In late 2015, the force moved its strategic headquarters to Eastleigh, into a building now shared with Hampshire & Isle of Wight Fire and Rescue Service.

In November 2022, the force was renamed Hampshire & Isle of Wight Constabulary by Police and Crime Commissioner Donna Jones.

The force is overseen by an elected police and crime commissioner (PCC) on non-operational matters (i.e. budget and priorities).

The core policing activities are organised into four Operational Command sections: Intelligence, Tasking and Development, Prevention and Neighbourhoods, Response and Patrol and Investigations.

These are superintendents for the three unitary authorities (Southampton, Portsmouth and Isle of Wight) and chief inspectors for the non-metropolitan districts of Hampshire.

Their primary roles are to respond to the incoming emergency calls and to proactively patrol to prevent and detect crime.

Officers start and end their shifts at a patrol hub but are not officially confined to any subdivision of Hampshire while at work.

The strand also includes call handlers and control room staff who work very closely with the police officers on the ground.

[46] In addition to providing an emergency response to incidents on the road its work is directed towards reducing casualties and offending and in particular at disrupting the activities of travelling criminals.

The force has ARVs with both police-liveried and unmarked variants - a marked ARV is distinguishable from other police vehicles as it has big and bright coloured asterisk [*] stickers that are displayed on all four corners of the vehicle) and they usually contain two or three police officers that are specially trained authorised firearms officers (AFO).

The Marine Unit provides a specialist resource to the force and a policing presence along the 253 miles (407 km) of navigable coastline of the two counties.

[48] In addition, the unit is responsible for the investigation of marine incidents and supporting the work of the UK Border Agency, HM Coastguard and the harbour authorities.

Hampshire officers no longer use the traditional police jumper, having favoured a black fleece with 'Police' written on the chest and back.

In addition, officers carry TETRA digital radios, Body Worn Video, rigid handcuffs, incapacitant spray, the ASP 21" collapsible baton, leg restraints, a resuscitation mask and a basic first aid kit.

[52] Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary uses a wide selection of vehicles for their individual capabilities and the requirements of the roles for which they are employed.

This provoked controversy from the public and the government, as until then, all forces had used domestic cars (Austin, Jaguar, MG, Rover, Wolseley).

Hampshire Constabulary's former air support unit initially operated an Edgley Optica, G-KATY, as an observation platform in the mid-1980s.

[55] Subsequently, Hampshire operated a fixed wing Britten-Norman BN-2 Islander from the former Royal Naval Air Station at Lee-on-the-Solent.

[61][62][63] Previous results of inspections by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) are published below:[64] In November 2014, a HMIC report on crime recording found Hampshire Constabulary failed to record, as crime, 40% of incidents, one of the three worst force performances in the country.

Through their submissions to Stonewall, Hampshire Constabulary were consistently high performers on the index from 2006 to 2013, scoring no lower than 15th place overall.

[69] The crime fiction writer Graham Hurley draws on his knowledge of Hampshire Constabulary, and in particular Portsmouth CID, for his series of police procedural novels.

Set in Portsmouth and revolving around the fictional Detective Inspector Joe Faraday they portray a gritty picture of the city and its crime.

[72] The day-to-day work of Hampshire Constabulary featured in some 69 episodes, spanning three series, of the popular BBC 1 observational documentary, Real Rescues.

[73] This series first aired on BBC 1 in October 2007[74] The three-part, Channel 4 documentary, The Force followed the work of Hampshire detectives during the investigation of three serious crimes in the county.

The first episode followed the progress of an enquiry into the murder of a woman whose body had been found in a field near Basingstoke[75] whilst the second revealed the work of Hampshire's dedicated rape unit during a live investigation in Portsmouth.

[76] The last programme featured a re-investigation of the arson of a block of flats in Portsmouth as a result of which a young man died.

[77] In July 2022, the force was criticised when officers arrested a man for tweeting an image of a swastika, composed of four progress flags.