Introduction

This exploration into the policing brain begins with taking stock of the world in which we find ourselves in the 2020s. As there are calls on everyone's resilience, so are there calls on the resilience of emergency responders, police officers, police staff and those who share their lives with them. Some challenges we all share, and some are unique to our own jobs and the ways we have adapted to them. The opening chapter looks at the obvious environmental influences on contemporary policing from the wider social and political sphere of criminality and social care. Crucial findings from socio-psychological research show how we interpret these wider influences and how they translate into our perceptions of everyday policing – and how the emerging discipline of ‘police wellbeing’ addresses them. Finally, we introduce some initial glimpses of what makes a ‘policing mind’, supported by the latest developments in neuroscience. In doing so we open to a new way of perceiving police resilience – from the inside, out.

The times we are in

The 2020s began with a year when the phrase ‘unprecedented times’ tripped off the tongue of every social and political commentator, and the police service was not immune to the infectious sense of instability that COVID-19 brought with it. The nation's latent anxiety was palpable, intensified by months of disparate attempts by governments and scientists the world over to gain any grip on what was needed to keep the public safe.

So, what might this have meant for the policing brain? At home in the UK, serving police had their own version of events. Increases in domestic violence and attendance to sudden deaths brought with them relentless exposure to the suffering of the vulnerable, worsened by forces feeling under-resourced and ill-prepared and in addition to officers’ personal worries of contaminating their family's safe space at home. Resilience specialists have highlighted that some individuals may be more vulnerable to the impact of the pandemic than others due to their underlying issues and professional histories.