Module Directory

Police play a crucial role in society, and policing has a direct impact on the lives, freedoms and security of citizens. This module examines key challenges in contemporary policing. Students will have the opportunity to gain an advanced understanding of how policing works in and tries to adapt to our contemporary world. Topics will explore how policing responds to challenges such as political polarisation, cybercrimes, contested spaces, and the rise in crimes which, like stalking, elude prosecution. Students will have the opportunity to hear from police themselves about how they respond to these challenges. They will also hear from experts who have worked closely with police to navigate the fallout from scandals, resolve ethical dilemmas, and negotiate boundaries with self-styled ‘citizen police’, as well as those campaigning for police reform to address brutality, abuse and misconduct.

The module equips students with the necessary skills to critically evaluate the current academic and policy literature on policing, draw on theories of policing, legitimacy, and order to analyse contemporary issues in policing, and develop a critical understanding of key topics in policing.

The aims of this module are:

• To introduce students to several key empirical and analytical issues in contemporary policing.


• To introduce students to theories of law enforcement and policing.


• To allow students to situate contemporary policing practices within broader social and political institutions, movements, contexts and debates.


• To enable students to critically evaluate contemporary issues in policing with reference to relevant criminological and social theories as well as normative and political frameworks.

By the end of this module, students will be expected to be able to:

1. Demonstrate a comprehensive knowledge of contemporary policing practices as they relate to a range of specific challenges and across empirical contexts.


2. Critically evaluate contemporary policing practices with reference to a range of critical criminological ideas and theories, and engage critically with those ideas and theories.


3. Identify and explain how contemporary policing practices relate to broader social and political debates.


4. Apply their critical understanding of contemporary policing to reshape these practices by engaging with a range of stakeholders.

Transferable Skills

• Ability to independently deploy theoretical frameworks and insights to real-world empirical examples.


• Ability to independently research and critically evaluate theories of policing and crime.


• Ability to independently research and evaluate policing policies, institutions, and practices and to analyse them in the context of broader systems such as the criminal justice system and political institutions.


• Ability to communicate research questions and results with a range of stakeholders to reshape criminal justice practices.

Syllabus information

Cop Culture in a Changing World

Police culture is core to how officers understand themselves and their role in society, and how they carry out their work. Public perceptions of police culture –especially around gender and race- also determine how citizens view and interact with police, and who wants to join the police. But what are the factors that shape and entrench police culture? How have efforts to reform it fared over the years? How has it changed and resisted change? And how do policing subcultures (e.g. in armed units) develop and potentially conflict with broader cop culture? This week we delve into the inner, institutionalised world of policing, guided by the work of theorists and ethnographers who have embedded themselves within police over the years.

Dark Nets, Deepfakes and Dirty Hands: Policing, undercover, and the cybersphere.

Police have always had to operate in criminal underworlds in order to weaken and undermine them. But how can police maintain legitimacy and authority when behaving just like the criminals they’re supposed to be catching? Do police have to get their hands dirty and play criminals at their own game, or are some things off limits? How do these longstanding questions play out in the context of the dark web – the ‘wild west’ of the internet? Are the same principles and rules regulating policing offline fit for purpose in the cybersphere? We consider these questions in relation to theories of undercover policing and real-world cases of dark web investigations.

Bad Apples and Bad Barrels: Scandals and Misconduct in policing

Power corrupts, but when cops behave badly, who polices the police? This week we take a look at recent and historic police scandals, how policing organisations have responded to wrongdoing by their own, what democratic institutions and the public can do to hold them accountable. We survey some of the biggest scandals to rock policing and the responses to them –from independent investigations to public inquiries to the obscure mechanisms of ‘misconduct proceedings’. And we examine different approaches to preventing bad apples rotting the barrel.

Policing contested crimes: hate, abuse, and political protest

Recent years have seen an expansion in the use of criminalisation as a strategy to deal with social problems like online hate and to protect businesses from disruptive activities like environmental protest. Police increasingly find themselves tasked with drawing and enforcing the line between the legitimate exercise of freedom of expression and maintaining social cohesion and business as usual on the streets. This week we examine critically the different ways in which police have resolved these dilemmas and consider what these trends mean for the role of law enforcement in a liberal democracy.

Vigilantes, Digilantes and ‘Citizen Police’: competing to keep communities safe.

Citizens are increasingly using digital platforms to take the detection and fighting of crime into their own hands. Examples range from ‘citizen journalist’ groups that crowdsource evidence to undertake open-source investigations (see Bellingcat), to digilante groups which doxx racists and fascists online (see Anonymous and the KKK) to ‘paedophile hunters’. Instead of waiting for police to fight crime for them, these groups self-organise and are driven by their own sense of justice to act where they perceive the authorities are falling short. They pose a challenge to a model of security governance that relies on clear distinctions between law enforcement and those they protect. They blur the lines between the police and the public and between responsible citizens and dangerous vigilantes. How should the police respond and what role should such groups be given in a democracy?

Big Tech, AI and the Future of Digital Policing

How are new technologies and the big tech industry shaping policing and what does it mean for the relationship between citizens and law enforcement? From live facial recognition, to cutting-edge total surveillance and predictive policing platforms and body worn cameras, new police technology inspires excitement and anxiety alike, provoking active resistance in some communities. And as the big tech industry moves into the market of public security, taking control of police data, questions of transparency, power, and public interest become more pressing. This week we draw on real case studies to examine how police and publics can respond to these challenges.

Policing without prosecuting: prevention, problem-solving and harm-reduction.

The criminal justice system systematically fails to hold people accountable for certain kinds of crimes. But when prosecution of serious and serial perpetrators seems bound to fail, what should police do to keep the public safe? In the UK, less than 1% of reported rapes and only 4.4% of reported domestic abuse crimes are ever prosecuted. In response, police are increasingly reaching for other means to prevent reoffending, resulting in an expansion of what are known as protection orders- measures which restrict the liberty of those deemed dangerous but fall short of a prosecution. From active surveillance to electronic tagging, restrictions on communications and associations, new protection orders for terrorists, sex offenders, stalkers and domestic abusers represent a significant expansion in the use of policing power. Are they a smart way to address persistent offending? Or are they a worrying encroachment of the state into individual freedom, as argued by theorists of ‘preventive justice’?

Law enforcement in transnational contexts: Globalization and crime

The forces of globalization mean that local crimes often have international origins and policing and law enforcement increasingly respond to challenges that transcend national borders and boundaries. This week highlights how globalization has created new challenges for law enforcement agencies seeking to combat issues such as online romance fraud and other kinds of scams, the drug trade, human smuggling and human trafficking. Students will consider the challenges and opportunities for police engaged in joint operations, navigating diverse legal and criminal justice systems, mutual learning and collaboration and the risks and benefits these actions bring.

Policing in the media and popular culture

The enduring public fascination with crime drama, detectives, undercover officers and the dark worlds they police has shaped public understandings of policing as well as policing itself. How have police been represented in the media and popular culture and how has this changed over time? What does this tell us about our vision of the role of police in society? How have police forces seek to shape their representation in the media and tell their own stories and what are they trying to achieve by doing so? This week students will discuss the power, promise, and perils of the media and culture in shaping the relationship between the police and the public.

This module will be delivered via:

• One two-hour seminar per week.

Students are expected to undertake the reading and preparation before classes and be prepared to engage in discussion.