British Police Research Articles

Changing local policy and practice towards the policing of domestic violence in England and Wales

PurposeThis paper considers the influences that have shaped local domestic violence policy and how this has affected police practice in one English police force.Design/methodology/approachThe research in this paper is based upon theoretical concepts of central government and local accountability over policing; policy making and implementation; and pressure group influence. Documents issued to local police forces from Central Government were examined and compared to local policy documents to assess their affect over local police policy. Using a structured format, senior managers were interviewed to gain their impressions of these influences. Views of ground level staff were obtained through postal questionnaires.FindingsThis paper finds public opinion and pressure from academic research upon Central Government has resulted in a very strong central influence over local police policy and practice. Police officers believe that these influences have had a major affect upon the way that they respond to domestic violence issues at a local level, to the point where both managers and front line police officers believe that their discretion in dealing with these issues has been curtailed, and that top down control over police practice has increased. Police attitudes towards policing domestic violence are more enlightened than they once were.Originality/valueThis paper examines the opinions of both senior local police policy makers and front line policy implementers and will be of value to those interested in the policing of domestic violence issues.

Improving the quality of investigative interviews for suspected child abuse: A case study

This paper reports a case study of a joint police–social services project, which aimed to improve the quality of investigative interviews for suspected child abuse. Thirteen English police officers and social workers who had previously participated in training according to the Memorandum of Good Practice (Home Office 2002) and carried out some investigative interviews, participated in a number of project components over a 9-month period. These included: an initial training and awareness revision day; review sessions in which videotaped interviews were evaluated by the interviewers and project group; aides-memoires for phases of the interviews (e.g. rapport, closure); and audiotaped debriefs carried out by interviewers immediately after the investigative interview had taken place. Interviews carried out pre- and post-project were analysed for evidence of improvement in practice. Specifically, attention focused on the quality of rapport, free narrative, questioning, closure, and the number and type of details elicited from the child. A number of methodological challenges were encountered in the project, and ultimately, evidence of improvement was limited. However, encouraging findings were noted with respect to the quality of closure, inclusion of ground rules and practice interviews. The findings are discussed in the context of the difficulties in training interviewers and sustaining improvements in skills as well as knowledge.

Facial burns after exposure to CS spray

2-Chlorobenzylidene malononitrile (CS) was developed in 1928 by Corson and Stoughton. It replaced chloroacetophenone (CN) as riot control agent and self-defence spray in the late 1950s due to its increased potency but more importantly, less toxicity. It is the most widely used form of 'tear gas'. The British Police force have used it since its introduction in March 1996 and use a 'spray' containing 5% CS (w/v) in a solvent of methylisobutylketone (MIBK) with a nitrogen propellant. Advocates of its use claim, that if used correctly, the noxious effects are transient, and mainly manifest as lacrimation and irritation respiratory tract. Generally CS sprays appear to be safe if used in a controlled manner. We present a case of facial and upper body chemical burns resulting from the use of CS spray in the UK. The police restrained a 24-year-old man after a domestic disturbance in the early hours of the morning. CS was sprayed onto the face and upper body and then the man was handcuffed. After release from police custody, he presented himself to his local Accident and Emergency Department the following evening complaining of burns to his face and upper body as well as pain in the shoulders and wrists related to his arrest. CS is a white solid with a low vapour pressure that is released as an aerosol of fine particles or in solution. The microscopic particles act as potent sensory irritants, especially on moist skin and mucous membranes. It is an alkylating agent and reacts at nucleophilic sites. Although unclear, injuries related to this class of agents may be caused by the inactivation sulphhydryl-containing enzymes such as lactate dehydrogenase and coenzymes in the pyruvate decarboxylase system.4 Onset of symptoms usually occurs in the first minute after exposure with severe pain in the eyes and sensitive areas of the face. This is followed by lacrimation, visual disturbance, blephorospasm, rhinorrhoea, sneezing, coughing, retching, tightness in the chest and a burning sensation in the nose, throat and exposed skin. The severity of reaction depends upon the duration of exposure, concentration of the CS, moistness of the skin and whether the patient is in a restricted environment. The effects are usually temporary (reduced if in an 'open' environment) resolving in 30 min. Severe burns related to CS exposure have been attributed to flame burns from the explosion of gas-grenades, contact burns when hot canisters touched victims' bodies, burns related to the MIBK solvent which in itself is an ocular and skin irritant, and delayed cutaneous hypersensitivity reactions related to previous exposure.3 In this case report, the most likely cause is a combination of the CS and MIBK resulting in a chemical burn. The confined environment and perspiration associated with the domestic dispute sought to aggravate the physiological response. Following exposure to CS patients should be well aerated, and contaminated clothes removed. In the UK, blowing dry air from a hair dryer to force evaporation is the preferred method for facial exposure,5 while irrigation with normal saline to the rest of the body can be used.1 CS is known to have other serious toxic side effects such as miscarriage, hepatitis, pneumonitis and reactive airway dysfunction syndrome (recurrent cough and wheezing).2 Use of CS in a confined space is not advised due to the increased risk of severe toxic reaction.

Facing inwards and outwards? Institutional racism, race equality and the role of Black and Asian professional associations

This article considers the role and influence of black and Asian professional associations in the criminal justice services, five years on from the pivotal Lawrence Inquiry (1999) and its assertion that ‘institutional racism’ was endemic in the British police service. Drawing on interviews with Chairpersons of seven professional associations, and a small case study of the Association of Black Probation Officers, the article explores their internal supportive function in assisting members who have experienced various forms of occupational racism. A tentative proposal is made for black and Asian professional associations to develop their external focus to utilize members’ life skills and cultural knowledge to challenge the institutional dynamics of racism within the criminal justice services, and to engage more directly with local black and Asian communities. Such work can be conceptually framed by conceiving of ethnicity as a resource.

The King is Dead, Long Live the King: Tall Tales of New Men and New Management in The Bill

This article argues that the new styles of management and new styles of masculinity promoted in the discourse of new public management (NPM) are not offering anything new at all. Through a semiotic analysis of the characters and behaviour depicted in the British television police drama, The Bill, we are able to make this explicit. The visual aspects and the time constraints of television communication produce a condensed representation of larger and more covert social phenomena. The episodes we have selected depict a moment of rapid organizational change within the workplace and offer a rich site to explore the implementation of a new policing order and the related repackaging of hegemonic masculinity. In this respect, gender and genre are an inextricable mix and display a remarkable resistance to change.

Vers une réforme des pouvoirs de la police en Angleterre

The author discusses certain reforms to the law of police powers which are currently being demanded by the English police. He notes that the English police have long acted under a regime of limited powers. These have proven to be irksome, but they have also conduced to a regime under which the police use the minimum powers possible and rely considerably on public support in the fight against crime. The police however urge that further powers are necessary, notably powers to stop and question persons in public places and to hold arrested persons for interrogation concerning the commission of offences before charging the person or bringing him before a magistrate. These wide powers resemble those of certain other systems, notably France, the practical workings of which are comparatively little known in Britain. They are of doubtful legality in view of the European Convention on Human Rights. The author questions the necessity for and the desirability of such powers. He contends that they are apt to be abused, and that the French experience affords a guide to what might happen. He argues that formal powers are no substitute for public support. He fears that powers to stop and search will cause resentment, and that little countervailing practical benefit will result from them. As regards powers to detain persons before charging, he argues that such procedures will erode existing civil liberties safeguards and that certain proposed safeguards such as limiting the time available to the police for detention will prove ineffectual. There will be little time to inform defence lawyers of the nature of the case at an early stage and magistrates will probably support the police. If detention is to be allowed judicial permission should, as a general rule, be sought in advance from a High Court Judge. Here he advances a model based upon the experience of Cyprus. The author also considers, briefly, the modalities of interrogation. He considers that the suspect must continue to have a right to silence. He must also have the right to the timely assistance of a defence lawyer, a right which presently is too often subverted by the practice. The author considers also that thought should be given to the question whether a suspect should have the right to the assistance of a lawyer during police interrogation. The author concludes that in assessing the nature of and necessity for accretions and additions to police powers, the English should not lose sight of their historic attachment to civil liberties.

Irregular Marriages: Unorthodox Working-Class Domestic Life in Liverpool, Birmingham, and Manchester, 1900-1939

English police personnel records provide a perspective on working-class marriages not available in standard sources. Police officers were respectable workingclass men expected to uphold the reputation of the force both on and off the job, and yet 119 cases of irregular marriages appear in police records in Liverpool, Birmingham, and Manchester. Their affairs, separations, cohabitation, and other unorthodox marital arrangements clearly demonstrate that attempts to impose a strict legal model of marriage on police officers could not displace the more flexible ideas of matrimony still common to respectable working-class culture in the first half of the twentieth century.

Making Faces: Tattooed Women and Colonial Regimes

This article explores a criminal case in late-nineteenth-century Upper Burma, in which a British police officer named Chisholm was accused of forcibly tattooing the face of his Burmese mistress, Mah Gnee. The case is discussed with regard to the histories of punitive and decorative tattooing in pre-colonial and colonial South Asia, as well as British anxieties about the occupation of Burma. The article then analyzes the links between the body politics of tattooed women in Britain and Burma in the aftermath of the Chisholm case. From the 1880s to the 1920s, a period of severe economic and political strain for the British aristocracy, upper-class women of the metropole began to adopt the tattoo. This fad greatly disturbed continental scholars such as Cesare Lombroso, who associated tattoos with savage or criminal populations. Late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century British interpretations focused instead on the tattoo as a gendered marker of aristocratic crisis, a material sign of whether British aristocrats were fundamentally 'primitive' or 'modern'. The 'problem' of tattooed women, articulated both in the unstable territories of Upper Burma and in London's fashionable circles, underscored the complex (and uniquely British) historical connection between the downward spirals of aristocracy and empire.

From reel to ideal: The Blue Lamp and the popular cultural construction of the English ‘bobby’

Using the Ealing Studios film The Blue Lamp (1950) this article considers the shifting portrayal of the English police officer within the popular cultural imagination and how this has impacted upon attitudes to the police and their place within notions of ‘Englishness’. Drawing on a range of primary and secondary sources, I extend Clive Emsley’s (1992) seminal work on ‘the indulgent tradition’ of the English police by analysing how, in the immediate post-war period, a convergence of circumstances enabled The Blue Lamp to break with previous popular cultural representations. The article offers a series of insights into the deep cultural and interpretive work that had to be undertaken by Ealing Studios to produce PC George Dixon, the iconic image of the English ‘bobby on the beat’. It also suggests that despite this ‘Ealingization’ of the English ‘bobby’, for box office reasons audiences were also offered the metropolitan spectacle, glamour and turmoil of the chaotic life of the violent young ‘cop killer’ played by Dirk Bogarde.

Triage Decisions of United Kingdom Police Firearms Officers Using a Multiple-Casualty Scenario Paper Exercise

British police officers authorized to carry firearms may need to make judgments about the severity of injury of individuals or the relative priority of clinical need of a group of injured patients in tactical and non-tactical situations. Most of these officers receive little or no medical training beyond basic first aid to enable them to make these clinical decisions. Therefore, the aim of this study is to determine the accuracy of triage decision-making of firearms-trained police officers with and without printed decision-support materials. Eighty-two police firearms officers attending a tactical medicine course (FASTAid) were recruited to the study. Data were collected using a paper-based triage exercise that contained brief, clinical details of 20 adults and 10 children. Subjects were asked to assign a clinical priority of immediate or priority 1 (P1); urgent or priority 2 (P2); delayed or priority 3 (P3); or dead, to each casualty. Then, they were provided with decision-making materials, but were not given any instruction as to how these materials should be used. Subjects then completed a second triage exercise, identical to the first, except this time using the decision-support materials. Data were analyzed using mixed between-within subjects analysis of variance. This allowed comparisons to be made between the scores for Exercise 1 (no decision-support material) and Exercise 2 (with decision-support material). It also allowed any differences between those students with previous triage training and those without previous training to be explored. The use of triage decision-making materials resulted in a significant increase in correct responses (p < 0.001). Improvement in accuracy appears to result mainly from a reduction in the extent of under-triage. There were significant differences (p < 0.05) between those who had received previous triage training and those who had not, with those having received triage training doing slightly better. It appears that significant improvements in the accuracy of triage decision-making by police firearms officers can be achieved with the use of appropriate triage decision-support materials. Training may offer additional improvements in accuracy, but this improvement is likely to be small when decision-support materials are provided. With basic clinical skills and appropriate decision-support materials, it is likely that the police officer can make accurate triage decisions in a multiple-casualty scenario or make judgments of the severity of injury of a given individual in both tactical and non-tactical situations.

Imprint of the Raj: How Fingerprinting was Born in Colonial India (review)

Reviewed by: Imprint of the Raj: How Fingerprinting was Born in Colonial India Simon A. Cole (bio) Imprint of the Raj: How Fingerprinting was Born in Colonial India. By Chandak Sengoopta. London: Macmillan, 2003. Pp. xv+234. £15.99. It is widely believed that fingerprinting was invented at Scotland Yard. Far from being a mere antiquarian matter, this belief has even assumed some legal significance in a recent criminal case (United States v. Llera Plaza, 188 F.Supp.2d 549, E.D. Pa. 2002). Leaving aside for the moment all the usual caveats familiar to historians of technology about what it means to "invent" something, the British claim is controversial at best: arguments can be made for both Argentina and the United States. That the British contribution to the development of fingerprinting occurred not at home but abroad, in India and Japan, is usually a mere footnote to the general acclamation of British genius. In Imprint of the Raj, Chandak Sengoopta shows that fingerprinting was a product, not so much of Britain, but of the Raj, of the imperial encounter between colonizer and colonized. The locus of British inventiveness in the area of personal identification was no mere coincidence. Fingerprinting, Sengoopta argues, was like curry powder: "Developed in India but not indigenous, British but not evolved in Britain itself . . . incorporated into British tradition and then gradually re-transmitted to the world at large, blur[ring] the simplistic distinction we often make between home and Empire" (p. 6). There were two rival claimants to priority in the British contribution to fingerprint history: William Herschel, grandson of the Astronomer Royal William and son of the famous polymath John, and the Scottish physician Henry Faulds. For most of the past century, probably at the instigation of Francis Galton, Scotland Yard has systematically inflated the claim of the former and denigrated the claim of the latter. Sengoopta has uncovered interesting evidence to support the thesis that the slighting of Faulds was in [End Page 252] part motivated by payback for his temerity in taking a skeptical view of the Yard's reliability at forensic fingerprint identification. Recently, it has become fashionable to champion the long-maligned Faulds. Sengoopta bucks the trend by returning attention to Herschel. He finds that Herschel, whom I had always taken as a mere underachieving descendant of illustrious ancestors, was a profoundly decent man and an unusually just colonial administrator, an "honourable magistrate . . . one whose efficiency and integrity were lauded by Indians of the time as well as by recent historians of the indigo disturbances" (p. 70). It was in the wake of these disturbances (better known as the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857), and the contract disputes engendered by them, that Herschel came up with the idea of thumb printing as a way of linking written contracts to the bodies of those who executed them. Also valuable is Sengoopta's careful and nuanced discussion of how credit for inventing the Henry system of fingerprint classification—the most significant British contribution to modern fingerprint identification—should be allocated among the British police official Edward Henry and his Indian assistants Azizul Haque and Chandra Bose. Sengoopta shows that it was the British role as rulers of India that demanded fingerprinting as a way of keeping track of a native population that did not enjoy the liberties of Englishmen. Routine identification of civilians, as opposed to criminals, would have been unthinkable at home. "The body of the colonial subject, however, was another matter altogether" (p. 203). "Unquestioned authority went hand in hand with pervasive fears of being deceived by the populace," Sengoopta writes. "It is this curious combination of despotic rule and intense insecurity that is the ultimate explanation of the origin of systematic fingerprinting in the Raj as well as of the astonishing extent of its application" (p. 204). Imprint of the Raj is packaged as a popular history; instead of notes, it contains an excellent essay on sources. But Sengoopta, a professional historian of medicine, is too good a historian to be drawn into either the scholarly sloppiness or facile thinking typically associated with popularizations. Like the mentor to whom the book is, in part, dedicated, Roy Porter, Sengoopta is at...

The Coercive Impulse: Policing Labour in Interwar Greece

This article employs relational analysis to deal with the following question: since the Greek labour movement was organizationally weak throughout the interwar era, why was the state so tenacious in repressing it? Attempting to answer this question involves a brief account of the pertinent legislation, a sketch of the evolution of the security apparatus (paying particular attention to the role of the British Police Mission in reorganizing the Greek gendarmerie), and the presentation of the dynamics of state coercion (coercive frequency and intensity). It draws on British diplomatic records (PRO/FO) and a quantification of the coercion the Greek labour movement endured in the interwar period. It is argued that, contrary to a widespread view, state coerciveness did not signify misguided overreaction by state officials, but was structurally engendered by the convulsive unpredictability of the labour movement. Far from being merely haphazard or senseless, the coercive conduct of the state appears to have been both well-calculated and effective in undermining the labour movement’s dynamic by constricting political opportunities. On the other hand, this coerciveness exacerbated the labour movement’s politicization and its penchant for militant extra-legal action, despite its continuing organizational problems.

Between a rock and a hard place: the dilemmas of managing part‐time working in the police service

PurposeTo study the effects of the introduction of part‐time working on managing a police force.Design/methodology/approachThis case study involved in‐depth, semi‐structured interviews with part‐time officers in an English police force, their full‐time colleagues and managers.FindingsThe author illustrates practical problems which police managers face in ensuring they have staff in adequate numbers and experience to carry out the duties required of an organization which has to operate 24 hours‐a‐day, seven days‐a‐week and which has no way of knowing in advance what demands will be placed on it at any given time. The study focuses attention on the dilemma of legislation designed to improve the status of part‐time workers generally, and people's expectation of “family friendly” employment, with the traditional “command and control” needs of an organization such as a police force.Practical implicationsImplications for human resource management are identified, as the conflicting needs and views of manager and part‐time employees are explored. These conflicts are particularly difficult for HR to reconcile as part‐time and reduced‐hours working continues its expansion.Originality/valueProvides some useful information on part‐time working at a police station in the UK.

Policing by Degrees: Police Officers' Experience of University Education

The British Police was established as an artisan organization that would develop its own leaders. This fostered continuous debate on the quality of leadership and proposals for lateral entry, which elicited sustained opposition from the Police Federation and politicians. By the 1960s, intense pressures to change led to an emphasis on recruiting graduates and support for university education. The Essex Police decided to send officers to university full‐time, gave them free choice of subject and did not require them to stay after graduation. This article draws on interviews with officers who attended Essex University full‐time and it analyzes their experiences as students, their return to operational policing and their reflections on the impact of having graduates within the police service. The material raises issues about policing, leadership and education, and illuminates how the police organization has changed to a more sophisticated institution with well‐educated leaders, but without bending to lateral entry.

A Russian Bebel Revisited: The Individuality of Heinrich Matthäus Fischer (1871-1935)

SEER,Vol. 82, No.3, jUY 2004 A Russian Bebel Revisited: The Individuality of Heinrich Matthaus Fischer ( 87 I- I935) DAVID SAUNDERS AT a meeting in the Newcastle Socialist Institute on Saturday4 May I907, ComradeFischerdeliveredan addressupontherevolutionary movement inRussia.He saidthatatthestartofthemovementitwasalmostwhollyin thehandsofthenobles,andit wasonlysincei 90 I thattheworking classes hadtakena leadingpart.He gavean accountof theDuma,pointingout thattheSocialDemocrats wereadominating force,anditwastothatparty onlythattheRussianpeoplecouldlookforanyamelioration ofthepresent socialconditionofthecountry.He referred atsomelengthtothetortureof politicalprisoners,more particularly to what was knownas the 'Riga Museum',andsaidthattheseoughtto be madeknownin orderthatthe truestateofaffairs mightbeputbeforetheworld.A resolution waspassed to the effectthat the meetingexpressedits heartiestsympathywith the Russianpeopleintheirstruggle forfreedom,applauds thoselocalresidents whohavebeenassisting inthetransference ofarmsandammunition tothe revolutionaries, and emphatically protestsagainstthe confiscation of the cartridgesseized by the Newcastlepolice. It thereforecalls upon the authorities toreturnthecartridges totheirrightful owners. 1 A speakerwho held that the working classes did not start taking 'a leading part' in the Russian revolutionarymovement until i90I and thatfiftyor sixtySocial Democrats were dominatingthe Second Duma seemed to be overlooking the St Petersburgtextile strikesof I896-97 and about 450 other elected Russian parliamentarians.Perhaps,then, 'ComradeFischer'was ill informed.Perhaps,indeed, it isunreasonable to expect accuracyabout Russiafroma man with a Germanname in a speech to people in north-eastEnglandwho werepresumablyno better informed than he was and who, as fellow socialists,probably sympathizedwith him anyway. David Saunders is Professor of the History of the Russian Empire at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. He is grateful to the British Academy and the Research Committee of the University of Newcastle for financial support; to the Study Group on the Russian Revolution, the History Departments at the Universities of York and Newcastle and the Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle upon Tyne for opportunities to present oral versions of this paper; and to the anonymous reviewers of the SlavonicandEastEuropean Reviewfor some extremely helpful suggestions. I 'Meeting of Socialists', EveningChronicle (Newcastle), 6 May I907, p. 6. 626 A RUSSIAN BEBEL REVISITED It is more likely,however, that Fischerchose hiswordswith care, for in fact he knew his subjectwell. Although his parentswere German, he had been born and brought up in Russia and belonged to the very Russian 'workingclasses'whose aspirationshe was tryingto promote. As a metalworker,he probably considered I9O i more importantthan I896-97 because of the so-called 'Obukhov Defence' of that year, an event which sparkedoff 'thefirstmajorwave of metalworkerprotestin Imperial Russian history'.2When he called the Social Democrats a 'dominating force' in the Second Duma he probably had in mind the dramatic part that one of them had been playing in the recent and continuing Duma debates about the torture of political prisoners at Riga,3 for until shortly before his address in Newcastle he had been collaboratingwith Latvian subjectsof the tsar in that 'transferenceof arms and ammunition' from the north-eastof England to the Russian Empire which the British police had just exposed. He was actively involved, therefore,in the cause to which his addresswas devoted, and forthat reasonmay be worthlooking at more closely. He has not escaped the attention of historians. Indeed, he and Semen Kanatchikov were the two 'Russian Bebels' whom Reginald Zelnik discussed in a celebrated article of I976.4 Zelnik looked at Kanatchikov first, however, returned to him but not to Fischer in subsequent publications,5 and concentrated on Fischer's life in St Petersburgin the first half of the I89os (whereas the present article considers his life as a whole). Other students of early Russian social 2 Heather Hogan, ForgingRevolution: Metalworkers, Managers,and theStatein St. Petersburg, i890-I91 4, BloomingtonandIndianapolis,IN, I993, p. 52. Fierce denunciations of the government by I. P. Ozol', a Menshevik deputy from Riga, were among the highlights of the extensive debates in the Second Duma on the torture of political prisoners at Riga. See Gosudarstvennaia duma, Stenograficheskie otchety,I907 god, 2 vols, St Petersburg, I907, I, I906-13; 2, 700-I 6. 4 Reginald E. Zelnik, 'Russian Bebels: An Introduction to the Memoirs of the Russian Workers Semen Kanatchikov and Matvei Fisher', RussianReview,35, 1976, 3, pp. 249-89; 4, pp. 417-47 (hereafter, Zelnik, 'Russian Bebels'). 5 See A Radical Worker in TsaristRussia: TheAutobiography of SemenIvanovich Kanatchikov, ed. and trans. Reginald E. Zelnik, Stanford, CA, I986 (hereafter, Zelnik, A RadicalWorker); and Reginald E. Zelnik, 'The Fate of a Russian Bebel...

Communicating knowledge about police performance

This paper describes the organizational processes of knowledge acquisition, sharing, retention and utilisation as it affected the internal and external communication of knowledge about performance in an English police force. The research was gathered in three workshops for internal personnel, external stakeholders and chief officers, using Journey Making, a computer‐assisted method of developing shared understanding. The research concluded that there are multiple audiences for the communication of knowledge about police performance, impeded by the requirement to publish performance data. However, the intelligence‐led policing model could lead to a more focused means of communication with various stakeholder groups. Although technology investment was a preferred means of communicating knowledge about performance, without addressing cultural barriers, an investment in technology may not yield the appropriate changes in behaviour. Consequently, technology needs to be integrated with working practices in order to reduce organizational reliance on informal methods of communication.

Susan Sydney-Smith, Beyond Dixon of Dock Green: Early British Police Series

Susan Sydney-Smith, <i>Beyond Dixon of Dock Green: Early British Police Series</i>

Policing in South Africa

This article is a study of the introduction of local financial management (LFM) to South African policing. Four forms of institutional theory are used to interpret and understand this comparative study. The conclusion of this article is that the deliberate attempt to replicate the English experience in South Africa failed because of the different ideologies and value-laden beliefs that underlay the need for change and the different dynamics of power of the interest groups that were represented in the organizational structure. The taken-for-granted organizational processes that supported the implementation of LFM in English police forces impeded implementation in South Africa. A pluralistic model rather than a single institutional perspective is shown to be beneficial in understanding institutional impacts on organizations. In particular, different perspectives help in an understanding of how culturally derived norms of behaviour can be in tension with formal rules and how the formal structure must be adaptive to the environment and culture within which people cope with uncertainty by relying on established routines.

New Ways of Looking at the State Apparatus and the State Archive in Nineteenth-Century Ireland 'Curiosities from That Phonetic Museum': Royal Irish Constabulary Reports and Their Political Uses, 1879-91

This essay seeks to contextualise the intelligence work of the Royal Irish Constabulary, particularly in the 1880s, in terms of the wider British and imperial practice and, as a corollary, to reflect upon aspects of the structure of the state apparatus and the state archive in Ireland since the Union. The author contrasts Irish and British police and bureaucratic work and suggests parallels between Ireland and other imperial locations, especially India. This paper also defines the narrowly political, indeed partisan, uses to which this intelligence was put, particularly during the Special Commission of 1888 on 'Parnellism and crime', when government-held police records were made available to counsel for The Times. By reflecting on the structure of the state apparatus and its use in this instance, the author aims to further the debate on the governance of nineteenth-century Ireland and to explore issues of colonial identity and practice. The line of argument proposed in this essay is prefigured in Margaret O'Callaghan, British high politics and a nationalist Ireland: criminality, land and the law under Forster and Balfour (Cork, 1994).

Police Force! An Examination of the Use of Force, Firearms and Less-Lethal Weapons by British Police

Since the turn of the century the police use of firearms has become increasingly scrutinised by the press and public. To answer the increasing demands for better policing of firearms situations, the government and police forces of the UK have committed to the research of less-lethal weapons. This article strives to discuss how the police use of firearms may develop in the future with the introduction of less-lethal weapons. The discussion is based around three main themes: the development of the police use of firearms since the 1960s; the comparison of the main types of less-lethal weapons currently available; and a review of a Police Complaints Authority report into police shootings arguing that less-lethal weapons may have made a difference. It is concluded by proposing that a risk assessment procedure is created so that firearms officers can decide which weapon is best suited to each incident.