POLICING

Policing



Policing

Introduction

The aim of this essay is to explain the causes of the increase in violence and deaths of young people due to guns, knives and gangs and discuss the various policing challenges this presents. The police system of Great Britain is one of the oldest in the world and refers as public and private policing bodies within the United Kingdom. UK police is comprised of a number of large formations, which are formally subordinate to local authorities under the control of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in England and Wales. UK Home Office formulates strategies to combat crime.

'No one's policing their own minds more than an author. You spend a lot of time in your own head analysing what you think about things, and a philosophy comes' (Terry Pratchett ).

The police doctrine is the set of ideas or opinions, ethical precepts, legal and officially accepted concepts which is based on police work, integrating principles of its institutional role, the philosophical and legal law related to Police defence of human rights, law, order and security. Thus, the doctrine precedes and supports the theoretical knowledge and practical concepts on public safety, public and domestic orders. There are many doctrines in relation to the right of police underpinning of Constitutional Law and Administrative Law. The first derives the concepts of rights and freedoms; the second derives the notion of public service. The primary function of the police law is to protect the public, promotion and regulation of human rights, and to encourage the individual freedoms in the preventive function of government to ensure public order (Morgan, 1997, p80-89).

Crime and associated violence is considered as one of the greatest nuisance faced by the society of the United States and United Kingdom. With ever increasing rates of crimes, the regulation of firearms has become a serious debating issue in the government sector. Stricter gun laws can result in lowering the violence rates, has become the common perception and the many studies tend to find the correlation between the prevalence of firearms and the significant rise in the violence rates. According to the proponents of the regulation of guns, increased availability of guns facilitate attacks, robberies, aggression, violence and even fatality. However, an authentic consistent relation between the phenomena of the gun regulation and the lowering of violence rates lacks the evidential support (Greene, 1988, p90-100).

What is 'gun crime' and 'knife crime'?

Young people and 'knife' and 'gun crime' are at the forefront of public attention, and an almost constant focus of the media and policy makers in this country. Yet what exactly do people mean when referring to 'knife' or 'gun crime'? 'Gun crime' and 'knife crime' are not discrete entities, but encompass a variety of unlawful behaviours. Such weapons can in fact be used in actions which fall under a range of offences in the UK legal context, e.g.:

robbery

violence against the person

burglary

sexual offences and domestic violence

criminal damage.

'Gun' and 'knife crime' are therefore an amalgam of different sanctioned ...