‘Inappropriate but not crime’? Policing racial hatred in Sweden

ABSTRACT

Racial bias afflicts police practices across the globe. Police discrimination against and mistreatment of racial and ethnic minorities is indeed difficult to underestimate. While much attention has been thus paid to racially biased policing, fewer studies examine the question from the reverse angle, namely how the police themselves combat racist offences. This article offers empirical insights into the policing of racial hatred in Sweden, a relevant yet relatively understudied case. Drawing on interviews with police officers and crime investigators, I discuss law enforcement perspectives, e.g. perceptions and reasoning in relation to the investigation of racist offences. Findings evince a rather narrow approach as regards the constructions of racist motive that involves a relatively restricted use of bias labelling in identifying hate incidents, especially when the boundaries of racial hostility are perceived as blurred. I argue that while such an approach may reflect a legitimate effort to demonstrate the existence of a motive behind an offence, it may also lead to an underestimation of more mundane forms of racism and their harms inflicted upon racialized individuals and communities. The results have implications for ‘recognition’ and ‘belonging’ as benchmarks of democratic policing, and ‘the promise of inclusion’ associated with combatting hate crimes.     

The police education qualification framework: a professional agenda or building professionals?

ABSTRACT

Given the growing complexity in British policing, the College of Policing are implementing a Police Education Qualification Framework through a professionalization agenda. This aims to standardise entry to the police and allow serving officers to gain accreditation for their previous training and experience. Part of this process involves the development of a national police curriculum for higher education institutions to deliver to new recruits. Different definitions of what constitutes professionalism can impact on officers’ interpretations of this concept and how they subsequently engage with the proposed reforms. This paper, which is based on in depth qualitative interviews with serving officers who have undertaken an academic qualification in policing, suggests that the relationship between police education and the development of professionalism is complex. Officers need to be trusted and encouraged to use their learning in a way that develops their own personal sense of professionalism. However, this paper will argue that current perceptions amongst officers are sceptical of the wider agenda and brings into question the development of a standardised curriculum which may ultimately be viewed as further governance over officer behaviour.     

Drug Globalization: Eventual Legalization of Beer in Iceland and Marihuana Decriminalization in the USA

This article discusses whether different motivations for and perceptions of the police role, either as ‘law and order‐oriented thrill‐seekers’ or as ‘social workers’ lead officers to adopt different approaches towards the public. The first category police rank‐and‐file officers' desire for action and excitement, causing them to perceive policing as a mission, also causes them to have a distorted view of reality whereby they perceive members of the public either as significant adversaries or as insignificant ones. For them, ‘real police work’ means chasing and catching villains, and this delusional picture of what policing is may lead them to enlarge and redefine ‘insignificant criminals’ and thus perceive them as ‘villains’ who merit and justify police targeting. However, as these insignificant criminals—beggars, drug addicts, vagrants, ethnic minority youths, and drunks—are not perceived as actually ‘significant adversaries’, the targeting of and encounters with them also produce fatigue in police officers as these activities fail to comply with many police officers' desire to ‘catch the villain’, and the encounters are repetitive and tedious. Police fatigue and stereotyping may entail cynicism due to the ways in which some groups respond to police targeting, such as accusing the police of racism or threatening them with complaints. It is argued that the first type of police officers to a larger degree will experience fatigue and cynicism than the second type of officers—‘the social workers’—who are motivated by a will to ‘help others’, and who receive more rewarding responses from the public.     

Crowd Situations and their Policing from the Perspective of Finnish Police Officers—a Case Study of Finnish Police Knowledge

This study explores crowd situations from the perspective of the Finnish police. The qualitative data consist of focused face-to-face interviews with police officers (n = 15). The results of these interviews indicate that special crowd control units have shifted from being an innovation to being an ordinary part of public order policing, despite the infrequent use of these units. Furthermore, police knowledge concurrently involved diversity and polarity. Crowd situations vary from political protests to sporting events and street festivals, and the police play multiple roles and apply diverse measures and tactics depending on the situation. Polarity is linked to the way the police perceive different crowds and crowd events as ‘easy’ and ‘ordinary’ or ‘difficult’ and ‘deviant’. Finally, tension emerges between national and global aspects within police knowledge. This tension is linked to how police perceive crowd events and public order policing in terms of the past, the present, and the future.     

Present but not prevalent: identifying the organizational correlates of researcher-practitioner partnerships in U.S. Law Enforcement

ABSTRACT

Federal funding streams, the International Association of Chiefs of Police, and policing executives and scholars alike have advocated for more researcher-practitioner partnerships in American law enforcement. While a few studies have explored the growth and prevalence of research partnerships in policing, less attention has been placed on the organizational correlates of such collaborative relationships. Using a nationally representative sample of US law enforcement agencies, the current study investigated participation in what we term ‘rigorous partnerships’ – more formal, long-term relationships between researchers and practitioners with increased opportunity for interactive knowledge exchange. Policy implications and directions for future research are discussed, with a specific focus on the barriers and impediments that both parties face for successful collaborative efforts and research translation.     

The ‘us vs them’ mentality: a comparison of police cadets at different stages of their training

ABSTRACT

Any depiction of police culture includes a strong ‘us versus them’ element, but research has been unable to satisfactorily explain its development and evolution. In particular, very few studies have focused on the training period, between when an individual chooses a police career and his/her first day as an officer. A total of 1,979 pre-university students from seven colleges in Quebec (Canada) completed a self-administered survey where they had to answer general questions about the police followed by specific questions about four realistic videos of fictional police interventions involving use of force. Unsurprisingly, the analysis suggests that students in Police Technology tend to think they are more supportive of the police and the use of force than students in other programs. However, students in Police Technology increasingly indicate that the majority of people would report a more negative opinion than they have, suggesting that police candidates increasingly disidentify with the rest of the population.     

Trends in police research: a cross-sectional analysis of the 2010-2014 literature

ABSTRACT

This review provides a cross-sectional analysis of the police literature for years 2000 to 2014. It represents the ninth special feature review of police research published in Police Practice and Research: An International Journal. The study reports on trends over time in police literature according to substantive categories, publication medium, and methodological typology. The study also relies on findings from prior police research reviews as a basis for a discussion of the long-term patterns of police research over time from 2000 to 2014. A topically organized bibliography of the 2010 to 2014 police literature reviewed is also provided.     

The ‘Code of Silence’: Are Self‐Report Surveys a Viable Means for Studying Police Misconducts?

Police misconducts have very rarely been studied by the self‐report method because it is assumed that the ‘code of silence’ is too hard to break even in an anonymous survey research situation. In this study a self‐report method was carried out in a police unit in Finland. Respondents were shown a list of 16 possible conducts. They were asked whether they knew a police officer who had been engaged in misconduct mentioned in the list or whether they themselves had engaged in one or more of the misconducts mentioned in the list. The analysis results indicated that, in an anonymous self‐report survey context, police officers are clearly willing to report on service misconducts, both their own and those of their fellow officers. Thus, the assumed ‘code of silence’ does not seem as strong as the literature suggests.     

A four-phase process for translating research into police practice

ABSTRACT

This article presents a framework that extends the discussion of translational criminology and the dynamic process of translating research to practice. The goal is to provide an explicit dissection of the translation process into four phases to help outline a structured way of thinking about how to incorporate research into police practice. The four-phases include: Phase I: ‘Does it Work?’ Research and Evaluation; Phase II: ‘What Works?’ Synthesis and Dissemination; Phase III: ‘How to Make it Work?’ Implementation and Evaluation; and Phase IV: ‘Make it Work!’ Institutionalization and Sustainability. The process is founded in implementation science and the ‘Knowledge to Action’ model (KTA) used in the medical and public health fields, as well as current translation activities for policing, and the authors’ experience as practitioners, researchers, and ‘translators’ over the last 25 years. It is the hope that parsing out four distinct phases for the translation of research to practice will assist researchers and police leaders to identify and fill gaps in current and future translation activities.     

Teaching police ethics: analysis of an increasingly complex teaching context

ABSTRACT

The importance of ethics in policing and, therefore, in police education and training, is widely acknowledged. Nonetheless, disagreement often exists about the ways in which police ethics subjects should be taught and who should teach them. In this paper, three areas of debate will be critiqued, with the aim of arriving at principled responses to the underlying issues. The first issue will be whether police ethics subjects should include any ethical theory and, if so, to what extent. Related to this, but also a distinct issue in itself, is the question of whether standalone police ethics subjects should be valued over dispersing ethics learning throughout a police curriculum (e.g. as a ‘golden thread‘ running through every subject). Finally, the question of who should teach police ethics subjects will be considered. Here, the issues largely revolve around the relevant significance of philosophical expertise, knowledge and critical analysis as compared to policing expertise. Importantly, the principled responses developed in the paper will not only be theoretically sound. They will also take account of the real-world conditions in which many police ethics subjects are delivered, particularly situations where agreements in place require police ethics subjects to be taught by both police officers and academics.     

Permanent beat assignments in association with community policing: Assessing the impact on police officers' field activity

Although the permanent assignment of police officers to their beats has long been an important goal in community policing, its utility has not been assessed empirically. Using a multiple time-series quasi-experimental design, the present study reports on an impact assessment of permanent beat assignment in conjunction with a community policing program implemented in the Philadelphia Housing Authority Police Department. Permanent beat assignment in the treatment sites led to increases in officer-initiated investigative activity (indicating greater responsibility for beats), while no such changes were observed in the comparison sites. Implications for public policy and for conducting police research in public housing are discussed; future research directions are suggested.     

Me,myself and I: the sociology of policing male rape,the gaze of the ‘Other’

In this paper, the bodies of male rape victims as the ‘other’ are problematized. The social and cultural constructions of male rape within a policing context are examined since the police play a major role in impeding the progress of male rape cases. The author draws on police data, generated from interviews and qualitative questionnaires with the police, to illustrate the problems with policing male rape in England, UK. While the author provides empirical data, sociological, cultural, and post-structural theoretical frameworks largely inform it. It is argued that the bodies of male rape victims are positioned in inferior positions, whereby their bodies are metaphorically and symbolically marked as ‘abnormal’, ‘deviant’, and the ‘other’. Through social and power relations, their bodies are tainted, which reinforces gender and social norms.     

On creating ethical,productive, and durable research partnerships with police officers and their departments: a case study of the National Justice Database

ABSTRACT

Translational policing science must begin with explicitly communicated research aims and a shared vision for promoting safety. For researchers to approach police departments without first considering the concerns held by officers and their departments at large, is unethical, unproductive, and undermines efforts to secure longstanding mutually useful researcher-practitioner partnerships. In presenting a case study analysis of the multi-method National Justice Database’s recruitment practices, this article highlights some of the challenges that emerge when articulating study aims that hold relevance for public safety; defining theoretically- and solution-oriented research questions; administrative police data collection, analysis, and dissemination; and bolstering human research subject protection protocols for sworn officers who may be justifiably reluctant to participate in social science research endeavors. Implications for ethical policing research practice, fostering collaborative researcher-practitioner partnerships, and leveraging the benefits of data science are also discussed.     

The prevalence of compassion fatigue,compassion satisfaction and perceived stress,and their relationships with mental toughness,individual differences and number of self-care actions in a UK police force

ABSTRACT

Police personnel are likely to be affected by stress and compassion fatigue, which may have important consequences for health, well-being and job performance. There are certain individual differences which may protect against compassion fatigue, for example mental toughness, personality and self-care behaviours. However, there is little research examining all of these constructs in combination with policing. The current study aimed to gather information regarding the prevalence of compassion fatigue, compassion satisfaction and perceived stress within a large UK police force, and their relationships with personality, mental toughness and self-care activities. A questionnaire was completed by 605 police employees within a UK police force. The results demonstrated that 20% of personnel suffered from negative psychological outcomes and that these outcomes were predicted by individual differences and self-care activities. The requirement for shift work, and mental toughness scores, significantly predicted compassion satisfaction, compassion fatigue and perceived stress. The analyses also revealed a role for gender, tenure, personality and self-care in several aspects of well-being. The implications of these findings are discussed, considering the current contexts in which policing operates, with the aim of improving the psychological well-being of police officers and staff.     

Creating a ‘what works’ translational tool for police: a researcher-city government partnership

ABSTRACT

In recent years, a number of translational tools have been developed in policing to make the growing research evidence base more accessible and useful for practitioners and policymakers. Here we focus on the creation of the ‘What works in policing?’ website, which resulted from a collaboration between a government agency in Seattle, Washington and researchers at George Mason University and Arizona State University. We describe the site in detail and its similarities to and differences from existing translation tools, as well as the rationale for a local government’s involvement in translational work. In particular we focus on efforts to link the site with the work of the Seattle Police Department through a case study approach. We review indicators that suggest the site is being well-utilized and close with thoughts on the future of translational work in policing and efforts to ensure translational tools are useful to practitioners.     

Giuliani in Izmir: Restructuring of the Izmir Public Order Police and Criminalization of the Urban Poor

This paper examines the recent restructuring of the Izmir Public Order Police, launched in 2006 to address the rise in urban crime in Izmir, Turkey. Transforming itself into a professionalized and effective organization against ‘criminals’ and claiming to institute a proactive policing strategy, the Izmir police have expanded their control over the urban space, while specifically targeting the poor segments and populations in the city, and carefully distinguishing them from the ‘respectable’ and ‘innocent’ citizens. The paper details the elements of the new policing in Izmir and demonstrates that it has rested on profiling and criminalization of the ethno-racially differentiated urban poor populations, especially Kurdish migrants. The new policing in Izmir, the paper argues, is not an isolated case but an example of the neoliberal transformations around the globe, where regulation and management of urban poor populations are increasingly relegated to the penal rather than the social state.     

Settling institutional uncertainty: Policing Chicago and New York, 1877–1923

We show how both the Chicago Police Department and the New York Police Department sought to settle uncertainty about their propriety and purpose during a period when abrupt transformations destabilized urban order and called the police mandate into question. By comparing annual reports that the Chicago Police Department and the New York Police Department published from 1877 to 1923, we observe two techniques in how the police enacted that settlement: identification of the problems that the police believed themselves uniquely well equipped to manage and authorization of the powers necessary to do so. Comparison of identification and authorization yields insights into the role that these police departments played in convergent and divergent constructions of disorder and, in turn, into Progressivism's varying effects in early urban policing.     

Lilac? ‘Ten years of blue nurtured nature’

Abstract

The paper seeks to determine whether indicators evincing attitudes of police culture themes of solidarity, isolation and cynicism amongst SAPS officials are gender neutral as well as change in relation to Van Maanen’s and Manning’s stages of police culture socialisation. Using a survey format, the researcher employed a longitudinal design. The study established that SAPS cadets that commenced their basic training at the six SAPS basic training institutes in January 2005, entered the organisation with predispositions in furtherance of solidarity, isolation and cynicism. The period of ‘college/academy training’ (January to June 2005) did not significantly counteract these tendencies, neither the subsequent ‘field training’ (July to December 2005). Nine years on, and these attitudes intensified. The study further found that for the duration of the project (10 years), female trainees and their conversion to fully-fledged police officials had mostly stronger values exhibiting solidarity, isolation and cynicism, compared to their male counterparts.     

The physical competence test of the Dutch National Police: The effects of wearing a police uniform on test performance

ABSTRACT

In this study, we investigated the effects of wearing a police uniform and gear on officers’ performance during the Physical Competence Test (PCT) of the Dutch National Police. In a counterbalanced within-subjects design, twenty-seven police officers performed the PCT twice, once wearing sportswear and once wearing a police uniform. The results showed clear indications that wearing a police uniform influenced the performance on the PCT. Participants were on average 14 seconds slower in a police uniform than in sportswear. Furthermore, performing the test in uniform was accompanied by higher RPE-scores and total physiological load. It seems that wearing a police uniform during the test diminishes the discrepancy between physical fitness needed to pass the simulated police tasks in the PCT and the job-specific physical fitness that is required during daily police work. This suggests that wearing a police uniform during the test will increase the representativeness of the testing environment for the work field.     

Transformation of Macau policing: from a Portuguese colony to China’s SAR

This study examines policing in Macau and identifies major forces that have shaped its transformation over past decades. Prior to 1999, Macau was a Portuguese colony. Its criminal justice system inherited key features of the Continental system, including two independent law enforcement agencies: the Judiciary Police and the Public Security Police. In the colonial era, expatriate commanders drawn from the military or legal professions headed both departments, while the rank-and-file was composed mainly of local Chinese. This policing mechanism, together with the ‘laissez-faire’ policing philosophy adopted by colonial leaders, created segregation between policing agencies and the community. Citizens preferred minimal interaction with police, since they were skeptical about their professionalism, capability, and reliability. Macau became part of the Peoples’ Republic of China in 1999. The de-monopolization of the gaming industries in 2002 brought huge GDP growth, but generated internal social conflict. Growing public demand for accountable governance motivated a series of governmental reforms, some of which have extended to policing. These reforms have improved the transparency of policing, but it remains to be seen if they will ultimately succeed in generating public trust in the police forces.