Reimagining policing

The thread that runs through all three papers is a consistent commitment to the proposition that legitimacy and operational effectiveness are not in tension — that the constraints imposed by consent, accountability, and the rule of law are not obstacles to effective policing but conditions of it. Policing institutions that enjoy genuine public trust can do things that institutions operating under suspicion cannot: they can obtain voluntary cooperation, share information across agencies, deploy new capabilities with community support, and maintain the legitimacy that sustains their authority through crises. The investment in good governance of digital policing is therefore not a cost to be minimised but a return to be cultivated.