4 - Visibility and foot patrol

Summary

Introduction

Police visibility has been an important part of rhetoric on law and order for successive governments. Visibility made up a large part of the Labour government's promises as outlined in its 2004 White Paper, Building communities, beating crime. Citizens were promised ‘a more visible, accessible police presence on the streets and in their communities’ (Home Office, 2004a, p8), and it formed a core part of the National Reassurance Policing Programme (NRPP). Even after the 2010 change of government, and the cuts to police budgets that followed, police visibility remained important, at least in principle: Theresa May's 2011 speech to the Conservative Party Conference, which announced the abolition of the single confidence target and insisted that the primary role of the police was ‘cutting crime’, also insisted that the police ‘must remain visible and available to the public’ (May, 2011).

As the last chapter laid out, visibility appears to be a key component in creating and sustaining public confidence in the police, although it may not be able to do this alone. Visibility appears to be part of a range of police activities that support confidence through reassuring the public that their neighbourhoods are safe and secure, and that this local order will be defended by the authorities; it is part of a kind of policing that reassures people that they matter, and they belong.

This chapter begins by looking at the enduring popularity of visible policing, and particularly of foot patrol, and the place in British culture of the ‘bobby on the beat’. It does this by looking at the evidence that shows foot patrol to be more effective in supporting confidence than patrol in vehicles, and explaining this – and the seemingly endless demand for foot patrol – in the context of what it symbolises to the public.

We then examine research around the capacity of foot patrol to fight crime and disorder – in particular, the increasing evidence that targeted foot patrol can lead to small but significant reductions in crime in ‘hot spots’. The chapter also looks at the importance of what the police do in these patrols, underlining the potential dangers of taking a purely law enforcement approach.

A broader idea of what visibility means also allows us to consider it in terms of the value of accessible and familiar policing to communities.