Working Together: Governing and Advising the Police

Abstract

Drawing on the ideas of critical friendship and the ladder of participation, this article seeks to characterise and comprehend both statutory and voluntary working relationships the police are involved in. These ideas are widely used and their usefulness and limits are explored through a focus on community engagement and independent advisory groups (IAGs), and governance through a police authority. These two cases reveal that various ‘steps' on the ladder can be applied and that critical friends can play various roles but that there are also numerous complications around that. One of these is applying critical friendship to groups ‘inside’ and outside’ the police. While there is a lack of information about the content of critical friendly advice and no way of assessing its impact, this article concludes that the term is of some value for what it suggests about what makes for more effective critical friendship.