1
The McDonaldization of British Policing
Dr Richard Heslop, Police Sergeant, UK 1
Paper presented to the Police Federation of England Wales Seminar on Police
Professionalisation, Leatherhead UK, 23 to 25 February 2011
Introduction
In recent years the police service of England and Wales has been subject to a relentless
process of centrally driven ‘reform’ and workforce ‘modernisation’ in which the ideas of
reform, modernisation, performance and professionalisation are indivisible. Reform of
the police, according to HMIC (2004:29), ‘represents a major attempt to modernise the
service and raise performance….Modernising the police workforce is about making the
service more professional’.
This paper, however, is concerned with a paradox about police reform,
modernisation and professionalisation. Whilst some aspects of modernisation and
reform have led to a pluralized workforce with specialist skills, other aspects of that
agenda are leading towards the ‘de-professionalisation’ of the police (Jones 2010). This,
it will be argued, particularly applies to warranted officers, who as well as experiencing
limits placed on their discretion (Rowe 2007), have, at times, been ‘micro-managed’
(Newburn 2008, Reiner 2010) and become ‘deskilled’ (Berry 2007).
More theoretically, the article draws on George Ritzer’s (1993, 2004)
‘McDonaldization’ thesis. The McDonaldization thesis is based on Max Weber’s (1921)
ideas on bureaucracy, which are embedded in his broader theory of the rationalization
process. Weber conceptualised bureaucracy as the organisational form that maximized
the influence of rationality on individual and group behaviors, and which allowed
organisations to complete a large number of tasks in a highly efficient and predictable
manner. While bureaucracy, in Weber’s view epitomised rationalisation in the 19th and
1
Dr Richard Heslop is a Sergeant in the British police, though the views expressed in this paper are his
own. Correspondence to r.heslop@tiscali.co.uk
2
early 20th centuries, for Ritzer, the present day exemplar par excellence of this trend is
the popular fast food chain McDonalds: and Ritzer’s neologism of the term
McDonaldization captures this trend. Ritzer’s central thesis is that McDonaldization is a
pervasive process, affecting not only the fast food industry but also many other sectors
of society including the education and criminal justice systems (Ritzer 2004). In an
organisational context McDonaldization can be thought of as being the opposite of
professionalisation and in this paper I argue that policing is increasingly becoming
McDonaldized.
Police reform and modernization
The McDonaldization of policing needs to seen in the context of a broad set of
government led reforms aimed at reforming and ‘modernising’ the police. Principle
dimensions of reform and modernisation have included: (1) changes in police
governance leading to increased centralisation and control; (2) greater pluralisation of
the policing function, specifically but not exclusively, under the concept of the ‘extended
policing family’ (McLaughlin & Murji 1995, Carlisle & Loveday 2007, Crawford 2008,
Reiner 2010) and; (3) the embedding into the police organisation of new public
management principles.
New public management and McDonaldization
New public management and McDonaldization share many common features (Wilkinson
2006). In brief, new public management is characterized by the application to the public
sector of business management thinking, performance and resource management,
internal competition and the recruitment and deployment of ‘professional managers’ individuals supposedly possessed of ‘generic’ leadership and management skills (Pollitt
2002, 2003). The extent to which new public management thinking has penetrated the
modern police service has been well documented by policing scholars (Carlisle &
Loveday 2007, McLaughlin 2007, Savage 2007, Reiner 2010). However, what has not
previously been recognised is the way that new public management and other police
reforms have coalesced to bring about the McDonaldization of policing.
3
McDonaldization
In 1993, the sociologist George Ritzer neologised the term McDonaldization to
characterise the highly controlled, bureaucratic and dehumanized nature of
contemporary, particularly American, social life. In his own words it is ‘the
[bureaucratic] process by which the principles of the fast-food restaurant are coming to
dominate more and more sectors of American society as well as the rest of the world’
(Ritzer 2004: 1). As such, the theory is not specific to the analysis of the fast-food
industry but is a more general theory of social and organisational change.
Consequently,
Ritzer’s thesis has become influential and the concept of
McDonaldization has been used to depict developments in a variety of different social
institutions including schools (Wilkinson 2006), higher education (Hartley 1995) and
even religion (Drane 2001). However, to date the concept of McDonaldization has only
rarely been employed in the analysis of criminal justice issues (see, for example, Bohm
2006) and not at all within the context of British policing.
According to Ritzer, McDonaldized institutions operate in accordance with four
main principles: calculability, efficiency, control and predictability. Taken together these
four factors can be understood as the basic components of a rational system and have
undoubtedly led to benefits for organisations and customers alike, hence the spread of
the phenomenon. However, the main problem with McDonaldized systems and a fifth
characteristic of the process is the production of irrationalities (or what Ritzer terms the
‘irrationality of rationality’) which threaten to undo its four central principles. A primary
purpose of the following sections is to highlight some of the irrationalities of McPolicing.
Calculability
Let us begin with calculability. Ritzer suggests that calculability – the emphasis on
counting and quantifying – is the linchpin that supports all the other aspects of
McDonaldization. In fast-food restaurants everything is measured precisely: so many
burgers have to come from a kilogram of meat, the French-fries must be of a certain
thickness and the bags must never be too full or too empty. It is easy to see how
4
seemingly neutral measures, meant to ensure standardization, eventually lead to the
reduction of the processes of production to a game of numbers.
It has been well documented how, in recent years, the police in being subjected
to increased public scrutiny and as part of the ‘performance’ strand of new public
management, have become obsessed with quantifying (Carlisle & Loveday 2007) and
everything from crime rates, to public confidence and more latterly ‘value for money’ 2
are constantly measured. Whilst some improvements have been observed, ultimately
bureaucratic chaos (Berry 2009) and other unintended consequences have resulted
(Carlisle & Loveday 2007).
Much of this has been driven by central target setters,
particularly the Home Office, and aided and abetted by bodies such as HMIC who
thereafter monitor performance under what the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ 2009)
termed the ‘police inspection industry’. For Carlisle & Loveday (ibid: 18) this
preoccupation with calculability ‘represents a return to the Taylorian values of the
industrial past’ and has even led to what they term the ‘sovietisation’ of police work.
Whilst the type and range of performance targets come and go, it is the extent to which
the ‘counting culture’ has been embedded into British policing which is signalled here.
The newest generation of police employees, those recruited in the last decade or so,
have experienced little else than the quantitative performance target regime, which has
become the main method of evaluating success (CSJ 2009).
Of course, it is not only recent police employees who have been socialised into
the counting culture. Police leadership in Britain has long been the focus of criticism and
this has been used to legitimatise programmes of central intervention and reform
(Golding & Savage 2008, Reiner 2010). Though paradoxically, it can be argued that
aspects of reform of the police have led to the ‘demise’ of police leadership as the
function of the leader is reduced to that of managing the attainment of centrally set
goals (Carlisle & Loveday 2007).
2
See HMIC ‘Report Card’ at http://www.hmic.gov.uk/Pages/home.aspx .Accessed 22/06/2011.
5
Efficiency
The second principle is efficiency, or the optimum method of getting from one point to
another for the lowest cost. Knowing the way McDonald's and a growing number of
other businesses operate, it is hardly necessary to expand on this. In the fast-food
industry efficiency is imperative as the term ‘fast’ implies and each and every process of
the business is organized to ensure that everything happens at the right time and the
right place. To the degree that incidents/cases move through the myriad specialist
departments of the police organization (HMIC 2010) like an ‘assembly-line’, aspects of
modern policing practice are not unlike a fast-food production line.
Also under threat of extinction is the ‘omnicompetent’ police officer (Jones
2010) who historically would, and importantly could, deal with most incidents from start
to finish. In the recent inspection report Valuing the Police, HMIC (2010) explained how
in a single burglary investigation, from the point of reporting through to suspect arrest ,
charge and court appearance there were at least 30 different people involved in the
investigative, administrative and preparation process. Whilst this approach might work
for the production of widgets, in the context of a public service organization it is more
likely to produce the following irrationalities. First, as HMIC noted, the recent growth of
specialist units has, in many places, led to a reduction in the number of warranted
officers available to the public. Second, police effectiveness can also be undermined by
the potential lack of ‘ownership’ of cases. Put differently, if 30 individuals are involved in
a burglary investigation then whose case is it? The omnipotent officer was not only
omnicompetent in terms of their skill base, but they were also usually the single point of
contact (SPOC) for a member of the public. This leads on to the third potential problem,
that skills are easy to lose and difficult to regain. Unsurprisingly then, Jan Berry, the
former Chair of the Police Federation and special government advisor on police
bureaucracy has argued that the entire police service had been ‘systematically
deskilled’. 3
3
Key note speech delivered to the 2007 Annual Police Federation Conference.
6
Predictability
Predictability is tied to the imposition of ‘discipline, order, systematisation,
formalisation, routine, consistency and methodological operation’ (Ritzer 1993: 83). It is
apparent that predictability is closely tied to the dimension of calculability. In fast-food
restaurants, the food, as well as being fast, is absolutely standard and predictable. For
consumers, predictability provides peace of mind (Ritzer, 2004).
For the most part, members of the British public expect their expect
bureaucracies and institutions to operate smoothly, predictably, and in accordance with
certain standardized rules and procedures. These bureaucracies and institutions include
insurance companies, banks and the police. Of course, in many ways police work is far
from predictable (Waddington 1999), though in order to attempt to achieve
predictability the police service has, for many years, sought to standardize procedures,
services, and administrative techniques. It is contended, however, that in the last two
decades with the introduction of new public management thinking, far greater emphasis
has been placed on these areas and once again this has produced irrationalities. Not
least are the well documented concerns that the police service is becoming ever more
bureaucratic and risk averse (Flanagan 2008, Berry 2009). Recently HMIC criticised
police leaders for producing ‘industrial quantities’ of guidance documents.
4
However,
was this a case of the kettle calling the pot black? As suggested earlier, examined in a
wider political context HMIC is a key player in the ‘police inspection industry’ which is
itself part of what Power (1997) termed the ‘audit society’. In terms of policing and
bureaucracy, it may well be that HMIC are part of the problem (CSJ 2009).
Control
Predictability also clearly overlaps with the fourth dimension of McDonaldization:
control, which means that many aspects of production and consumptions are governed
by strict rules and an emphasis on one way of doing things. According to Ritzer
(2004:15), ‘the people who work in McDonaldized organisations are also controlled to a
4
Sir Dennis O’Connor, HM Chief Inspector of Constabulary, speech to the APA-ACPO Conference 1 July
2010.
7
high degree…They are trained to do a limited number of things in precisely the way they
are told to do them’.
With its emphasis on hierarchical power relations, delegation, rules and
regulations the police service is in many ways a classic bureaucracy. However, this has
been tempered by the fact that police officers have traditionally operated with a high
degree of discretion. This is a staple of many of the classic ethnographic studies of police
work (see, for example, Banton 1964, Manning 1977) and Waddington (1999: 38) even
went as far to suggest that the elimination of police discretion is
‘virtually
unimaginable’. Although there is still much that we can learn from a reading of the
classic policing literature (Loftus 2009), the received account of extensive police
discretion has not been empirically verified recently. Indeed, whilst it would be an
overstatement to argue that the unimaginable has happened, there is evidence to
suggest that officers are increasing being ‘micro-managed’ (Newburn 2008, Reiner
2010) and as such, police discretion is being limited (Rowe 2007, Flanagan 2008, Berry
2009).
The irrationality of rationality
Finally then, as indicated above, Ritzer identified advantages to McDonaldization,
without which the phenomena would not have become so widespread. It has made
McDonaldized intuitions bureaucratic and rational in a Weberian sense and has also
made them more profitable. However, rational systems inevitably spawn irrational
consequences and, as Ritzer states, ‘paradoxically, the irrationality of rationality can be
thought of as the fifth dimension of McDonaldization’ (2004: 17). In the case of the fastfood industry, irrationalities include environmental degradation, waste, as well as long
queues in restaurants. McDonaldized institutions can be inefficient because of excess
bureaucracy and other problems (ibid p 27). They can produce poor quality work and a
decline in employee effort because of the emphasis on quantification. Indeed, irrational
systems mirror the four dimensions of the rational systems (i.e. they are inefficient,
unpredictable, not subject to calculation, or control).
8
Conclusion and discussion
The British police service remains a politicised bureaucracy and, as such, the study of
the police institution has to be situated within a broader framework of political
economy (Reiner 2010). Like many other public sector institutions, the police service
has, in recent years, been subject to significant government led reform and
modernization, a key feature of which has witnessed the introduction into policing of
new public management techniques. The purpose here has been to use Ritzer’s concept
of McDonaldization as a further heuristic device to examine developments in
contemporary British policing. The introduction of the new public management has
resulted in the police service increasingly becoming McDonaldized with a
disproportionate stress on narrowly-defined efficiency, an obsession with calculability
and measurement and the power of the controlling mechanisms needed for imposition
and enforcement. This has brought with it a number of unintended consequences or
‘irrationalities’ including an increase in bureaucracy, a reduction in police discretion and
deskilling. As such, rather than leading towards increased professionalisation this has
arguably brought about ‘de-professionalisation’.
Neyroud review of leadership and training
However, with the election in 2010 of a Conservative led coalition government in Britain
there have been tentative signs that things could be moving in a different direction.
According to the Home Office (2010: 19), it is now the intention to ‘…free the police
from central control by removing government targets …reducing bureaucracy and
supporting professional responsibility’. Moreover, in August 2010 Peter Neyroud,
former Chief Executive of the National Policing Improvements Agency (NPIA) was
commissioned by the Home Office to conduct a fundamental review of police leadership
and training in the UK and his subsequent report was published in April 2011 (Neyroud
2011). Looked at from one perspective the Neyroud Report is merely the latest in a long
list of externally driven initiatives aimed at professionalising policing Home Office 2004,
HMIC 2004). However, Peter Neyroud is a respected former Chief Constable and his
report contains genuinely radical recommendations to move policing ‘from being a
9
service that acts professionally to becoming a professional service’ (ibid, p 11). To
achieve this, Neyroud places significant emphasis on new institutional arrangements
(i.e. the formation of a chartered ‘Police Professional Body,’ led by ACPO), together with
radical changes to police training and education. Perhaps most importantly, the
recommendation for policing to become a ‘chartered profession’ provides a potential
platform for the service to develop its own and much needed internal and coherent
overarching philosophy (Heslop 2010). Having, in recent years, become more
McDonaldized than professionalised, this could be the first step in reversing this
process. Though of course, it remains to be seen whether or not this will be achieved.
References
.
Banton, M., (1964). The Policeman in the Community, London, Tavistock.
Berry, J., (2009). Reducing Bureaucracy in policing, London, Home Office.
Bohm, R., M, (2006). “McJustice”: On the McDonaldization of Criminal Justice”. Justice
Quarterly, 23, 127-146.
Carlisle, P. & Loveday, B., (2007). “Performance Management and the Demise of
Leadership”. The International Journal of Leadership in Public Services, 3, 18-26.
Crawford, A., (2008). “Plural policing in the UK: policing beyond the police”. In Newburn,
T . (Ed.) Handbook of Policing. 2nd edition. Uffculme, Willan.
(CSJ) Centre for Social Justice, (2009). A Force to be Reckoned With, London, CSJ,
London.
Drane, J., (2001). The McDonaldization of the Church, London, Darton, Longman & Todd.
Flanagan, R., (2008). The Review of Policing: Final Report, London, Home Office.
Golding, B. & Savage, S., (2008). Leadership and Performance Management. In
Newburn, T. (Ed.) Handbook of Policing. 2nd edition. Uffculme, Willan.
Hartley, D., (1995). “The McDonaldization of Higher Education: food for thought?”
Oxford Review of Education, 21, 409-423.
10
(HMIC) Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary, (2004). Modernising the Police
Service: A Thematic Inspection of Workforce Modernisation-The Role,
Management and Deployment of Police Staff in the Police Service of England and
Wales, London, HMIC.
(HMIC) Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary, (2010). Valuing the Police, London,
HMIC.
Heslop, R., (2010). ‘Modern Professionals’. Police Review, 29 October 2010, 26-27.
Home Office, (2004). Building Communities Beating Crime (Government Paper), London,
Home Office.
Home Office, (2010). Policing in the 21st Century: reconnecting police and the people,
London, Home Office.
Johnson, T., (1972). Professions and Power, London, Macmillan.
Jones, A., (2010). The Professionals. Police, 11 May 2010.
Loftus, B., (2009). Police Culture in a Changing World, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Manning, P., K, (1977). Police Work, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press.
McLaughlin, E., (2007). The New Policing, London, Sage.
McLaughlin, E. & Murji, K., (1995). The End of Public Policing: Police Reform and The
New Managerialism. In Noaks, L., Levi, L. & Maguire, M. (Eds.) Contemporary
issues in Criminology. Cardiff, Cardiff University Press.
Newburn, T., (2008). Introduction: understanding policing. In Newburn, T. (Ed.)
Handbook of Policing. 2nd edition. Uffculme, Willan.
Pollitt, C., (Ed.) (2002). The New Public Management in International Perspective: an
Alysis of Impacts and Effects, London, Routledge.
Pollitt, C., (2003). Managerialism and the Public Services, Oxford, Blackwell.
Power, M., (1997). The Audit Society: Rituals of Verification, Oxford, Oxford University
Press.
Reiner, R., (2010). The Politics of the Police, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Ritzer, G., (1993). The McDonaldization of Society, Thousand Oaks, Pine Forge Press.
11
Ritzer, G., (2004). The McDonaldization of Society: Revised New Century Edition, London,
Sage.
Rowe, M., (2007). “Rendering Visible the invisible: Police Discretion, Professionalism and
Decision-making”. Policing and Society, 17, 279-294.
Savage, S., (2007). Police Reform: Forces for Change, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Weber, M., (1921). Economy and Society, Totowa, New Jersey, Bedminster.
Waddington, P., A ,J, (1999). Policing Citizens, London, UCL Press.
Wilkinson, G., (2006). “McSchools for McWorld? Mediating global pressures with a
McDonaldizing education policy response”. Cambridge Journal of Education, 36,
81-98.