Talking cop shop? A case‐study of police community consultative groups in transition

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Abstract
This paper begins with a critical review of three major criminological perspectives on ‘community policing’ and police/community consultation arrangements in Britain. It is noted that all three accounts link these policing policy developments back to the ‘Thatcherite’ agenda of the 1980s although with important differences which I discuss. In the second part of the paper the findings from my own case‐study of a Police Consultative Committee (PCC) ‘in transition’ are discussed. Although my local research confirms much of the earlier work on PCCs, this paper concentrates on some potentially significant and neglected developments of late in the work and membership of PCCs. In particular I outline the views of a politicised minority of ‘key players’ whose agenda accords closely to that shared by most academic critics. It is, however, argued that it is unclear yet to what extent this development is related to a growth in local democratic participation in policing policy rather than an emergent inter‐agency corporatism.

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