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Abstract
This article explores the prospects for greater democratic governance and accountability of policing arising from the inaugural elections for Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) across England and Wales. It argues that the democratic credentials of PCCs have been undermined not only by a failure of local politics to confer on them a strong mandate but also by wider inadequacies in how their role and remit have been defined and structured in law. The analysis proceeds to consider whether PCCs represent a truly local vision of governance, particularly in the light of the size of their areas of jurisdiction, but also given the centralised political affiliations of many PCCs. The implications for whether PCCs will be able to deliver a more socially democratic form of policing are discussed. The article concludes by suggesting the prospects for more democratically governed policing depend on a much wider range of social, economic and political features than a cyclical election for a Commissioner. Few of these are within the remit of PCCs and the risk of populism and majoritarianism might mean that the new office privileges rather than democratises local policing.
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to acknowledge the generous and insightful comments of Steven Hutchinson on an earlier draft of this article.
Notes
1. The Home Office has suggested that in the future PCCs may be given yet wider responsibilities ‘in respect of the criminal justice system’ (Citation2010, para. 2.20). Some of the arrangements discussed in this section apply differently in Wales, where the Welsh Assembly has responsibility for community safety.
2. At £5000, the size of the deposit required of candidates to stand in the PCC elections was 10 times the size of the deposit required to stand in the most recent parliamentary elections in the UK.
3. The previous low watermark for national elections was the 1999 UK European elections, the turnout level for which was 23%.
4. The elections used a supplementary voting system whereby voters were able to indicate their first and second choice of preferred candidate. Candidates who gained at least 50% of the ‘first preference votes’ were elected. Else, all but the two leading candidates were eliminated and their ‘second preferences votes’ added to the tallies of the remaining candidates. The candidate with the most votes after this ‘second round’ count was then elected. It should, however, be noted that in these elections just over 12% of voters cast a second preference vote (Garland and Terry Citation2013).
5. Of these eight PCCs, when the winners of the three ‘two candidate elections’ are discounted, four of the remaining five were elected in heavily populated, metropolitan police force areas (Greater Manchester, Merseyside, Northumbria and South Yorkshire). That each of these four areas elected a ‘Labour PCC’ gives a strong indication of how the candidates of this party gained more votes overall but won fewer of the contests than Conservative candidates.
6. For example, the electoral turnout at the local elections of May 2012, with which the PCC elections were originally scheduled to coincide, averaged 33%.
7. One independent candidate was affiliated to a political party, however. The eventual winner in the Surrey contest formed the ‘Zero Tolerance Policing Party’ as a vehicle to stand for election. This act of political entrepreneurialism may itself be seen as an instrumental attempt to gain electoral advantage from the perceived popularity of zero-tolerance policing among the public. As there was low public awareness of the candidates (Garland and Terry Citation2013), and as the name of the party that each represented appeared adjacent to their names on the ballot paper, forming this party most probably gave voters a clearer sense of what they thought were voting for than had the ballot paper merely declared the candidate to be an ‘independent’.
8. Four PCCs (in Hertfordshire, Kent, Norfolk and West Yorkshire) were Chair of the local Police Authority before resigning from the role in order to stand for election, whilst others have in the past held this responsibility.
9. July 2013.
10. Candidates produced statements of up to three hundred words: most contained information about how their vocational background had equipped them with suitable skills, knowledge and experience to succeed in the role of PCC. Many emphasised their ‘local’ credentials, albeit candidates had to be registered to vote in the force area in which they wished to stand for election. See http://www.choosemypcc.org.uk/.
11. Though a few Labour PCC statements did mention they would ensure a ‘swift’ police response (to anti-social behaviour).
12. Dixon of Dock Green was a British television drama series that ran between 1955 and 1976, which depicted the activities of a uniformed police officer, PC George Dixon. This fictionalised character is routinely invoked as a symbolic icon of a bygone ‘golden era’ of policing when police legitimacy is held to have been at its zenith and organised policing activity was dominated, both conceptually and ideologically, by the state (see Reiner Citation1992/Citation2010).
13. In response to this concern, the PCC for Avon and Somerset has published six separate and more locally specific (one per police district in the force area) Police and Crime Plans, alongside an over-arching force-wide plan.