A “quiet revolution” in policing

This month, we are celebrating the tenth anniversary of Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice. Apart from being an occasion for celebration too good to pass up, it is also a good opportunity to take stock of the last ten years and look to what the next ten might hold. In this piece, Peter Neyroud, General Editor of Policing, looks at past achievements and future ambitions for the journal, the field, and practitioners themselves.

Will there be any major changes for the journal?

We have already started making plans. For one thing, we have extended our word limit to 6,000 words. It is a decision that reflects how policing has changed over the last ten years. In 2005, the General Editors set the 4,000-word limit because they wanted police officers both to read the journal and write for it. This was a much tighter limit than is usual for academic journals, but the General Editors saw it as a readable length for busy practitioners, using journals like the British Medical Journal as a guide, where short articles are the norm rather than exception; they mused that 4,000 words was a length capable of being read by an officer on a meal break in the middle of the night. There is a saying in British policing that the real work is done by the “late turn van driver” and they wanted to see whether they could reach that reality.

We stayed with the shorter 4,000 word limit for ten years, while allowing a few exceptions, because we wanted to maintain our firm intent as a journal of policy and practice, rather than just another academic journal. We have also worked hard to get practitioners to publish and access the journal. It is genuinely gratifying to see so many practitioners co-authoring in our Special Edition on Australasian police leadership and management.

Moreover, our Special Edition signals that another of our intentions has borne fruit. We have called this journal international from its inception and we have worked hard to extend both its readership and its authors and reviewers across the world. The most significant recent statement of this intent has been the addition of Cynthia Lum to give us three General Editors.

How have things changed over this past decade?

Our first ten years have produced some notable articles and editions. These include New York and Los Angeles Commissioner Bill Bratton writing on performance; articles from International Criminology Prize Winners like Ron Clarke (writing with Graham Newman on policing terrorism) and David Weisburd (on legitimacy and police science); special editions on terrorism, community policing, police science, police performance, and diversity. We are also delighted to have seen many younger scholars publishing for the first time.

What makes the journal so successful?

We are proud of achieving what many other journals struggle to do: a quick turnaround between submission and publication. We judged that we needed to be relevant. One recent reviewer commented they “worried that this belated article—that will appear in a couple of years’ time—will be dated by then and been superseded by existing publications.” They need not have worried. Our articles do not take two years to publish, because two years in policing, particularly at the moment with the pace of change, could, indeed, leave some articles looking like historical statements. We have maintained a constant intent to influence the field and the policy makers, which means that we commit to maintaining as rapid a turnaround as sound reviewing, good scholarship, and excellent editing and production can achieve.

How has the field transformed over the years?

All of the General Editors have extensive experience of the field in policing, so we know that meal breaks rarely come uninterrupted, particularly for the “late turn van driver.” However, since 2005 there has been a transformation of police education and a significant growth in police practitioners completing Masters and Research degrees. Not only have we noted an increasing number of submissions from police officers seeking to publish the findings from their own research, but also a shift in interest in research more generally in the profession.

There is, in short, a “quiet revolution” going on in policing and policing research, which we wish to foster and develop. We feel that we can best assist by encouraging a wide range of contributions from 6,000-word research articles to 2,000-word research summaries, combined with articulate commentaries and high-quality discussion pieces.

What does the future hold?

We have a plan to cover some of the most pressing topics in the field over the next few editions—domestic violence, police culture and its impact on reform and delivery, policing cybercrime, and police forensics. We are also looking to extend our international reach well beyond our core English-speaking readership and bring an increasingly worldwide perspective to our journal. Last but not least, we will publish a series of articles which will assess the “state of the field,” covering topics such as the President’s Taskforce in the twenty-first century, the development of police education, and the journals on policing.

We are ambitious. Ten years’ experience has taught us to be ambitious. However, we can see the change in the field as we look back and we hope that we have played a small part in helping it happen. We look forward to the next ten years.

Image Credit: “NYC Police Horse Around After Superbowl Parade” by Tony Fischer. CC BY 2.0 via Flickr.