‘When will you go back to “real” police work?’ The liminal nature of victim support police officers

Abstract

ABSTRACT Victim support police work involves a wide range of relations within a police force, including expectations that set this occupation as a hybrid or liminal position, between what’s commonly considered classic policing and social work. Between victims’ and other police officers’ expectations, their experience is dramatically affected by liminality, with deep effects regarding group identity, satisfaction, and wellbeing. Drawing from qualitative research among victim support officers from Catalonia’s Mossos d’Esquadra corps, this article analyses how victim support officers find themselves between specific police fields and expectations, and how this defines them as liminars or subjects of liminal positions, roles, and actions. This, in turn, we argue, makes them an uneasy object and subject for victims, other officers, and for their institutions.