Summary
The author argues that for police services in the UK, Canada, the U.S.A. and Australia, reform is no longer an event, but a way of life. Reform is driven by a variety of factors -- demands for efficiency and effectiveness, a concern about the relationship between police and the communitythey serve, and organised corruption and other abuses of authority -- but it is ongoing because the reforms have been "plagued with unintended consequences". This paper describes the reforms of the past twenty years as a shift from command and control bureaucracy through markets to networks. It argues that many of the unintended consequences stem from the limitations of each of these governing structures. Part 1 describes three models: the Bureaucratic State, the Contract State and the Network State and shows how they have been adapted by police organizations and how the ideas embedded in the models serve as the source of the problems associated with police reform. Part 2 focuses on newtworks, and explores the limits and prospects of cooperative policing.