Abstract
ABSTRACT Fuelled by the declining numbers of warranted detectives and growing demand for non-traditional skill-sets within the police in England and Wales, non-warranted Civilian Investigators (CIs) were introduced by the Police Reform Act 2002 to enhance the police’s investigative capacity. In the absence of existing research on CIs, this paper uses the junior partner thesis as an analytical lens through which to examine the nature of the CI role relative to that of warranted detectives. Findings point to an evolving ‘equal partner’ role for CIs, resulting in an expansive occupational remit which belies their place in the formal police organisational hierarchy as the complementary ‘junior partners’ of detectives. The article concludes by arguing for better accommodation of the CI role/remit within the police organisational infrastructure. Developing effective training and progression opportunities for CIs are essential if the police are to retain both their specialist skills-sets and the organisational memory they represent.
Highlights
Recent decades have seen much attention paid to the issue of ‘plural policing’ (Jones and Newburn 2006), the rise of a ‘police extended family’ (Johnston 2003) or a ‘mixed economy’ (Crawford et al 2004) of policing, as scholars have sought to account for the diversity of actors engaged in authorising and delivering policing alongside the public police
Findings reported in this paper point to a tension between the rhetoric and reality of the Civilian Investigators (CIs) role in that while CIs are in many ways the ‘equal partners’ of DCs at the level of the occupation, they continue to be relegated to the status of ‘junior partners’ at the level of the organisation
The occupational experience of CIs was characterised at both forces by significant ‘role blurring’ and/ or ‘mission creep’, whereby CIs had, over time, taken on new roles/tasks beyond their intended supportive remit
Summary
Findings reported in this paper point to a tension between the rhetoric and reality of the CI role in that while CIs are in many ways the ‘equal partners’ of DCs at the level of the occupation, they continue to be relegated to the status of ‘junior partners’ at the level of the organisation This dissonance highlights the fragmented nature of contemporary ‘detective work’, as traditional and well-established divisions of labour within ‘core’ areas of police work (such as crime investigation) continue to be broken-down under the conditions of pluralisation. This thesis affords an analytical lens through which to examine the nature of functional boundary blurring within the police, in relation to the hierarchy of investigative provision between CIs and DCs. Where CIs fall on the scale of complementarity (junior partner) to competition (equal partner) is first analysed at the level of the occupation; that is the social and functional dimensions which serve to define CI-DC interactions within the CID itself. Translating the model’s application to CIs and the governance of ‘detective work’ allows for a better appreciation the complex relationship(s) which exist between CIs and DCs within the contemporary police CID, including how the police are responding (if at all) to changing divisions of labour and shifting role boundaries
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