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Helena Kennedy QC, with Police Assistant Commissioner Rob Beckley, explores our expectations of policing today and changing ideas of safety - in public, in private and online.

Can the police keep us safe? It’s argued policing has never been good at dealing with crime after the event and struggles now under the weight of increasing expectations. Definitions of harm have widened hugely in recent years and, with this, come more complicated ideas of what safety means to communities.

In the final part of this series, Helena and Rob investigate the realm of online and cyber crime, which poses huge difficulties for policing. They explore the police’s role in public order and how the idea of the prevention of harms - responsibility and care within communities rather than reactive policing - might transform public safety.

With public trust in the police shaken by a series of high-profile scandals - the 2021 murder of Sarah Everard by a serving police officer and forces such as the Metropolitan Police and Greater Manchester Police now in special measures - is the social contract between police and public corroding? Did it ever exist for some sections of the public? Robert Peel once wrote ‘the police are the public, and the public are the police’– a formula at the heart of policing by consent. But the UK has different publics, andmultiple communities, which are policed differently. Certainly some communities feel safer around the police than others.

Talking to all ranks of the police across the UK, and to criminologists and critics, Helena and Rob consider what we expect from the police now - is it too much, can they really deliver? - and what is the primary purpose of the police today? Over the course of the series they ask if this is the moment for a new kind of social contract between public and police, where other institutions, both public and private - as well as citizens themselves – take more responsibility for safety and care in our communities, independent of policing.

Contributors in this episode include: Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary Andy Cooke, Deputy Chief Constable Maggie Blythe, criminologist Patrick Williams, active bystander trainer Graham Goulden, writer and urbanist Adam Greenfield, independent chair of the oversight board for the 2022 Police Race Action Plan Abimbola Johnson, NPCC coordinator for cyber and fraud Pete O’Doherty, criminologist and author of The End of Policing Alex Vitale, Director of the Police Foundation Rick Muir, author and advisor to government on crime prevention Tom Gash and DI Upile Mtitimila, Cheshire Constabulary.

Presented by Helena Kennedy QC with Police Assistant Commissioner Rob Beckley
Produced by Simon Hollis

A Brook Lapping production for Â鶹ԼÅÄ Radio 4

This series is dedicated to the late Roger Graef, criminologist and documentary maker

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