Policing in a Time of Austerity: Understanding the Public Protection Paradox through Qualitative Interviews with Police Monitoring Officers

This article examines the changing nature of public protection police work in a climate of continued austerity and increasing prosecutions for sexual offending, which have impacted significantly on the workloads of police teams who manage and monitor registered sexual offenders in the community. This increase has run parallel to a decrease in the general policing budget, which has seen it cut by an average of 22% across England and Wales (BBC, 2017). Utilising data from observations and in-depth qualitative interviews with police officers from a force in England, this article highlights the effect which cost saving measures have had on the professional standards of the police service in the management of sex offenders; how collaborative working practices have been hindered by these austerity measures, and finally how continual cuts have had a detrimental effect on the police’s ability to protect the public.