Policing in the context of "Shadow Home Secretary"

Provosts (usually pronounced "provo" in this context) are military police (MP) whose duties are policing solely within the armed forces of a country, as opposed to gendarmerie duties in the civilian population. However, many countries use their gendarmerie for provost duties.

As with all official terms, some countries have specific official terminology which differs from the exact linguistic meaning. The head of the military police is commonly referred to as the provost marshal, an ancient title originally given to an officer whose duty was to ensure that an army did no harm to the citizenry.

A tactical objective is the immediate short-term desired result of a given activity, task, or mission. While historically the term had been applied to military operations, in the 20th century, it has been increasingly applied in the fields of public safety, such as policing and fire-fighting, as well as commerce, trade planning, political, and international relations policy.

Whereas strategy in the military sense is about overall planning, tactics refers to day-to-day events in a war. A tactical objective is often an intermediate step to achieving an operational objective, and, as such, requires decision making and problem solving skills applied during the execution of the tactical plan as part of the operational plan.

Police abolition is advocated by a political movement, mostly active in the United States, that seeks to replace the policing system with other systems of public safety. Police abolitionists believe that policing, as a system, is inherently flawed and cannot be reformed—a view that rejects the ideology of reformists. While reformists seek to address the ways in which policing occurs, abolitionists seek to transform policing altogether through a process of disbanding, disempowering, and disarming the police. Abolitionists argue that the institution of policing is deeply rooted in a history of white supremacy and settler colonialism and that it is inseparable from a pre-existing racial capitalist order, and therefore believe a reformist approach to policing will always fail.

Police abolition is a process that requires communities to create alternatives to policing, such as Mobile Crisis Teams and Community accountability. This process involves the deconstruction of the preconceived understandings of policing and resisting co-option by reformists. It also involves engaging in and supporting practices that reduce police power and legitimacy, such as defunding the police.