ABSTRACT
This chapter argues for the application of T.H. Marshall's seminal analysis of citizenship to the analysis of police governance, suggesting that democracy in general, and democratic policing in particular, has not one dimension but three namely civil, political and socio-economic. The Coalition's reforms involved only one of these dimensions, the political, and in the narrowest sense. The chapter examines why police accountability has proved to be such a riddle. It also offers a brief history of the police accountability debate in England and Wales in order to contextualise the Coalition's reforms. A central pillar of the Coalition Government rhetoric presenting the reforms is that they achieve democratic policing. The Coalition Government claimed that its novel system of elected Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) achieves democratic governance of policing. Elected authorities, like PCCs, may threaten the legal and civil rights of minorities, and indeed all individuals. Basic rights must be protected and preserved for a system to be called democratic.
