Police in Britain have a wide remit — they are relationship counsellors, playground attendants, debt advisers, dispute invigilators and speaking clocks, called to resolve anything from a flooded street to a neighbour playing music late at night.
In fact it is sometimes difficult to work out exactly where the business of law and order begins and ends (the sociologist Egon Bittner once defined police work as “something that ought not to be happening and about which someone had better do something now”). But for the last decade, amid shrinking budgets, police and government have been worrying about mission creep. Where does proper policing segue into community babysitting?
