Abstract
Police custody is a complex environment, where police officers, detainees and other staff interact in a number of different emotional, spatial and transformative ways. Utilising ethnographic and interview data collected as part of a five-year study which aims to rigorously examine ‘good’ police custody, this paper analyses the ways that liminality and temporality impact on emotion in police custody. Architecture has previously been noted as an important consideration in relation to social control, with literature linking the built environment with people’s emotional ‘readings’ of space. No work, however, has examined the links between temporality, liminality and emotional performativity in a police custody context. In this environment, power dynamics are linked to past experiences of the police, with emotions being intrinsically embodied, relational, liminal and temporal. Emotion management is therefore an important way of conceptualising the dynamic relationships in custody. The paper concludes by arguing that emotional aftershocks symbolise the liminal experience of detainees’ understanding of the police custody process once released, noting that it is important to understand the microscale, lived experience of police custody in order to develop broader understanding of broader social and policing policy in a police custody context.
Highlights
Geographies of police custodyPolice custody is the place that people are taken once they have been arrested and whilst the police investigate allegations made against them
Drawing on an emerging field of scholars who have examined the role of emotions in prisons (Crewe et al, 2014; Moran, 2011), this paper explores the interaction between liminality, emotion and custody as a space of transformation and reflection
This paper offers insights into the geographies of police custody
Summary
Police custody is the place that people are taken once they have been arrested and whilst the police investigate allegations made against them. Jewkes (2011) uses the concept to understand life sentence prisoners, arguing that it is relevant for understanding those who receive an indeterminate life sentence and who exist in a near permanent liminal state What she notes is that liminality can refer to states of being or states of mind (as is the case for lifers on indeterminate sentences, who are the focus of Jewkes’ chapter), as well as physical spaces (such as prison reception areas or holding bays for prison visitors), as we pass from a period of stability to one of ambiguity or undergo some kind of transformation (Jewkes, 2011: 278). The role of individual emotion and the transformative experience of custody is important for understanding the lived experiences of custody on detainees
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