Upside down policing

Research in policing nowadays can easily get drawn into what is being called its ‘science’, which is often focusing on technology. Automation for efficiency has always played a role in the development of any industry or profession, and whilst this may now be accelerating because of artificial intelligence (AI), there is still a vital need for strategic research.

The ‘scientific’ advances can surely help with efficiencies, but the hard thinking around the big questions still need attention. It is more than 60 years since policing had a strategic Royal Commission into its purpose and many argue this is evidence that the police mission has not kept up to date with democratic society (Cooper, 2021).

In this sense, bolting on scientifically informed efficiencies without a strategic underpinning of function is flawed. It’s a little like trying to programme your Sat Nav to shave off a few seconds without actually knowing where you’re going.

While the current focus on ‘science’ in policing research is vogue, if we look at policing in the round, the big fundamental questions still need our attention. To illustrate the point this time we take a look at research that is more than 30 years old. Research is about asking questions, ideally the right questions. But then these questions need answering, and those posed by Oxford graduate Professor David Bayley, who many regard as being America’s most preeminent scholar of international policing studies, are interesting ones. Here we take a look at those research questions Professor Bayley posed three decades ago and how they are relevant, and still unanswered, right now.

Professor Bayley’s research (1994) was international, drawing on data from Australia, Britain, Canada, Japan and the US. He started with the challenge to what extent the police actually do anything about preventing crime. His closing remarks were about how policing had a curious approach to where it put its resources, and how, in the future, that ought to be something we think about. Let’s do just that.

The right people in the right place at the right time?

Policing in England and Wales faces a structural crisis driven by long‑term under‑investment, rapid recruitment, and an organisational model that places the least experienced officers at the point of greatest risk.

Evidence from policing and other public services shows that inexperience combined with excessive workloads leads to reduced quality, increased error rates, and high levels of burnout. Current reform proposals emphasise AI as an efficiency tool, but this risks overlooking the deeper issue: the misalignment between where expertise exists and where it is most needed (James, Cox and Carr, 2025).

We explore here the need for a fundamental rebalancing of policing’s skills structure. Drawing on the work of Professor Bayley, consider inverting the current hierarchy so that the most skilled and experienced officers are deployed on the front line, supported by administrative staff rather than replaced by them.

Such a shift would align policing with other high-risk professions, improve public service quality, and strengthen organisational resilience.

The front line is undervalued and under resourced

Recent evidence indicates that the front line is disproportionately staffed by the most junior officers (Jeeves, 2025). This is a consequence of austerity-driven reductions in long‑term funding, rapid recruitment under the Police Uplift Programme (from 2019) and high turnover and limited retention of experienced officers. As a result, officers with limited service experience are routinely tasked with complex, high‑risk duties, often without adequate supervision (Kassem and Erken, 2024).

Inexperience is compounded by workload pressures. Research across sectors – including policing and nursing – shows that the combination of inexperience and overload reduces quality and increases burnout. Sevedzem (2024) highlights this pattern as a systemic issue, not a failure of individual staff.

The Health and Social Care Committee (2026) heard evidence from Professor Nicola Ranger that NHS staff were so ashamed of the quality of care they could provide under pressure that they “could not look patients in the eye”. Similar pressures are evident in policing.

Recent reform proposals emphasise AI as a means of improving efficiency. Investigations into the use of Palantir‑supplied AI (The Guardian, 2026) show potential benefits in accelerating analytical processes and reducing administrative burden. However AI cannot substitute for professional judgment or operational experience, efficiency gains do not address structural skill shortages and technology‑ led reform risks repeating past cycles of structural change without improving service quality.

The lack of a Royal Commission means there is no shared national framework for answering the foundational question: What is policing for? Without this, reform risks being piecemeal and self‑replicating.

The upside-down skills pyramid

Professor Bayley (1994) argued that policing is structurally inverted: the most experienced and highly paid officers are furthest from operational duties. He contrasted this with medicine, where the most skilled practitioners (surgeons) perform the most complex, hands‑on work. This insight remains relevant. Despite facing daily life‑threatening and complex challenges, frontline policing is staffed by those with the least experience. Meanwhile, senior officers are often desk‑bound, removed from operational practice.

Ironically, even medicine faces resource constraints: the British Medical Journal (2023) reported that 56 per cent of surgeons surveyed wished to spend more time operating but were limited by theatre availability. Yet the principle remains: expertise is concentrated where risk is highest. Consequently, unlike the current reform agenda (focusing on top-down boundary changes and administrative centralisation) we could apply the research question posed and consider how actual reform should prioritise quality and capability, not simply structural reorganisation.

More bobbies less bosses would mean frontline constables, sergeants and inspectors held the highest‑paid and most skilled roles, with administrative functions staffed by lower‑paid clerical personnel. Supervision would be more devolved and operationally based. With far more operational officers on duty at any one time, properly invested top class training for the front line would enhance continual professional development and remuneration. Promotion would be based on operational competence, not movement away from frontline duties. The logical continuance of that would be that senior officers would need to apply to become constables, if they wish to progress into the most skilled (and remunerated) operational roles. This would align policing with other high‑risk professions and ensure that the public receives the highest quality service at their point of need. It would also mean people would want to sign up and stay, able to make the operational difference they join up for, properly supported, trained and equipped.

Policing should incentivise the retention of front-line experience where it most needed as part of a long-term strategic approach to the workforce, not just fill shift rosters to plod through the week. Investing and rewarding to keep experience and expertise at the front line will help get service delivery right first time, to reduce failure demand and help avoid situations exposed in the recent Taylor Independent Enquiry in Nottingham. This means designing a skill-based service from the bottom-up to make sure the job gets done on the streets; re-organising Headquarters is hardly on the public’s bucket list.

Police for public service not administrative efficiency

The current reform of policing in England and Wales is very top down, being led by Lord Herbert and Lord Blunket, with Lord Hogan-Howe apparently implementing a pre-decided solution to change boundaries. Inverting the pyramid would mean reform being informed from the bottom up, from what the public want (who pay for policing via tax) and what those who do the job (the front line) know.

Inverting the policing triangle, valuing those who do the job and those who receive the service, over those who administer it could be transformative. It could re‑professionalise frontline policing by valuing it as the most important place in policing, improve retention by investing in operational expertise, reduce the disconnect between leadership and practice and enhance public confidence by ensuring the most experienced officers respond to critical incidents. That would then represent the right people in the right place at the right time.

More bobbies, less bosses

The notion of the tax-paying public wanting to receive a skill that they pay for is hardly rocket science. The thought that the tax payer is remotely interested in how the back office is administrated just reflects being out of touch with the real world: yet to what extent has policing as a profession for some time now being organised administratively often by people with little to no operational policing experience?

We should not be reforming to make an administrator’s life easier but to enable those doing the job to do it better for the public’s sake.

When members of the public attend A&E, they expect to see a doctor, not an administrator. The same principle applies to policing: the public expects skilled, experienced officers at the point of crisis. Investing in policing frontline expertise – supported, not replaced, by technology – would improve investigative quality, reduce error rates, strengthen community trust and enhance resilience in high‑pressure environments.

Professor Bayley is still asking better questions than our current reform programme. We should be informed by a Royal Commission or its strategic equivalent to define the purpose and future structure of policing before we start moving the furniture. We should be developing a skills‑based career framework that rewards operational expertise rather than administrative progression. We should be rebalancing pay structures to reflect the complexity and risk of frontline roles.

We should be challenging unnecessary administrative tasks and prioritise police officers’ time to do what they do best. We should be seeking to use AI strategically, focusing on reducing administrative burden while investing far more in human judgement in operational decision‑making. We should be strengthening supervision and mentoring to support inexperienced officers and reduce burnout, which should include reducing the internal demand caused by over management.

Policing is at a critical juncture. Efficiency‑driven reform centred on AI will not resolve the deeper structural issues affecting quality, capability and public trust. A fundamental reorientation is required; one that places the most skilled officers where they are most needed: on the front line. A solution-oriented approach would start with what would good look in service delivery and then reverse engineer in order to build the structure and skills to deliver that operational quality. Inverting our upside-down policing would modernise the profession, improve service delivery, and align policing with other high‑risk, high‑skill public services. Professor Bayley reminds us that top-down administrative restructure is not the only way to reform an organisation, because there are many merits in building bottom-up operational skills, focused upon delivery of a quality service to the public.

Dr John Coxhead SFHEA, FRSA is Professor of Policing at De Montfort University Business School and Professor of Community Safety at Loughborough University.