ABSTRACT
The police service is currently undergoing fundamental challenges and significant change which have not been heralded in previous generations. The chapter considers the changing social, political and economic landscape of policing which in recent years has faced the challenges of a reduced workforce, an increasingly complex workload and increasing efforts to pursue an agenda of ‘professionalisation’. This changing external policing environment will be considered alongside the changing internal policing cultures which together it might be argued form a ‘new policing identity’.
