Chief Inspector Research Articles

He Do the Police in Different Voices: The Rise of the Police Procedural

January–February 2012 | 9 F ilms, novels, and television episodes featuring realistic policemen and women as main characters are so common today that it is odd to consider how relatively uncommon they were in the first century of modern crime writing. As is usual with these “who’s on first” discussions, one can argue endlessly about who created the police procedural and propose various candidates, but 1948—107 years after the publication of Edgar Allan Poe’s “Murders in the Rue Morgue”—is the year in which a definite tipping point was reached. In March of that year, director Jules Dassin’s The Naked City was released. Filmed in a documentary style on location in New York City, the film begins with the narrator (producer Mark Hellinger) almost apologizing for its unusualness. This seems odd today, now that we are blasé to location shooting and the subsequent convention of unsteady, handheld cameras to simulate documentary realism, but the style of Naked City, perhaps realism in movies in general, was very edgy in 1948. Inrapidsuccessioninothermedia, successful police procedurals appeared. In March 1949 the drama Detective Story opened on Broadway. Written by Sidney Kingsley, the play centers on detective Jim McLeod and his ruthless attempts to bring down an abortionist. Italltakesplaceinthedetectives’squad room and is less focused on the crimes than on the price McLeod pays in his marriage and soul for being a detective. In June of the same year, the legendary Dragnet presented its first episode on radio, shaping all forms of fictional law enforcement to this day. Two years later in December, Dragnet debuted on He Do the Police in Different Voices: The Rise of the Police Procedural The cast of the BBC’s Prime Suspect, with Helen Mirren as Detective Chief Inspector Jane Tennyson. Crime&Mystery international j. madison davis NBC television and by 1954 was in a battle with ILoveLucy for the top-rated TV show. One Nielsen rating indicated that 16,332,000 out of 27,000,000 TV sets in the United States were tuned to the show on Thursday nights.1 An initial look at the differences between what is often called the hardboiled or noir detective story and the police procedural doesn’t reveal much. The police hero is a man moving down the mean streets, as Raymond Chandler puts it. He is a man of common background in quest of justice, but can only exact a small portion of it out of the unfragrant world we live in. Usually , the police hero is also as scarred as the hard-boiled private eye in his battles to make something, anything, right. Sam Spade pays an emotional price for turning Brigid O’Shaughnessy over to the police. There’s an ongoing ruefulness in Philip Marlowe’s loneliness . All this is in contrast to the joyful revelations that characterize the traditional puzzle-solving detectives of Agatha Christie, S. S. Van Dine, and Arthur Conan Doyle. Chandler points out how unrealistic the traditional mystery is, but by the late 1940s it was also obvious how unrealistic the hard-boiled private eye had become. By focusing on the police, creators hoped to reveal the real work of solving crimes. Naked City showed the police examining the crime scene methodically, reprimanding citizens and cops for moving the body or otherwise altering the crime scene. We see police taking photos, dusting for fingerprints, and doing the footwork to locate suspects. Dragnet adapted true stories from the Los Angeles police department. Creator Jack Webb rode with the police and listened to their language and professional terminology. “As director, story editor, casting chief, and star of the show, [Webb] purposely refrains from dramatic artifice,” Time wrote, “and thus achieves a different kind of dramatic effect.” Many of the stories Webb used were very slight; one episode involves the apparent theft of a baby Jesus from a crèche. There was little shooting and onscreen violence by private-eye standards. The usual definition of the police procedural is a crime story in which the ordinary processes and limitations of the police force are used to resolve the story question. Note that I did not say, “discover the criminal.” Many police procedurals hinge not...

Public order policing in South Yorkshire, 1984–2011: the case for a permissive approach to crowd control

The Metropolitan Police Service's handling of the anti-G20 demonstration on 1 April 2009 attracted widespread public criticism and indignation. Mass media coverage of the event emphasised how police officers had reacted to protesters in a sometimes violent and allegedly indiscriminate manner, and had resorted to the now familiar and controversial tactic of ‘kettling’ demonstrators into a confined space before detaining them for several hours. Media reports initially echoed police briefings in disclosing that the death of a male passer-by, unintentionally caught up in the event, was due to natural causes. Video footage of the incident subsequently contradicted this account, suggesting that the fatality resulted from an unprovoked attack by a police officer. Reports prepared by Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Constabulary have since called on the police to adopt a more permissive approach to managing political protest, predicated on a commitment to facilitating the right to protest. This paper lends weight to arguments in favour of such an approach by highlighting the experience during the last 28 years of South Yorkshire Police, a force which has not only revised its practical and philosophical approach to handling public dissent, but also developed a more open attitude in its dealings with the media in a bid to restore public confidence and staff morale, following nationwide controversy around the Orgreave mass picket of 1984 and the Hillsborough stadium tragedy of 1989.

Changes to educational policy and management in Wales: facing the “cuts” and new strategic challenges

Like the rest of the United Kingdom, Wales is facing a new challenge from the implementation of the Coalition Government’s cuts. The Welsh Assembly Government [WAG, renamed Welsh Government (WG), in May 2011] budget was reduced by £1.8billion over the next four years. WAG responded by introducing its own revised austerity budget which reduced spending on Education by 8%. At the same time, the performance of Welsh Education has been under severe strain as a result of a series of new challenges. These include the consequences of Welsh pupils’ performance in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), the failure to meet government targets projected in The Learning Country, funding disparities, the findings of the Chief Inspector’s Annual Report for Wales, the state of literacy in Wales, the re-organisations within the Department for Children, Education, Lifelong Learning and Skills [DCELLS, renamed Department for Education and Skills (DfES) in May 2011], the Thomas Review Report and the announcement of the Minister’s new twenty-point plan which will guide policy for the next four years. This paper will first put Welsh educational policy into context before considering each of these issues in turn and finally, projecting forward to the future.

Need, well-being and outcomes: the development of policy-thinking for children's services 1989-2004

This paper describes how government policy thinking about the well-being of children and young people developed between the Children Act 1989 and the Children Act 2004. These two Acts are milestone statements about how services to children in England and Wales should be delivered. It is an account informed by the author's own experience as a government adviser on children's social care over much of this period and supporting documentation. It traces the strands of government policy thinking about how to deliver services for children from children in need to the articulation of the five Every Child Matters outcomes. It argues that attempts to achieve coordinated service planning for children and young people played a significant role in the formulation of shared objectives and the articulation of child outcomes. However, it argues that looking at real outcomes exposes how children in the UK do relatively badly compared with other rich nations. It questions whether we can realistically expect our services to deliver significantly improved outcomes given the impact of enduring inequality in our society. This paper is dedicated to the memory of David Lambert CBE, former Assistant Chief Inspector of the Social Services Inspectorate in London, who died suddenly on 7 October 2010. He lent me articles to assist me in writing this paper.

Improving Prisoner‐Staff Relationships: Exporting Grendon's Good Practice

Abstract: Early in 2009, the newly appointed Director of Offender Management, South‐East Region, asked the Governor of Grendon to lead a flagship project to improve the quality of prisoner‐staff relationships in the region's prisons. A recent HM Chief Inspector's report on Parkhurst had been highly critical, while Grendon has been repeatedly praised by HM Chief Inspector for its outstanding and excellent prisoner‐staff relationships. The flagship project, now an innovation project, encompasses a wide range of initiatives throughout the South‐East Region, one of which seeks to identify aspects of the Grendon regime which could be distilled and transferred to other prisons in order to assist in improving prisoner engagement and interactions with staff. This article describes how the Head of Psychology at Grendon, along with a group of Grendon prisoners, have set about distilling aspects of the Grendon regime with a view to exporting them to HMP Isle of Wight. This work forms part of a developing link between the two prisons.

The Confident Constable: A Search for the Intense Simplicity of Trust?

Stan Gilmour is a Detective Chief Inspector with Thames Valley Police, England, UK. He is a Senior Investigating Officer within their Major Crime Unit and is a graduate of the University of Oxford’s Criminology and Criminal Justice programme. This paper argues that the police need to have a comprehensive understanding of the challenges they face, but thereafter they need to simplify the policing task in order to produce an excellent service experience, delivered in a fair and rights-regarding manner. To illustrate his argument, the author discusses some of the key terms that typify current discussions on public satisfaction in order to give a practitioner’s viewpoint. The author reinforces the claim that the delivery of excellence is simplified by focussing on Tyler’s (2003) Procedural Justice paradigm rather than a crime control model and that professional goals should be based on delivering Public Value Management outcomes rather than generating statistics to support a New Public Management regime. To spark further research, a question is posed: Are we only seeing half of the problem? If the police service is to be successful in offering trust, it may have to begin by democratizing trust—to include its own members in the pact that it seeks to create with the public it serves. This is perhaps the intense simplicity of trust; it begins in your own backyard.

A neglected and under-resourced age group

In her final annual report as Chief Inspector of Prisons Dame Anne Owers recently described young adults as ‘a neglected and under resourced age group’ (HMCIP, 2010). While her assessment relates s...

Crime Scene Investigation: The Chief Inspectors’ Display Rules

Television as one factor in the “cycle of role division” (Eagly 1987; Shields 2002) can aid to perpetuate traditional role attitudes as well as set new norms. The aim of the study is to examine gender differences in facial expression of emotion on TV as well as changes of these differences over time. A content analysis of 12 episodes of a prominent German crime series from two time samples (1979–1981 / 2005) was done by employing the Emotional Facial Action Coding System (EmFACS, Friesen and Ekman 1983). Results show that there are gender differences in stereotypically male emotions: Male actors express these emotions significantly more frequently than female actors, while the latter show more “social smiles”. These differences are reduced over time.

Archaeology and Politics in the Holy Land: The Life and Career of P. L. O. Guy

Philip Langstaffe Ord Guy's (1885–1952) career in archaeology began as Woolley's assistant at Carchemish and as Chief Inspector for the Department of Antiquities of Palestine during the 1920s. He is best known as director of the Megiddo Expedition (1927–1934), where he employed innovative techniques in balloon photography, and provided a highly influential identification of the pillared buildings found there as stables. He dated these buildings to the Solomonic era, sowing the seeds of a long-running debate over the role of the Bible in archaeological interpretation. Guy was later appointed director of the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem (1935–1939), initiating the short-lived Archaeological Survey of Palestine. After World War II and Israel's War of Independence, Guy became a senior figure within the fledgling Israel Department of Antiquities and Museums as Director of Excavations and Surveys. Active involvement in Zionist politics through his marriage into the Ben-Yehuda family was a controversial factor that impacted on his career within 1920s and 1930s Palestine. Recent archival research allows an assessment of Guy's double life as archaeologist and political activist and the degree to which these areas intersected. His name can be added to the diverse spectrum of archaeologists working in the Holy Land during this formative but turbulent colonial and post-colonial era.

Lord Bradley's review of people with mental health or learning disabilities in the criminal justice system in England: All not equal in the eyes of the law?

In December 2007, Lord Bradley was asked by the Government, in a six‐month period, to review court liaison and diversion schemes for mentally ill people. A year and a half later, and having extended the brief to encompass the entire criminal justice system, Lord Bradley has reported. The Government has now responded to Bradleys’ findings (Ministry of Justice, 2009) so it is timely to comment on the review particularly in relation to prisons in England. The English prison population is almost at its highest ever level and currently stands at around 82,000 people ‐ according to the Prison Service’s standard of certified normal accommodation, the prison population is now 8000 more than it should be. As HM Chief Inspector of Prisons, Anne Owers, has noted ‘activity and support from staff . . . were the two things thought to be most helpful by prisoners with mental health and emotional problems, in over‐crowded and under‐resourced prisons these essential elements of care are at a premium’ (HM Inspectorate of Prisons, 2007).

The Detective Novels of Qiu Xiaolong

CURRENTS The Detective Novels of Qiu Xiaolong Alan R. Velie Qiu Xiaolong isawriter zvhofitsthenewglobalized literary paradigm.His novels featurea detective, Chen Cao of theShanghai Police Bureau,who has a degree inEnglish literature and afondnessfor T. S. Eliot aswell as classical Chinese literature. The booksaredensewith literary allusions and discussions ofcurrent Western critical theory and itsusefidness,surprishigly,for solvingcrimes.Chen also uses traditional Chinese techniqueslikeBuddhist meditationand brings tohiswork a combinationofConfucian and communistdevotion todutyand country. he novels ofQiu Xiaolong transcend the normal American whodunits in that they X are saturated with literatureand literary theory.As the products of a Chinese American writer who was born and raised in Shanghai, now lives in St. Louis, has published in both English and Chinese, and currently writes inEnglish about China, his novels are excellent examples of the new globalized literature. Qiu was born inShanghai in 1953.He became a writer, publishing poetry, translations, and liter ary criticism inChina before coming to theUnited States as a Ford Foundation Fellow to study modernist poetry. Qiu earned a PhD in compara tive literature from Washington University, and settled inSt. Louis. Since his arrival in theUnited States he has published five murder mysteries, all centered inShanghai: Death ofa RedHeroine (2000), A LoyalCharacterDancer (2002),When Red Is Black (2004),A Case ofTwo Cities (2006), and RedManda rinDress (2007). Qiu's novels feature a highly literatedetec tive,Chief Inspector Chen Cao of the Shanghai Police Bureau. Chen, who majored in English at Beijing Foreign Language University, had hoped tobe a scholar likehis father, but thegovernment, which assigned jobs at the timeChen graduated, made him a policeman. Undaunted, Chen applies theanalytical skills thathe had honed by explicat ing thepoetry of T. S. Eliot to the task of solving murders. Itmay seem questionable that studying English literature would prepare someone to solve May-June 2009 155 Alan Velie, David Ross Boyd Professor of English at the University of Oklahoma, teaches the Bible, American Indian literature, and Shakespeare. He has written and edited ten books and lectured in Europe, South America, Asia, and the United States. He adapted this article on Qiu Xiaolong from a talk he gave at the conference co-sponsored by WLT at Beijing Normal University lastOctober. murders, but literarycriticism and detection are related,both logically and historically.Hermeneu tics, the art and science of interpretation,though as ancient as the Talmud in biblical criticism, is linked in literarycriticism?at least in theEnglish speaking world?to the use of circumstantial evi dence in legal proceedings, which began in the late eighteenth century.Using circumstantial evidence necessitated drawing conclusions from observable circumstances instead of relyingon the testimony of witnesses?in other words, it involves detec tion.The hermeneutic tradition inEnglish begins with Maurice Morgann, who wrote what amounts to a brief defending Falstaff against the charge of cowardice. Shortly afterward S. T. Coleridge and other English literary critics began using deductive practices to explore the psychology of characters in order to explicate literary works. Not long afterward theAmerican Edgar Allan Poe and Englishman Wilkie Collins introduced the detec tive into anglophone literature. It isworth noting at this point that although themystery novel seems today to be aWestern form, like somuch else in our world?gunpowder and printing, for instance?China had itbefore the West: Dee Goong An is an eighteenth-centurynovel based on the seventh-century detective Di Renjie. Westerners may know the work fromthe translationofRobert Van Gulik, CelebratedCases ofJudge Dee (1949). In theworks ofQiu Xiaolong, detective Chen Cao's reasoning skills, coupled with the knowl edge ofhuman behavior he derives fromhis study of classical Chinese and contemporary English lit erature,make him a highly effectivesleuth.Given the currentChinese policy favoring thosewith a formal education, Chen makes chief inspector in a very short time. He doesn't abandon his literary interests, however: he still writes poetry, and even finds time topursue amaster's inclassical Chinese literature in a special program at Shanghai Uni versity.His effortsresult inhis appointment as an executive member of theWriters Association. Qiu's books are worth reading formany rea sons?they are entertainingasmysteries; theygive a great deal of insight into the culture and cuisine of contemporary China, especially Shanghai, as China transforms (factories booming, high-rises sprouting, soy soup...

Asset recovery to reduce drug market harms

This article, written by a Detective Chief Inspector with extensive experience of asset recovery, discusses how asset recovery legislation can contribute to a harm‐reduction‐led approach to enforcement. Drug supply chains to the UK and the drug markets they supply are described. The harms they create are discussed and four key elements of the Proceeds of Crime Act (POCA) (2002) are outlined. Early results from the use of the POCA are promising.

Cosmic Chaos in The Secret Agent and Graham Greene’s It’s a Battlefield

Cosmic Chaos in The Secret Agent and Graham Greene’s It’s a Battlefield Malika Rebai Maamri (bio) Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent (1907) possesses some of the features of the hunted-man novel as written by writers such as Graham Greene. In The Secret Agent, Conrad dramatizes the tension between public time and individual freedom. Some of the malaise engendered by the new dimension of time can be found in this “tale of the nineteenth century,” as his dedication calls it (Secret). The key event of It’s a Battlefield (1934) is the disbanding of a Communist demonstration during which a policeman is inadvertently killed by Jim Drover, a bus driver, followed by the latter’s subsequent death sentence. The Communist leader, ironically named Mr. Surrogate, demands that Jim be hanged so that he can be used as a martyr for the Communist cause. Greene shows the reactions of a number of people to the event. Conrad Drover, Jim’s brother, and Milly, the latter’s wife, strive to help Jim, but in the end, betray the man they love. Conrad Drover becomes, like Winnie, tormented, guilt-ridden, and looks at the world from his own darkness and isolation. Gradually, as in The Secret Agent, guilt and hatred become a state of mind, and people seldom get justice because London—the center of Empire—has become the city of lost illusions. Both Conrad and Greene treat of the theme of the arbitrariness of justice or, as Greene has it, of “the injustice of men’s justice” (Battlefield 62). Conrad and Greene depict societies in which modern man is crushed beneath the fear of a political power that engenders social injustice, and the perverse effects these inequities can have on the different members of society. The issue, in both novels, is no longer how justice can be made but rather how it can survive in a world ruled by [End Page 179] unreason. In Conrad’s novel, the Professor, the paragon of perverse unreason, has suffered revolting injustice in prison, his resentment increasing his hatred of mankind so much that universal destruction becomes his sole purpose. Furthermore, there is an overlapping of identities in Conrad’s novel. Like Chief Inspector Heat, the Assistant Commissioner at times has similarities with the criminal classes. Hence terrorism and law enforcement become simply two sides of the same coin. The lapsing of law enforcement into illegality blurs the boundaries between the “healthy” and the “diseased.” The lack of communication among men increases mutual suspicion. Usually regarded as a fair man, Heat is nonetheless happy with loopholes in justice. Therefore in order to protect Adolf Verloc, he prefers to incriminate Michaelis. Inspector Heat of the Special Crimes thinks that “it would be stupid not to take advantage of legal facilities” (Secret 90). Ironically the police and administration investigation of the attack on Greenwich Observatory is focused on the fragment from Stevie’s coat found just by accident after the explosion, while the real culprit—the Professor—is left free by tacit assent of the police. The anarchists and the police are indeed accomplices, says the Professor: “Like to like. The terrorist and the policeman both come from the same basket. Revolution, legality countermoves in the same game; forms of idleness at bottom identical” (Secret 67). Such anomalies in the operations of law and justice are also found in Greene’s It’s a Battlefield. This world is inhabited by men engaged in battle, yet this “army” remains ignorant of the neighbor’s battle. The action and the setting are again reminiscent of The Secret Agent. Verloc’s counterpart is Mr. Surrogate, the Fabian Economist, who is indeed “nothing but social contradiction in [seeming] action” (Battlefield 44). Though he advocates social improvement and equality of opportunities, and though he feels compassion for the unfortunate, he actually withdraws from any real contact with human beings. He advocates sacrifice and yet is unable to put it into practice. He conceals his true nature behind the mask of Communism just as Verloc hides behind his work for the Embassy. Only Mrs. Surrogate knew her husband well. “The portrait of the Lady,” which hangs over his bed, is a...

Understanding Organized Crime: A Local Perspective

Detective Chief Inspector Stan Gilmour of Thames Valley Police has been involved in developing his force's response to the threat from organized crime, which includes the mapping of organized crime groups within his force area. In this paper, he examines the elements that have come together to press for a step-change in the way the police define, recognize and deal with organized crime. In doing so he explains the problems he has encountered as a police officer trying to grapple with the concept of organized crime. He will also explore some of the issues that have emerged, either as help or hindrance, in the difficult task of mapping covert networks. The thoughts expressed in this article are the author's own and not those of Thames Valley Police.

Endless Interrogation

This paper takes a revisionist look at the first episode of Prime Suspect (1991–2006)—hereafter known as Prime Suspect (1)— in what was to become a cycle of dramas, conceptualised, and in the first instance, written by Lynda La Plante, based upon the female Detective Chief Inspector character, Jane Tennison. Critical attention has hitherto tended to shift away from Brunsdon's (2000) ground-breaking work on Prime Suspect (1)'s “equal opportunities discourse” toward critiques which emphasise its noir, hardboiled and literary, traditions. The paper thus seeks to rehabilitate Prime Suspect (1)'s televisual—rather than derived—lineage, in an adapted form of dramatised documentary practice. By using insights drawn from Kristevan psychoanalytic analysis I undertake an analysis of the programme in order to demonstrate how the masculine police series drama genre may be not only intervened, but is ultimately deconstructed by, the abject female body.

Questions for the Chief Inspector

Questions for the Chief Inspector

Frontline Voice: P.A.J. Waddington Interviews Chief Inspector Oliver Wright

Frontline Voice: P.A.J. Waddington Interviews Chief Inspector Oliver Wright

Some reflections on risk assessment, parole and recall

A few high-profile murders by released prisoners, subject to parole and life licences, have drawn governmental and public attention to the process of the parole board decision to release an offender and the quality of supervision under licence by probation areas. Reports by the Chief Inspector of Probation indicate that, in some parts of the parole process, too little attention is paid by prison and probation staff and parole board members to issues of risk of harm, static risk, instrumental violence, conditions of release and the thoroughgoing end-to-end management of prisoners. This article discusses these issues and examines some of the changes in parole responsibilities since the Criminal Justice Act 2003. In particular, it looks at the impact of recalls to custody following a breach of licence requirements and extended sentence recalls.

Why the UK needs drug courts

Peter French has worked as a police officer and chief inspector for over 30 years. His experience in dealing with drug‐related crimes and a recent visit to the States has convinced him that the UK needs more, not less, criminal justice interventions. Drug Courts, he argues, increase treatment retention and offer greater flexibility to help people stay the course. Though they work for the US, with up to 75% success rates, will they work for the UK? Find out why Peter French thinks they will, with bells on.

On Closer Inspection: Learning to Look at the Whole Home Environment

It’s supposed to be a harbor, a haven—it’s home. But some home environments can cause serious health problems. Moisture and molds can inflame asthma and allergies. Broken steps can cause a fall. A leaky oil furnace can produce deadly carbon monoxide. Cockroaches and mice can produce airborne allergens that trigger asthma episodes. A variety of health professionals and inspectors may enter a home for one reason or other, but few are equipped to spot all the possible ways a house can hurt its occupants. Now a new government partnership aims to change that.