Police Reform from the Bottom Up ─ Officers and Their Unions as Agents of Change

What role can and should police unions and rank-and-file officers play in driving and shaping police reform? Police unions and their members are often viewed as obstructionist and conservative, not as change agents. But reform efforts are much more likely to succeed when they are supported by the rank-and-file, and line officers have knowledge, skills and insights that can be invaluable in promoting reform. Efforts to involve police unions and rank-and-file officers in police reform are less common than they should be, but they are increasing, and there is a good deal to learn about policing, police reform and participatory management from the efforts made to date.

In this pioneering volume, an international, cross-disciplinary collection of scholars and police unionists address a range of neglected questions, both empirical and theoretical, about the place of police officers themselves in the process of reform – what it has been, and what it could be. They provide a fresh view of police reform as occurring from the bottom up rather than the top down. This book will be highly useful for practitioners and scholars who have a serious interest in the possibilities and limits of police organizational change.

This book is based on special issues of Police Practice and Research and Policing and Society.

Monique Marks is an Associate Professor in the Community Development Programme at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. She has published widely about police unions, police labour rights, and police organisational change. She has also conducted participatory action research with police unions in South Africa and in Australia for the past 15 years.

David Sklansky is the Yosef Osheawich Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, USA, and Faculty Chair of the Berkeley Center for Criminal Justice. He has written extensively about policing and criminal procedure.