Cops and customers: consumerism and the demand for police services

Research has drawn attention to the incorporation of localised political elites and a new 'urban officer class' into police consultation processes. The resulting corporatist-style bodies mediate a range of political and economic tensions in the development of local policing priorities. Most research on this issue has focussed upon formal police consultation processes (PCCs) and multi-agency initiatives. Here, however, we examine the extent to which a rather wider section of 'the community' shares this essentially 'local corporatist' approach to police policy making. More specifically, in the light of an increasing application of consumerist approaches to public service management, the article attempts to assess the extent to which public attitudes to policing display an increasingly individual and consumerist ideology. The article discusses some possible implications of this.