British Police Research Articles

A hierarchy of respect

Purpose – Interviews two black minority ethnic (BME) male youths who were raised in high knife and gun-crime areas of London. Design/methodology/approach – Considers whether feral youth behavior might have something to do with British youths’ need for respect. Findings – Quotes one of the youths as saying it is disrespectful to enter their territory without permission. Practical implications – Quotes the other as saying that BME male youths do not get respect from the British police, the politicians or the society and so do not have a voice. Social implications – Considers that society might therefore benefit from changing its attitude to BME youth. Originality/value – Contains the views of two BME young people who were prepared to be named in an interview that would provide them with the opportunity to air their views without criticism.

Preventing Political Violence in Britain: An Evaluation of over Forty Years of Undercover Policing of Political Groups Involved in Protest

This article offers a first academic evaluation of the Special Demonstration Squad and the National Public Order Intelligence Unit, two British undercover police units working for the Metropolitan Police Service at different times between 1968 and 2011. It provides a historical overview of their infiltration of political groups involved in protest for the purpose of gathering criminal and political intelligence aimed at preventing violence, public disorder, and subversion. It discusses the controversies surrounding these units, and the related institutional responses, and offers an attempt at understanding their operations within the remit of intelligence-led policing and against a political culture that prioritizes action over inaction in reducing risks and threats to the State and society.

Police use of discretion in response to domestic violence

This article addresses the issue of police officers’ use of discretion when responding to domestic violence. With reference to Ericson and Haggerty’s theory of risk-oriented policing, we collected data direct from information management systems in an English police force and conducted field observations with attending officers to explore the degree to which officers used discretion to interpret the national definition of domestic violence. We also considered how officers applied national standards for recording incidents and crimes. We found that considerable discretion was required to interpret the official definition of domestic violence, and that decision making in relation to recording or otherwise incidents and crimes of domestic violence was variable. Specifically, we found examples of domestic-related incidents not recorded as such, and examples of crimes either not or incorrectly recorded. The implications of these findings for policy and practice are discussed.

Crime Prevention Policy of the British Police : A Case Study of ACPO CPI’s Security Checklists

Crime Prevention Policy of the British Police : A Case Study of ACPO CPI’s Security Checklists

Dealing with the distress of people with intellectual disabilities reporting sexual assault and rape

When police officers interview people with intellectual disabilities who allege sexual assault and rape, they must establish rapport with the interviewee but deal with their distress in a way that does not compromise the interview’s impartiality and its acceptability in court. Inspection of 19 videotaped interviews from an English police force’s records reveals that the officers deal with expressed distress by choosing among three practices: minimal (e.g. okay) or no acknowledgement, acknowledging the expressed emotion as a matter of the complainant’s difficulty in proceeding (e.g. take your time) and rarely (and only if the complainants were apparently unable to resume their talk) explicit reference to their emotion (e.g. it’s obviously upsetting for you). We discuss these practices as ways of managing the conflicting demands of rapport and evidence-gathering.

Demobilised Soldiersand Colonial Control: The British Policein Mandate Palestine and After

Demobilised Soldiers and Colonial Control: The British Police in Mandate Palestine and After Former soldiers filled the ranks of the British section of the Palestine police, veterans not just of the Great War but also of the war against rebels in Ireland (1919–1921). This is an empirical study of the harsh reality of service in the Palestine police for these tough, demobilised war veterans. This article details the violence of everyday policing, including torture and a «dirty war», mining archival sources and contextualising this material within the British use of collective punishment across the empire. The Palestine police failed in its job of policing, necessitating the deployment of the Army to Palestine; with this collapse in police control the force became more violent. The article argues that policing methods from the Mandate period –informed by war veterans – continued after the disbandment of the Palestine force in 1948, both within Israel and in other parts of the British Empire where former Palestine police officers went to serve in the 1950s. In telling the full story of policing in Palestine, this article extends our understanding of inter-war colonial policing, including its impact on local people, and it makes useful connections to other colonial powers operating in similar circumstances to the British in Palestine, which extend our knowledge of imperial and neo-imperial histories.

The Discursive Construction of Evidence in Police Interviews: Case Study of a Rape Suspect

This article presents an analysis of the discursive construction of evidence in an English police interview with a rape suspect. The analytic findings differ from previous research on police–suspect interview discourse, in that here the interviewers actively lead an interviewee to produce defence evidence. The article seeks to make the following contributions: (i) it demonstrates the interactional mechanisms through which the interviewers co-construct the interviewee’s own version of events, and highlights the potential legal ramifications by focusing on the construction of one key evidential aspect, namely, consent; (ii) it lends weight to the hypothesis that interviewer agendas are strongly determinative of interview outcomes in terms of the evidential account produced, while making the important new contribution of showing that this is not simply a case of police interviewers being inevitably prosecution-focused; and (iii) it aims to provoke further investigation into the significance of interviewer discursive influence in cases where consent is at issue, against a backdrop of increasing numbers of rape cases being discontinued by the police at this early stage of the criminal justice process.

The Changing Pattern of Domestic Cannabis Cultivation in the United Kingdom and Its Impact on the Cannabis Market

With improvements in both technology and information, cannabis is being increasingly grown indoors for domestic use rather than being imported. This study examines 50 cannabis farms detected by an English police force and examines the characteristics of the 61 suspects associated with them. The study highlights a U.K. pattern in domestic cultivation, which is moving away from large-scale commercial cultivation, at times coordinated by Southeast Asian organized crime groups, to increased cultivation within residential premises by British citizens. Offenders range from those who have no prior criminal history to those who are serious and persistent offenders. The ramifications for law enforcement agencies and policy formers are discussed.

Evidence-Based Policing

It is a hallmark of a science-based profession that its members conduct and publish research. In her 2012 address to the Police Superintendents Association for England and Wales, the Home Secretary of the United Kingdom called on the British police to do just that. Since the Home Secretary is equivalent to the Attorney General of the United States or the Minister of Interior in many other countries as the chief elected official responsible for policing, her injunction to publish research is a major reflection on the police profession. This volume is one response to her injunction. It will not be the last. Police research was once the sole domain of professional social scientists. No longer. Police professionals now make major contributions to research, just as practicing professionals do in other fields. Medical research is full of practicing clinicians, many of whom split their time between research and practice. Surgeons are first authors of important research articles, with their statisticians in second authorship spots. This volume reflects an aspiration to see the same pattern develop in policing in which research leadership moves from academics to professionals. The articles in this volume are therefore as remarkable for their authorship as they are for their contents. Fully half of the authors are current or former police professionals. Five of the seven first authors of these articles are police professionals. All of the police professionals hold master’s degrees in evidence-based policing from the University of Cambridge, and one (Peter Neyroud) is a Cambridge PhD candidate—after commanding thousands of police officers in two large British police agencies. They are all in the vanguard of the kind of evidence-based police profession that the U.K.’s new ‘‘College’’ of Policing (a professional membership and standard-setting body founded in 2012) is designed to promote, by identifying and applying the best evidence of what works in policing for over its core membership of 200,000 U.K. police professionals (see www.college.police.uk) and academics from universities across Britain. Authors in this volume are also active in the Society of Evidence-Based Policing (SEBP; www.sebp.police.uk), whose 2,000 members globally are linked to universities on four continents and whose winter 2015 U.K. conference included presentations from police-research partnerships from nine universities and police services.

Strangers in the Village? Colonial policing in rural Bengal, 1861 to 1892

AbstractThe chief concern of this article is the organization and administration of rural policing in colonial Bengal during the last 40 years of the nineteenth century. It connects its design and implementation with the consolidation of India's colonial police force, while highlighting the ongoing negotiations made by the Bengal police in a wider colonial model. The article argues that the police administration of rural Bengal was shaped initially by the ordinary constraints of the colonial state which underpinned the design of the Indian police—namely its frugality and preference for collaborating with local intermediaries, a manifestation of salutary neglect. Yet, it highlights the role of Bengal's largely British police executive in renegotiating customs of governance and, ultimately, as an established model of policing in India. The article focuses, therefore, on ongoing and at times informal police reforms which were based upon notions contradictory to an official discourse about policing in India. This article thus contextualizes the development of rural police administration in Bengal in a strong tradition of police-led reform in the province. In so doing, the article redresses a traditional historiographical focus on the political origins and coercive function of the police, and problematizes current research which situates Indian policing within customs of British governance in the subcontinent.

The Black & Tans: British Police and Auxiliaries in the Irish War of Independence by D. M. Leeson (review)

Reviewed by: The Black & Tans: British Police and Auxiliaries in the Irish War of Independence by D. M. Leeson Peter James Cottrell Leeson, D. M. – The Black & Tans: British Police and Auxiliaries in the Irish War of Independence. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Pp. 318. The cycle of political violence begun on Easter Sunday 1916 which culminated in the creation of an independent Irish state in 1922 can still stir strong emotions and whilst memoires, histories and novels emphasising a Nationalist perspective abound; relatively little exists giving alternative perspectives. Even less has been published dealing specifically with the infamous ‘Black and Tans’ and ‘Auxies’ whose activities, despite the passage of ninety-three years, have come to rival arguments over British culpability for the Great Famine (1845-52) as “…the most emotive subject in modern Irish history…”(p.157). In seeking write about these controversial groups and scrape away some of the patina of myth, even after the passage of so much time, Leeson inevitably strays onto dangerous ground. It is, however, a foray to be welcomed. So, who were the eponymous ‘Black and Tans’? Such is their infamy in parts of Ireland that even one of the names used for this period is ‘The Tan War’ and the colours of the ribbon of the campaign medal issued to the conflict’s IRA veterans were inspired by them. Were they really the violent scrapings of English gaols; traumatised flotsam of the Great War; foreign freebooters wreaking genocidal [End Page 822] havoc across Ireland or does the truth lie elsewhere? By going back to primary sources, Leeson tries to find out. Ultimately, two things hamper his investigation. The first is that in reality, there was no such organisation as the ‘Black and Tans’, instead the term was coined by an unknown Limerick wag to describe newly enlisted policemen at a time when kit shortages reduced the RIC to making up deficiencies by issuing surplus Army clothing. The second is that nationalist folklore conflates the memory of these men with the ex-officers of the Auxiliary Division—the ‘Auxies’—who joined as Temporary Cadets on the princely sum of £1 per day, plus allowances. Whilst the men remembered as ‘Tans’ were, in reality men who had joined the RIC on short term contracts as Temporary Constables working alongside regular policemen the ‘Auxies’ were altogether different. Never fully integrated into the RIC, this expensive and well paid force was raised to “…wage a war to the death…” (p. 214) against the IRA’s guerrillas. As very little has been published that deals specifically with either group Leeson’s book inevitably adds to the historiography of the conflict; drawing together information that appears elsewhere as well as original research and making it available to the general reader. By focusing on the men who joined the RIC in October 1920, at the height of the War of Independence, Leeson is able to shed light on the sort of men they were. Unsurprisingly, the majority had seen service in the recently ended world war; most were also working class men in their twenties making them almost a decade or so younger than the average Irish career policeman. Whilst the RIC had never been an exclusively Irish force it did not actively recruited outside of Ireland until January 1920 as a response to losses caused by the IRA. Undoubtedly, the influx of thousands of ‘British’ recruits had an impact on the nature of, what had been, an overwhelmingly Irish Catholic constabulary but focusing on what Leeson terms the ‘British’ police he not only sidesteps the internecine nature of the conflict but also ignores one of the most fascinating, and indeed controversial aspects of both the ‘Tans’ and ‘Auxies’. Many of them were Irish. Leeson offers no explanation of why men like Cully Tynan O’Mahoney—father of Irish comedian Dave Allen, doyen of 1930s Dublin’s literary society and sometime managing editor of the Irish Times—joined the Auxiliaries, glossing over the fact the only ‘Tan’ to be executed by the British for murder was also a Dubliner, William Mitchell (Pp.199-200). They were not alone and by 1921 almost a quarter of those who joined...

On matters of balance: an examination of the deployment, motivation and management of the Special Constabulary

The Special Constabulary – a branch of warranted, uniformed volunteers with full police powers within British police services – has a long history. However, whilst it is an important resource for swelling the size of the warranted police service, it is firmly embedded in the mixed economy of policing and promoted as a practical response to state retrenchment and fiscal constraint; we know very little about the motivations of special constables, how they are deployed within the organisation or the management of this sizable volunteer force. Bringing together extant literature on these matters and drawing on the results of a small empirical study conducted in one English constabulary, this paper draws out implications for the recruitment and retention of special constables, their training and their supervision and oversight. It is argued that at the heart of the challenge of developing effective strategies for deploying, managing and motivating special constables lies the need to balance a series of competing needs. There is a need to balance flexibility, reward and appreciation, recognising that special constables are ‘amateurs’ giving their time for free, against rigour, regulation and ‘professionalism’, recognising the nature of the powers that they hold, that they are representing the police in the community and that their inclusion in the mixed economy of policing is not cost neutral.

‘Solvability’ and Detection of Metal Theft on Railway Property

This paper aims to assess the relative importance of the principal ‘solvability factors’ in detecting metal crime on the national rail network in England and Wales. It uses British Transport Police data for 4001 metal theft offences committed between 2009 and 2010. Seven main types of metal theft and 12 solvability factors were identified, which include, in order of importance, scrap metal dealer checks, covert police activities, vehicle registration checks, forensic evidence and witnessed offences. The likelihood of detection depended on number of factors present and their effect sizes, with the significant solvability factors accounting for 64 % of variation in detection outcomes. Number of solvability factors available in the case was a significant predictor of solvability with each additional factor boosting detection odds five times. There were notable, countrywide spatial variations in detection rates, some of which reflected solvability differences, while differences in investigative practice are also likely to have played a role. The study provides information for case screening procedures that would improve the cost-effectiveness of metal theft investigations by ensuring resources are directed at the more easily solved cases, not allocating resources to cases which are unlikely to be solved, and by ‘triaging’ lines of enquiry.

Identification on the street: a field comparison of police street identifications and video line-ups in England

A street identification or live show-up provides an eyewitness with an opportunity to identify a suspect shortly after a crime. In England, the majority of suspects identified are subsequently included in a video line-up for the same witness to view. In Study 1, robbery squad data from three English police forces recorded 696 crimes, the identification procedures employed and prosecution decisions. A street identification was the most frequent identification procedure, being attempted in 22.7% of investigations, followed by mugshot albums (11.2%) and video line-ups (3.4%). In Study 2, data of 59 crimes were collected in which suspects, identified in a street identification, were subsequently filmed for a video line-up. Across both studies, most (84%) suspects identified in the street were subsequently identified in a video line-up, indicative of a commitment effect, in which a witness conforms to their first identification decision. All suspects identified in two procedures were eventually cautioned or charged to appear in court. The ground truth of suspect guilt in these field data cannot be determined. However, suggestions are made for reducing the likelihood of a mistaken identification of an innocent suspect caught up in an investigation; all possible steps should be taken to reduce the inherent suggestiveness of the street identification procedure.

Robert Reiner: a pioneer in policing scholarship

This article charts the career of Robert Reiner, the pioneering British police researcher and prolific writer on mass media, popular culture, political economy, law and order, crime and justice. It surveys his life and work focusing on his contribution to the sociology of policing. The article examines Reiner’s empirical and theoretical studies of policing and the ways in which his work has shaped the discipline. The Politics of the Police, published nearly 30 years ago and now in its fourth edition, is the finest, most authoritative and comprehensive account of British policing in the post-war period and remains the standard work in the field. The article explores the historical, sociological, cultural and social-legal facets of Reiner’s work that have decisively shaped our thinking about policing, how it should be defined, understood and studied. The legacy of Reiner’s work is a tradition of policing scholarship that embraces a fully social and democratic sensibility of what the police are for in order to show how policing can best be performed.

Standing up for science: The antivivisection movement and how to stand up to it.

Animal research has been and remains crucial to the development of modern medicine. The reasons for ongoing research are manifold from finding ways to treat cancer to understanding the mechanisms behind neurodegeneration to developing new vaccines against HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases. Nearly all of us benefit from medical treatments made possible through animal research, and with so much at stake, it is important that scientists make the case for the importance of using animals in research. With animal rights extremism at an all‐time low, there has never been a better time for scientists to overcome their reluctance to talk about the benefits of their work. Sadly, polls show that opposition to animal research among young people, for example in the UK and USA, is significantly higher than among those aged over 65 [1], [2]. In my view, this is in part because of the large amount of misinformation propagated across the Internet by opponents of animal research—the “antivivisection” (AV) movement. Moreover, the past decades have seen bouts of intense activism—including harassment, threats and violence directed towards scientists—aimed at shutting down animal research. During the same period, the scientific community have worked diligently to replace, refine and reduce the use of animals in research (http://www.nc3rs.org.uk), making much progress; however, these efforts have not been sufficient to satisfy the passions of some activists. Part of the problem is that scientists rarely engage with those who are opposed to animal research, which can leave them detached from the need to justify or explain their work. This lack of communication also creates an information vacuum in the public sphere about the need to use animals. In a recent poll in the UK, only 31% of respondents felt “fairly well informed […] about science and scientific research/development” [2]. …

Adult Male-on-Female Stranger Sexual Homicide

Research into stranger sexual homicide remains limited as is our understanding of this crime, and this can hinder criminal investigations and the assessment and management of offenders. This study aims to address this. Using data gathered by various British police forces, this study presents a descriptive profile of adult male-on-female stranger sexual homicide in Great Britain in recent years. Along with demographic and occupational data on offenders and victims, the criminal histories of offenders are illustrated as are their offense behaviors. The results are discussed in light of similar research, and future directions and implications are considered.

The Black and Tans: British Police and Auxiliaries in the Irish War of Independence, 1920–1921 David Leeson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. xvi+294 pp. £30 (hardback).

<b><i>The Black and Tans: British Police and Auxiliaries in the Irish War of Independence, 1920–1921</i></b> David Leeson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. xvi+294 pp. £30 (hardback).

Police officer perceptions of harassment in England and Scotland

PurposeResearch has demonstrated that certain relational biases exist within perceptions of stalking. One such bias concerns the perception that ex‐partner stalkers are less dangerous than those who target strangers or acquaintances despite applied research suggesting the opposite.MethodIn all, 135 police officers in England (where stalking has been outlawed since 1997) and 127 police officers in Scotland (where stalking has been outlawed since 2010) responded to vignettes describing a stalking scenario in which the perpetrator and victim were portrayed as strangers, acquaintances, or ex‐partners.ResultsAlthough typical relational biases existed in both samples, Scottish police officers were less susceptible to these biases than English police officers. Victim responsibility mediated the relation between prior relationship and perceptions of stalking for the English, but not the Scottish, police officers.ConclusionsFuture work should examine whether these biases may be found in other areas of the criminal justice system, and how far they are influenced by policy, practice, and training.

Hair analysis to demonstrate administration of amitriptyline, temazepam, tramadol and dihydrocodeine to a child in a case of kidnap and false imprisonment

Amitriptyline, temazepam, tramadol and dihydrocodeine are prescription-only-medications that are rarely prescribed to children. Each of these drugs has a sedative effect on the central nervous system; their combined use could cause an exacerbation of the sedative effects. Amitriptyline (a tricyclic antidepressant) can be prescribed to treat nocturnal enuresis; temazepam (a hypnotic) can be used as a premedicant in inpatient and day-case surgery; tramadol (a synthetic opioid analgesic) is used to treat moderate or severe pain, though it is not recommended for children under the age of 12 years and dihydrocodeine (opioid analgesic), which is available in combination with acetaminophen (Co-dydramol®), is not recommended for children under the age of 4 years; in children over 4 years, a reduced dose is necessary. The North West Forensic Science Service Laboratory, Euxton, Lancashire, was asked by a British police force to analyze three separate hair samples, which had been collected from a young child following their discovery as a result of a large scale kidnap and false imprisonment investigation. After decontamination and segmentation (20 x 1-cm section), two of the three hair specimens were analyzed by liquid chromatography coupled with tandem mass spectrometry after alkaline (pH 9.5) extraction using methylene chloride/isopropanol/n-heptane (25:10:65, v/v/v). The entire length of each hair specimen tested positive for amitriptyline and nortriptyline (7–314 pg/mg amitriptyline; 7–318 pg/mg nortriptyline), temazepam (2–29 pg/mg), tramadol (60–2000 pg/mg) and dihydrocodeine (10–90 pg/mg) demonstrating that the child had ingested these drugs on more than one occasion prior to the kidnap. In this case, the child's mother and the mothers' partner were found guilty of kidnap, false imprisonment and perverting the course of justice. There are very few studies citing the concentrations of these drugs in children – especially children's hair samples. This case demonstrates the added value of hair testing and emphasizes the importance of using hair samples to complement conventional analysis.