TO WHAT EXTENT HAS RISK AVERSION BECOME A DEFINING FEATURE OF OPERATIONAL POLICING IN LATE MODERNITY? ILLUSTRATE YOUR ANSWER WITH ONE OR TWO EXAMPLES OF CONTEMPORARY POLICE PRACTICE?

TO WHAT EXTENT HAS RISK AVERSION BECOME A DEFINING FEATURE OF OPERATIONAL POLICING IN LATE MODERNITY? ILLUSTRATE YOUR ANSWER WITH ONE OR TWO EXAMPLES OF CONTEMPORARY POLICE PRACTICE?


Whatever happened to those Utopian days of leaving your back door unlocked and open for your neighbours to pop in and out whenever the need arose; to walking along a dark urban street to post a letter without fear of the footsteps behind you? What happened to the policing image of Dixon of Dock Green? Do those community ties with the police still exist or are they just a distant memory and the result of changing times? Something has changed society over the last 30 years in particular; that something now makes our homes into fortresses, it makes walking down a dark road no longer appropriate, perhaps we take the car or an additional friend or even security device.

It is questions like these that this essay proposes to address. The essay will not make claim to a precise answer but...