ABSTRACT
The Policy Studies Institute research on the Metropolitan Police and Kinsey’s work in Merseyside reveal that a large proportion of duty time is spent on police premises and that a significant slice of this time is accounted for by paperwork and administration. The attitudes of police officers to paperwork are complex and appear to be contradictory. They speak disparagingly about it yet they also treat is as important and use it to promote their own ends. Action-seeking and the value attached to activities that generate excitement and interest also figure prominently in accounts of policing provided by researchers. The grounds for decisions were recorded and were thus more visible in the department. The time it took a detective to close a case was more easily checked and, on the whole, detectives were more accountable than their colleagues in the other departments in the study.
