Geoff Pearson - Police Street Powers and Criminal Justice

POLICE STREET POWERS AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE

Police Street Powers and Criminal Justice 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.

Police Street Powers and
Criminal Justice

Regulation and Discretion in a Time of Change

Geoff Pearson

and

Mike Rowe

We must start by thanking our research participants, the many frontline police officers who volunteered to have an academic alongside them for the duration of their shift. It goes without saying that this work could not have been possible without them. In particular, some volunteers tolerated our presence and our questions on more occasions than it would be reasonable to have asked or expected. We hope we have done justice to them and have presented here something of their working world that they would recognise. Access to these volunteers would also not have been possible without a number of key contacts in both forces, who we would also like to thank. Ultimately both forces opened themselves up for scrutiny and criticism, which we appreciate is not always an easy thing to do. As with our volunteers, unfortunately we cannot name the key contacts at either force for reasons of anonymity.

Ethnographic work of this nature takes time, and we would like to thank those in our departments who have given us the freedom to spend so much time in the field, most notably Professor David Gadd and Professor Toby Seddon at The University of Manchester Law School. Over the six years of this project, we have also had some fellow travellers who have offered insights and assisted with some of the leg work. In this category, we would like to extend our gratitude to Dr Liz Turner and Lisa Weston, both at the University of Liverpool. Others have helped us to develop particular concepts that have been important for this book. In particular, thanks to Professor Ken Ehrensal, at the Kutztown University of Pennsylvania, who encouraged us to cast a critical eye over the knotty problem of police culture, and Dr Charmian Werren, at the University of Birmingham, who provided helpfully critical comments on the subject of ACAB. We would also like to thank Dr Paul Quinton from the College of Policing for information and advice at various different stages of the research.

We have had further support, encouragement, and critique from participants at the Annual Ethnography Symposium. For most of the last six years, they have heard versions of parts of this work, sometimes only to hear a slight development on the same theme the following year. As an interdisciplinary audience and forum, the Symposium is a test-bed like no other. It is unfair to single one from amongst a community, but particular mention might be made of Professor John van Maanen, who has given valuable support to the Symposium and to our work from the start. We should also acknowledge contributions and questions from participants at the conferences of the Socio-Legal Studies Association and the European Society of Criminology, and the emerging Police Ethnographies annual symposium.

We would also like to express our appreciation to the team at Hart who undertook to publish this work: to one anonymous reviewer for their positive feedback (we now know who you are!), to Sinead Maloney, the editorial director who steered the proposal through, Bill Asquith, the senior commissioning editor, Sasha Jawed and Savannah Rado, our publishing assistants, and Maria Skrzypiec, the copy editor. We were also assisted in this work through the comments of two readers of early drafts, Christina Ashworth and Valerie Pearson. However, all errors are ours and ours alone! Finally, having spent many hours, days, and nights in the field, we should also acknowledge that this has entailed the passing of many caring and domestic duties onto two forbearing partners, Rachel Johnston and Christina Ashworth. We appreciate that dog walking, cat feeding, and school runs have been going on while we have been spending those long periods of time working alongside the frontline officers who are the focus for this book.