ABSTRACT
In August 1967, the Home Office issued a circular aimed at encouraging forces to adopt a new system of policing, later described by Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary in his report for that year as ‘the biggest change in fundamental operational police methods since 1829’. This policing system, known as unit beat policing involved forces in additional expenditure on cars and personal radios. The forerunner of unit beat policing was a policing scheme in Kirkby, a Liverpool overspill town which the Lancashire Constabulary found difficult to police. An important feature of unit beat policing was that, initially at least, it was to be an experimental system, initiated by the Home Office and evaluated by its Police Research and Planning Branch. In 1975, the Police Research Services Unit at the Home Office produced a report which looked at how areas in nine forces were being policed under unit beat policing in 1972 and 1973.
