A conference on "police museums and strategic engagement" takes place at the Royal New Zealand Police College next month.
It will consider how police museums can strengthen their community relations, a seemingly unremarkable subject that appears to be just another example of museums becoming more visitor-focused. But in the case of police museums this is not straightforward.
The Metropolitan Police's Crime Museum, which has been based at New Scotland Yard in London since 1874, highlights how this type of museum is often still very inward looking. The collection began after a law was passed enabling the police to keep prisoners' property for "instructional purposes".
It still has this function today. Its current curator, retired detective Alan McCormick, says that one task of the Crime Museum is to teach officers "about the weapons they may encounter on the street". This accounts for the frightening array of concealed guns and knives that were once used by criminals, but are now on display.
The Crime Museum was revamped in July 2006. McCormick explains that this was prompted by the realisation that the museum "had lost its focus as a learning resource". He argues that, instead of being "somewhere people just come to gawp", it is "now a place where officers really learn lessons from past crimes".
The temptation to gawp must be immense when one is standing in front of the cooker that the serial killer Dennis Nilsen once used to dispose of his many victims. If the detective writer PD James is correct to describe murder as "a contaminating crime", what might happen if the public were given unfettered access to such attractions?
We are unlikely to find out. Access to the Crime Museum is restricted to serving police officers and members of the judiciary. Even so, it is not true to say that the public are completely forbidden from visiting it.
The number of people permitted on the restricted tours that occur every month must run into thousands. And objects from the Crime Museum are allowed to leave Scotland Yard, as happened last September when Barnet and Golders Green police stations held an open weekend.
This event was intended to give the public a chance to see around the police stations and look at objects from the Crime Museum.
This example shows that expanding public access need not necessarily be to the detriment of the Crime Museum's primary teaching role. A comparison could be drawn with the Wellcome Museum of Anatomy and Pathology at the Royal College of Surgeons of England.
This is only accessible to practitioners and students of medicine. But the associated Hunterian Museum is open to the public.
An attempt to provide something similar around the theme of policing occurred a little over a decade ago. In 1997, a PFI scheme was initiated by the Metropolitan Police with the aim of converting the former Bow Street police station in Covent Garden into a visitor attraction.
Called The Beat, it was to provide a neutral arena for discussion of policing practice and related issues. It never happened.
The long, complicated and ultimately unsuccessful story of this venture is told by the former leader of the private consortium, Andrew Thorburn, in his book, The Missing Museum.
The exact reasons why the police decided to pull out of the project in 2003 remain unclear. But the fact that the apparently offputting words "police" and "museum" were to be omitted from the title make it plain that any attempt to address contemporary policing in an entirely neutral and unbiased way is a far from easy task.
Balancing act
This is especially true when the police themselves are the main backers of the museum. Are such institutions able to be critical and ask difficult questions?
Recent events in Sweden suggest not. In October a new national police museum opened in Stockholm. It draws on a collection of some 10,000 objects, several hundred of which are arranged into a series of exhibitions showing how the image of policing has changed over time, be it in terms of uniform or media representation.
Methods of crime detection are also addressed, including a temporary exhibition about crime and the internet. An important target audience is children and young adults.
Reviews in both of Sweden's main newspapers drew attention to the fact that the museum was in effect an extension of the police's information department.
The displays were criticised for avoiding controversial issues. That there is no mention of Säpo (the security police) was pointed out by Eva Bäckstedt writing in Svenska Dagbladet.
She also notes that, while the Gothenburg riots of 2001 were addressed, nowhere was it mentioned that the police shot and wounded one of the protestors.
Bäckstedt concluded that, if the museum wishes to become more than just a resource for the police themselves, it must be prepared to "ask those really controversial questions".
Like in Sweden, the New Zealand Police Museum is a department of the police. Its manager, Kamaya Yates, argues that, even though the police are her "sole source of income and support", that does not stop the museum from being "critical of what the police have done or do".
She uses her museum's account of the controversial Springbok rugby tour of 1981 to illustrate this point. It juxtaposes two differing views of the resulting protest.
One is from the grateful South Africans thanking the police for their work; the other is from a protest leader thanking the police for inflicting so many injuries.
For Yates, this shows that the museum's association with the police provides "a greater opportunity to provide a context for people to understand how such things happened".
Another person who appreciates the importance of providing an impartial view of policing is Laurie Baty, the senior director at the National Law Enforcement Museum (NLEM) in Washington, DC.
It will be interesting to see if she succeeds once the museum opens in 2011. Its account of the Rodney King riots that took place in Los Angeles will provide one gauge of the museum's success.
The NLEM must also present a national story. Baty points out that this can only work by emphasising trends in policing, thereby restricting the number of local stories that can be told.
It will be a hard task, according to Baty: policing the US involves 18,000 agencies, each with their own laws to enforce, their own jurisdictions, and their own culture.
Funding
The NLEM draws attention to the distinctions between the overall national picture and the situation at the regional level. The latter can only be properly addressed by either constabulary museums, local authority museums or museum trusts.
In Britain, an interesting example of the latter is the Prison and Police Museum run by Ripon Museum Trust. Opened in 1984, it places the story of policing in the Yorkshire region within the national context.
The objects on display came originally from the collections of the North and West Yorkshire Police as well as Humberside Police. The trust is independent, although the chief constables of the four forces in the area are patrons.
The vice-president of Ripon Museum Trust is the retired police officer Ralph Lindley. He is convinced of the need to tell the story of policing through museums and describes the absence of a national police museum as "an absolute disgrace".
Lindley argues that "the museum profession finds the history of policing interesting but mystifying as well". And even those local museums with police-related collections look on them "as being of only nominal interest".
When it comes to constabulary museums, two factors emerge: first, a severe lack of financial resources and, second, the problem of permitting public access to police buildings.
The collection at Devon and Cornwall Constabulary provides a good example of the challenges - and potential - of such a resource. The 15,000-strong collection of artefacts, photographs and library was begun informally by a retired police officer and bequeathed to a not-very-enthusiastic constabulary.
It remained neglected in poor storage conditions until 2004 and the appointment of Angela Sutton-Vane as collections officer. She is candid about the challenges she faces. Her job would not exist without the support of the chief constable.
Only by becoming more financially self-supporting would she succeed in her goal of "looking at policing in a more intellectual and exploratory light".
Yet Sutton-Vane shows that, despite the many difficulties, there is a great deal to be optimistic about. She has rebranded the collection as a heritage and learning resource, attracted money from the Heritage Lottery Fund, employed an education officer, set up a website and initiated school outreach projects dealing with policing and citizenship.
This shows that, with the right leadership, these issues can be addressed. The recently accredited Essex Police Museum in Chelmsford confirms this. It now attracts more than 6,000 visitors a year and offers free support for the teaching of history and citizenship at key stages 1 and 2.
An even greater success story is the NCCL Galleries of Justice in Nottingham. For over a decade it has successfully addressed issues of citizenship and the law - for which it was awarded the Gulbenkian Prize for Museums in 2003.
Its many activities include mock trials, outreach work with children at risk of offending, and assisting the teaching of citizenship in schools.
The museum would be the perfect model for any national police museum. Yet it is revealing that the one gallery that is no longer part of the regular museum tour is Policing Today.
Set in a police station, it was an issue-based gallery in which the problems facing the police today were explored through images, objects and provocative questions.
The museum wishes to continue this important work, but has decided to hand it over to partners such as the Youth Offending Team and the Youth Justice Board. They will use the displays to work with specific, invited groups.
When it comes to the question of policing today, it is clear that the traditional approach of an exhibition open to self-guided museum visitors does not work.
It will be interesting to see if the delegates gathering next month in New Zealand agree. And, if so, what implications has this for police museums in the future?
Stuart Burch is a lecturer in museum studies at Nottingham Trent University
It will consider how police museums can strengthen their community relations, a seemingly unremarkable subject that appears to be just another example of museums becoming more visitor-focused. But in the case of police museums this is not straightforward.
The Metropolitan Police's Crime Museum, which has been based at New Scotland Yard in London since 1874, highlights how this type of museum is often still very inward looking. The collection began after a law was passed enabling the police to keep prisoners' property for "instructional purposes".
It still has this function today. Its current curator, retired detective Alan McCormick, says that one task of the Crime Museum is to teach officers "about the weapons they may encounter on the street". This accounts for the frightening array of concealed guns and knives that were once used by criminals, but are now on display.
The Crime Museum was revamped in July 2006. McCormick explains that this was prompted by the realisation that the museum "had lost its focus as a learning resource". He argues that, instead of being "somewhere people just come to gawp", it is "now a place where officers really learn lessons from past crimes".
The temptation to gawp must be immense when one is standing in front of the cooker that the serial killer Dennis Nilsen once used to dispose of his many victims. If the detective writer PD James is correct to describe murder as "a contaminating crime", what might happen if the public were given unfettered access to such attractions?
We are unlikely to find out. Access to the Crime Museum is restricted to serving police officers and members of the judiciary. Even so, it is not true to say that the public are completely forbidden from visiting it.
The number of people permitted on the restricted tours that occur every month must run into thousands. And objects from the Crime Museum are allowed to leave Scotland Yard, as happened last September when Barnet and Golders Green police stations held an open weekend.
This event was intended to give the public a chance to see around the police stations and look at objects from the Crime Museum.
This example shows that expanding public access need not necessarily be to the detriment of the Crime Museum's primary teaching role. A comparison could be drawn with the Wellcome Museum of Anatomy and Pathology at the Royal College of Surgeons of England.
This is only accessible to practitioners and students of medicine. But the associated Hunterian Museum is open to the public.
An attempt to provide something similar around the theme of policing occurred a little over a decade ago. In 1997, a PFI scheme was initiated by the Metropolitan Police with the aim of converting the former Bow Street police station in Covent Garden into a visitor attraction.
Called The Beat, it was to provide a neutral arena for discussion of policing practice and related issues. It never happened.
The long, complicated and ultimately unsuccessful story of this venture is told by the former leader of the private consortium, Andrew Thorburn, in his book, The Missing Museum.
The exact reasons why the police decided to pull out of the project in 2003 remain unclear. But the fact that the apparently offputting words "police" and "museum" were to be omitted from the title make it plain that any attempt to address contemporary policing in an entirely neutral and unbiased way is a far from easy task.
Balancing act
This is especially true when the police themselves are the main backers of the museum. Are such institutions able to be critical and ask difficult questions?
Recent events in Sweden suggest not. In October a new national police museum opened in Stockholm. It draws on a collection of some 10,000 objects, several hundred of which are arranged into a series of exhibitions showing how the image of policing has changed over time, be it in terms of uniform or media representation.
Methods of crime detection are also addressed, including a temporary exhibition about crime and the internet. An important target audience is children and young adults.
Reviews in both of Sweden's main newspapers drew attention to the fact that the museum was in effect an extension of the police's information department.
The displays were criticised for avoiding controversial issues. That there is no mention of Säpo (the security police) was pointed out by Eva Bäckstedt writing in Svenska Dagbladet.
She also notes that, while the Gothenburg riots of 2001 were addressed, nowhere was it mentioned that the police shot and wounded one of the protestors.
Bäckstedt concluded that, if the museum wishes to become more than just a resource for the police themselves, it must be prepared to "ask those really controversial questions".
Like in Sweden, the New Zealand Police Museum is a department of the police. Its manager, Kamaya Yates, argues that, even though the police are her "sole source of income and support", that does not stop the museum from being "critical of what the police have done or do".
She uses her museum's account of the controversial Springbok rugby tour of 1981 to illustrate this point. It juxtaposes two differing views of the resulting protest.
One is from the grateful South Africans thanking the police for their work; the other is from a protest leader thanking the police for inflicting so many injuries.
For Yates, this shows that the museum's association with the police provides "a greater opportunity to provide a context for people to understand how such things happened".
Another person who appreciates the importance of providing an impartial view of policing is Laurie Baty, the senior director at the National Law Enforcement Museum (NLEM) in Washington, DC.
It will be interesting to see if she succeeds once the museum opens in 2011. Its account of the Rodney King riots that took place in Los Angeles will provide one gauge of the museum's success.
The NLEM must also present a national story. Baty points out that this can only work by emphasising trends in policing, thereby restricting the number of local stories that can be told.
It will be a hard task, according to Baty: policing the US involves 18,000 agencies, each with their own laws to enforce, their own jurisdictions, and their own culture.
Funding
The NLEM draws attention to the distinctions between the overall national picture and the situation at the regional level. The latter can only be properly addressed by either constabulary museums, local authority museums or museum trusts.
In Britain, an interesting example of the latter is the Prison and Police Museum run by Ripon Museum Trust. Opened in 1984, it places the story of policing in the Yorkshire region within the national context.
The objects on display came originally from the collections of the North and West Yorkshire Police as well as Humberside Police. The trust is independent, although the chief constables of the four forces in the area are patrons.
The vice-president of Ripon Museum Trust is the retired police officer Ralph Lindley. He is convinced of the need to tell the story of policing through museums and describes the absence of a national police museum as "an absolute disgrace".
Lindley argues that "the museum profession finds the history of policing interesting but mystifying as well". And even those local museums with police-related collections look on them "as being of only nominal interest".
When it comes to constabulary museums, two factors emerge: first, a severe lack of financial resources and, second, the problem of permitting public access to police buildings.
The collection at Devon and Cornwall Constabulary provides a good example of the challenges - and potential - of such a resource. The 15,000-strong collection of artefacts, photographs and library was begun informally by a retired police officer and bequeathed to a not-very-enthusiastic constabulary.
It remained neglected in poor storage conditions until 2004 and the appointment of Angela Sutton-Vane as collections officer. She is candid about the challenges she faces. Her job would not exist without the support of the chief constable.
Only by becoming more financially self-supporting would she succeed in her goal of "looking at policing in a more intellectual and exploratory light".
Yet Sutton-Vane shows that, despite the many difficulties, there is a great deal to be optimistic about. She has rebranded the collection as a heritage and learning resource, attracted money from the Heritage Lottery Fund, employed an education officer, set up a website and initiated school outreach projects dealing with policing and citizenship.
This shows that, with the right leadership, these issues can be addressed. The recently accredited Essex Police Museum in Chelmsford confirms this. It now attracts more than 6,000 visitors a year and offers free support for the teaching of history and citizenship at key stages 1 and 2.
An even greater success story is the NCCL Galleries of Justice in Nottingham. For over a decade it has successfully addressed issues of citizenship and the law - for which it was awarded the Gulbenkian Prize for Museums in 2003.
Its many activities include mock trials, outreach work with children at risk of offending, and assisting the teaching of citizenship in schools.
The museum would be the perfect model for any national police museum. Yet it is revealing that the one gallery that is no longer part of the regular museum tour is Policing Today.
Set in a police station, it was an issue-based gallery in which the problems facing the police today were explored through images, objects and provocative questions.
The museum wishes to continue this important work, but has decided to hand it over to partners such as the Youth Offending Team and the Youth Justice Board. They will use the displays to work with specific, invited groups.
When it comes to the question of policing today, it is clear that the traditional approach of an exhibition open to self-guided museum visitors does not work.
It will be interesting to see if the delegates gathering next month in New Zealand agree. And, if so, what implications has this for police museums in the future?
Stuart Burch is a lecturer in museum studies at Nottingham Trent University
