Megan O'Neill

(Re)negotiating police culture through partnership working: Trust, compromise and the ‘new’ pragmatism

While a topic of considerable interest in the 1990s and early 2000s, there has been little literature on partnership working in the public sector in recent years. This is surprising given that the practice has been extended through the national roll-out of Neighbourhood Policing in England and Wales in 2008. This article presents a reassessment of how the police operate in partnership with other agencies. In contrast to the previous literature, our research suggests that police officers involved in partnerships find them effective, crucial to their work and, at times, enjoyable. Rather than conflicting with traditional police culture, partnership work is enhanced by, and enhances, the police orientation towards the pragmatic. We explore the implications of this for our understandings of police culture.

Where has all the racism gone? Views of racism within constabularies after Macpherson

Abstract Drawing on evidence from a study of Black Police Associations in English and Welsh constabularies, this article addresses perceived changes in the articulation of racialized relations within the police during the years following Lord Macphersons Report about the police investigation of Stephen Lawrences murder. Association officials argued that overt racism has been replaced by covert racism, evidence of which is, by definition, difficult to establish. Black Police Association officials’ and senior officers’ views of this change are discussed. Sources of evidence of covert racism are described and analysed, often related to Macphersons definition of ‘institutional racism’. The wider implications of the article for the study of race and ethnicity are then discussed, with particular reference to Brubakers recent work on ethnicity as cognition, which underpins the analysis of all the data gathered.

Examining ‘Window Dressing’: The Views of Black Police Associations on Recruitment and Training

In a previous issue of this journal, Ellis Cashmore (2002) discussed two key issues currently confronting police constabularies in England and Wales: the recruitment of minority ethnic officers and civilian staff, and the impact of diversity training now in place for all police officers. Cashmore argued that not only are these policies ineffective in enhancing cultural diversity within constabularies, but that they are harmful, presenting a false outward image of effective action. This article examines Cashmores arguments and develops them in light of findings from recent research on Black Police Associations (BPAs) in England and Wales. Our findings firstly suggest that, because of heavy involvement with these initiatives and the close relationship BPAs have developed with senior management (in comparison to non-BPA members), they must be considered in any discussion of minority ethnic recruitment and diversity training. In addition, the majority of the officers we interviewed were supportive of current recruitment and training programmes. Secondly, we argue that BPAs are helping to change the nature of the overall police culture to a certain extent. Many minority ethnic officers no longer feel they must downplay their ethnicity as members of constabularies.

Institutional Racism after Macpherson: An Analysis of Police Views

Lord Macphersons definition of institutional racism was central to his report about the police investigation into the murder of Stephen Lawrence. It was also integral to his recommendations for the reform of the police in England and Wales. Lord Macpherson argued for changes to race relations within constabularies. His notion of institutional racism is scrutinized in this article, based on evidence from a two-year project about Black Police Associations in the United Kingdom. Different meanings of institutional racism and their consequences are discussed, the locus of racism is charted, and the importance of an institutional memory of racism within constabularies is emphasized.

Policing and the Surveillance of the Marginal: Everyday Contexts of Social Control

While the surveillance practices of the private security industry have become a central preoccupation of scholarship, the surveillance power of the state has been greatly enhanced through multiple procedures of information gathering to support practices of control and management. In this article, we draw upon two different research projects to examine the surveillance work of the police and other public sector groups working in partnership, as well as the activities of police officers operating covertly. In so doing, we expose the often unintended, but nevertheless invasive and comprehensive power of state agencies to gather details of individuals in the residual working class, within mundane and innocuous policing practices. Our central argument is that these developments have occurred alongside a displacement of social policy through crime control, and represent both an acceleration and intensification of existing state approaches to the surveillance of the problematic individual. This extensive project of targeted surveillance, we contend, also calls into question current claims that the state is moving towards a system of managing deviant populations.

Policing Football in Scotland The Forgotten Team

In this article, I suggest that the prevailing literature which has been generated by academics and official enquiry on football spectator culture and violence has neglected one of the main features of any UK football match: the police. I demonstrate through reference to my own work with Scottish police officers how a significant police culture exists in relation to football. A key aspect in this culture is that the police do not operate as one homogeneous unit, or ‘team’ in Erving Goffman’s (1959) terms, but as several smaller teams working largely independently of each other. This police culture needs to be investigated further in order to gain a complete understanding of football spectator culture and violence.

Police community support officers in England: a dramaturgical analysis

Police community support officers (PCSOs) have become an integral part of neighbourhood policing teams (NPTs) in England and Wales since the national roll-out of neighbourhood policing in 2008. Most research on PCSOs examines their outward-facing role, such as in the extent to which these police staff have become community engagement or enforcement-orientated. While this is important to consider, what is also important is the manner in which PCSOs have been accepted by the police organisation internally. This can have a bearing on the degree to which PCSOs are able to fulfil their roles in neighbourhood policing. The research reported here is based on a six-month observational study of PCSOs in England. Using Goffmans dramaturgical framework and concept of performance teams, this article argues that PCSOs and police constables (PCs) comprise separate performance teams within each NPT group, although the degree of separation between PC and PCSO teams varied from one NPT to another. One element of this relationship which was generally consistent was that police officers and supervisors tended to value more highly PCSO work which was enforcement-orientated. This challenges PCSOs to enhance this side of their performances in spite of their limited statutory powers. Some PCSOs experienced this as a daily pressure to justify their existence to police colleagues, leaving them as disillusioned and unsatisfied staff. This was clearly expressed in the use of space in these police stations in that PCSOs sought out spaces where they could relax in their own exclusive ‘back stage’ areas, away from police colleagues.

Black police associations and the police occupational culture

In recent years, Black Police Associations (BPAs) have become key forces of change within the police service, involved in minority ethnic recruitment and retention initiatives, working closely with senior management, and also serving as mechanisms of support minority ethnic constabulary members and recruits. Most police services in England and Wales now have an officially recognised BPA, making it essential to consider the effect these groups have on the police occupational culture. Using data from our recent research project on BPAs, we explore issues such as the decreasing importance of rank and grading in the police culture; whether a parallel, ‘black’ occupational culture is emerging alongside the traditional ‘white’ one; the indirect influence BPAs have had as part of a wider process of change and the interplay between changing individuals and changing the institution as a whole.