This open access book analyses the utilisation, regulation and legitimacy of police powers. Drawing upon six-years of ethnographic research in two police forces in England, this book uncovers the importance of time and place, supervision and monitoring, local policies and law. Covering a period when the police were under intense scrutiny and subject to austerity measures, the authors contend that the concept of police culture does not help us understand police discretion. They argue that change is a dominant feature of policing and identify fragmented responses to law and policy reform, varying between police stations, across different policing roles, and between senior and frontline ranks.
The open access edition of this book is available under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by University of Manchester Library.
1. Introduction
I. Framing the Debate
II. Focus and Remit of this Book
2. In Search of 'Police Culture': Ethnographic Approaches to Studying the Police
I. Ethnographic Research
II. Fieldwork
III. Data and Analysis
3. Regulation and the Law
I. The Relationship between Policing and the Law
II. The Common Law Regulation of the Police
III. Legislation and the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984
IV. The Human Rights Act 1998
V. Policy, Procedure, and Guidance
4. Power, 'Culture' and Discretion
I. Understandings of Discretion
II. Training
III. Supervision
IV. Bureaucracy
V. 'Culture' and Discretion
VI. The Police Career
5. On the Beat: Temporal and Geographical Influences on Police Discretion
I. The Archetypal Shift
II. Time
III. Place
IV. Austerity
V. The System
VI. Concluding Remarks and Recap
6. Stop and Account! Proactive Interactions with the Public
I. Stop and Account
II. Vehicle Stop Checks
III. Stop and Search
IV. Discrimination and the Targets of Police Engagement
V. The Evolution of Stop and Search?
7. Arrest and Detention
I. Police Understandings of the Power of Arrest
II. Determinants of the Use of Police Discretion to Arrest
III. Force Policy and Domestic Abuse
IV. The Role of the Custody Sergeant
V. The Decline of Arrest
8. Legitimacy and Accountability
I. Understanding Legitimacy and Accountability
II. Legitimacy in Practice
III. Reflections
9. Monitoring, Technology, and Recording of Crime
I. Remote Supervision
II. Categorisation
III. Recording
IV. Technology and Discretion
10. Uniform Change? Revisiting Policing, Regulation, and the Law
I. Our Argument So Far
II. Revisiting the Legal Regulation of Policing
III. What Sarge Says: Supervision and Monitoring
IV. 'Police Culture' and Uniform Change
V. Reform to Police Stops
VI. Best Use of Arrest
VII. Professionalisation
VIII. Prognosis
