From crime fighting to problem solving: A gendered analysis of 'new policing' identities

This paper is located within the context of change in the organisation, management and occupational identities of the UK police service. The paper aims to explore the new professional/managerial subjectivities promoted within the discourse of New Public Management (NPM) for police service professionals. It focuses on the gendered meanings ascribed to policing professionals within NPM and examines the implications of policies that promote a greater community orientation and increased interagency partnership. The research adopts a Foucauldian feminist theoretical perspective (Weedon 1987; Sawicki 1991; Butler 1990) and the analysis takes place at the localised level, aiming to understand how individual police service professionals come to know and challenge the ways in which their identities are constituted within the organisation. The paper draws on the social texts of 25 uniform and civilian police managers. Analysis of the texts suggests a number of contradictory and complementary subject positions promoted within NPM. The paper argues that the promotion of a more professional and ethical policing subjectivity, based on community orientation and equality principles, may struggle to gain legitimacy within the current performance regime that legitimises a competitive masculine subjectivity, with its emphasis on crime fighting. The promotion of a more feminised policing identity requires a reconsideration of a policing model based on resource limitation and the pursuit of improved quantitive results. Without this, the imperative to move towards a more community oriented, problem-solving philosophy and practice will founder