'Jack of all trades and master of none,' is this a true reflection of today's British police

摘要

The purpose of present study is to explore the British policing methods and their effectiveness. Generally, four key goals of their policing include preventing crime and disorder, pursuing and bringing to justice those who break the law, keeping the peace, and helping the public. When considering these aims carefully, it leads to a subsequent question: If the majority of regular police officers are not directly fighting crime, what are the reasons for it and what are they actually doing? This is the foundations for the "Jack of all trades" argument of this paper, which gives rise to the two competing paradigms. One is that the role of the police should involve much more than simply apprehending criminals. Furthermore, the other paradigm suggests that the police are simply spending too much time on the activities that are not part of their main duties. These polarised viewpoints need to be taken into account before any meaningful conclusions can be drawn. This paper argues that the answer can be found in the culture of policing by examining the goals that the British police forces are currently attempting to achieve. It is clear that as the police have finite resources, they have to make choices about how to deploy them. This requires reconsidering their priorities and placing more emphases on some activities more than others.