only in its underling drivers and

motives, but also in its cultural meaning and the resulting problems and

challenges. The cumulative product of these insights is evidence of how

police reform is strongly linked to changing views about the role of the police

in contemporary society, the shifting balance of power relations between key

actors, and on political assumptions about the preferred relationships

between the public police and national governments.

This book therefore provides critical insights into police reform in different

national contexts and a snapshot of a dynamic European policing landscape

in which the contours of the relationships between police organizations,

governments and citizens are being redrawn.