ABSTRACT
As will be outlined in detail later in this chapter, a recurring theme that has been used to describe the development of policing in the period since the Lawrence Report has been ‘policing diversity’. While it will be shown that this phrase is used in conceptually ambiguous ways and often appears to be used by police services for its symbolic connotations, it generally features in two distinct ways in the professional and academic literature of recent years. First, the term has been used by those analysing the increasingly important role seen to be played by private and semi-private organisations in the delivery of services usually associated with the public police service. Along these lines, for example, Johnston (2000) uses the phrase ‘policing diversity’ to describe the increasingly pluralistic provision of policing that incorporates a range of organisations belonging to what the government’s recent agenda for reform has labelled the ‘extended police family’. The term is used in this sense to refer to the diversity of policing. In contrast, the other way in which the phrase appears, and perhaps the more common usage in the professional context, relates instead to the policing of diversity in terms of the complex composition of contemporary society. In this latter sense, ‘policing diversity’ denotes the increasingly difficult task apparently facing the police service as it seeks to meet the various demands of a multi-faceted society. While this chapter focuses primarily on the latter meaning of the term, by analysing some of the practical implications and highlighting the conceptual weaknesses of the approach, it also considers the likely ramifications that the increasing role for non-traditional policing agencies might have for the post-Lawrence agenda.
