‘Performance culture’: The return of reactive policing

Abstract

The research used two divisions of the Metropolitan Police in considering the effect of ‘performance culture’. First, objectives may shift away from community policing activities to easily quantifiable, predominantly law enforcing ones. Secondly, performance indicators may create a competitive ethos between police officers and influence their arrest decisions. Lastly, managerial accountability may have increased to the detriment of accountability to the community. The findings suggested that the pressure to achieve performance levels in certain tasks was steering objectives towards reactive, law enforcing policing and that certain aspects of sector policing, predominantly the pro‐active style, acted in conjunction with performance indicators to compound this shift. However, a strong cultural resistance to competitiveness may limit the effectiveness of performance achievement in creating competition. Finally, managerial accountability to the costs of policing appeared to be increasing but performance measu...