ABSTRACT
Police accountability has been problematic since the beginning of modern policing. Although a number of adjustments have been made in the contemporary period these have emerged as a series of unco-ordinated initiatives, complicated by the increase in organisations having a policing role – reflecting the move from ‘government’ to ‘governance’. To trace why attempts proved necessary to make good the deficiencies of accountability by reforming complaints procedures, changing the membership of police authorities, introducing codes of practice for arrest, interrogation and detention, and implementing new mechanisms for public consultation, we must examine the gaps left by the tripartite system that is formally, but increasingly nominally, the principal mechanism for making the police accountable.
