Forcing the Issue: New Labour, New Localism and the Democratic Renewal of Police Accountability EUGENE McLAUGHLIN Professor of Sociology, Department of Sociology, City University, London Abstract: The purpose of this article is to evaluate proposals contained in the government’s Green Paper Policing: Building Safer Communities Together (Home Office 2003) and the White Paper Building Communities: Beating Crime (Home Office 2004) to re-invigorate the structure of police governance in the UK. After providing a brief overview of New Labour’s initial attempts to modernise British policing, I analyse why and how the broader political discourse of ‘new localism’ came to frame the unfolding debate about the need to revitalise police accountability. The article then offers a critical evaluation of the latest Home Office attempt to reorganise the democratic structure of police governance in the UK. In democratic societies, where the emphasis is on demonstrating the ‘rule of law’ and ‘good governance’, the term ‘police accountability’ is a multi- faceted concept. Janet Chan (1999) has noted how ‘the modern state is deeply ambivalent about the way in which the police should be held accountable’ (p.267). Police accountability is, in theory, constituted through those mechanisms for ensuring that: (i) police forces are responsible for the quality of community safety, justice and security services they provide, and (ii) police officers are answerable for how they handle individual citizens, particularly with regard to respect for human rights and civil liberties. And as police scholars routinely note, organisational and officer level accountabilities are intimately connected. Effective delivery of core policing services depends on how individual officers working the streets and neighbourhoods exercise their discretionary authority and powers, and the nature and quality of police-public interactions turns on what police departments do to inculcate ethical standards of behaviour (Walker 2001; Klockars, Ivkovic and Haberfeld 2004). The field of police accountability in the UK has distinct internal and external features. In theory, accountability inside the organisation is ensured through corporate governance as exemplified by: organisational policies; reporting systems; codes of ethical standards; the cultural ethos; The Howard Journal Vol 44 No 5. December 2005 ISSN 0265-5527, pp. 473–489 473 r Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA