Change in Policing, Changing Police

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http://anj.sagepub.com/ofCriminology

Australian & New Zealand Journal

http://anj.sagepub.com/content/28/1_suppl/62The online version of this article can be found at:

DOI: 10.1177/00048658950280S108

1995 28: 62Australian & New Zealand Journal of CriminologyDavid Dixon

Change in Policing, Changing Police

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Change in Policing, Changing Police

avi ixon

Introduction

Clifford Shearings contribution to the study of policing has been outstanding.

In a series of areas, his work has introduced new ways of seeing and

understanding. The collection which he edited on Organizational Police

Deviance

1981)

has become a standard point of reference for people trying

to move beyond the confines of standard analyses of official corruption and

misconduct. His work with Philip Stenning on private policing

1984, 1987)

criticised the orthodox identification of policing with the state in a way which,

in the light of subsequent developments Johnston 1992; Shearing 1992),

seems remarkably prescient. With Richard Ericson

199 1),

he challenged the

accepted normative conceptualization of police culture, and in its place

offered an account drawing on postmodernist theory which sees culture as

carried and transmitted by narratives and stories. With Mike Brogden 1993),

his study of policing in South Africa rejects the usual attempts simply to

import British and North American policing, and instead suggests that South

Africa offers much for us to learn. In each of these areas of study, Shearings

work demonstrates a concern for theory which so often has been lacking in

policing studies.

Private

and

public policing

In the paper above, Shearing draws from his work on police culture and

private policing in the South African context to propose ways of transforming

policing which are fresh and of direct relevance to those attempting to change

policing around the world. Not surprisingly, the analysis is controversial.

Popular policing is Janus-faced: one side is a communitarian ideal of policing

by and for a responsible civil society; the other is discrimination, vigilantism,

excessive punishments, and an absence of due process. Of course, the real

world is not dichotomized in this way. Despite their enthusiasm

for

communal

self-policing, Brogden and Shearing acknowledge the sometimes horrific

expressions of popular policing in black South African communities which

were allowed by the apartheid state to suffer appalling levels of serious crime.

Nevertheless, some critics have been harsh about the optimism in their

account eg Guelke

1995:419).

Getting away from the state is problematic in at least two respects. First,

South Africa exemplifies the malevolent effects of the state on its subjects. The

civil society

of

black South Africa has an admirable vitality and strength, but

it also bears scars of the disorganization and ideological pollution inflicted by

the apartheid state. Second, there is the paradox that change requires action by

the state, and positive involvement by state institutions in their own

Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, University of New South Wales, Sydney, 2052,

Australia.

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64 1995) The A ustralian and New Zealand Jo urnal of Criminology

trivial. Instead, Shearing and Ericson present these stories as the key to

understanding police culture. It is through telling and hearing them that

officers know how to act. Importantly, this account provides for agency:

officers are not cultural dopes, but make choices in performing police work.

Shearing makes clear the implications for police reform: in his view, most

efforts at bringing about cultural change have been ineffective because their

subject has been misunderstood. This account of culture is an excellent

example of the use

as

opposed to mere recitation) of theory. Many

criminologists who have been intimidated or alienated by postmodernist

theory will see here the value of theorising in this way. However, some

qualifications may be raised.

Their account provides a convincing way of understanding police activity

on the street. The construction and deployment of suspicion, in particular, is

much better understood through this type of analysis than simplistic

assumptions about cultural norms.

This

has important implications for the

legal regulation of street policing, which has often failed because its nature

was misunderstood by rule-makers Dixon et a1 1989). However, the rejection

of a normative conception of culture is taken too far. Contrary to Shearing and

Ericsons argument 1991:482), there are cultural rules for which the evidence

is not merely and tautologically) the activity which they are supposed to

explain. In my experience of fieldwork in policing, there are informal rules

which are expressed and experienced as prohibitions and directives, and

which are not merely retrospective justifications for action. Obvious examples

are rules of collective solidarity eg back up your colleagues and dont snitch

or dob) and rules of behaviour eg dont let a challenge to your authority pass

without response). There may well be stories which convey the same message:

stories and norms may be complementary. In challenging the orthodoxy,

Shearing goes too far: there would appear to be good explanatory reasons for

and no theoretical reasons against) developing a broad conception of culture

which includes both elements. For example, Janet Chan has done this in her

combination of insights from organisational theory with Bourdieus analysis

of habitus and field Chan 1996a; see also 1996b). This approach, which sees

police culture as constituted by interaction between the legal and political

context of policing and police organisational knowledge, provides a

sophisticated and comprehensive understanding of police culture.

Shearings rejection of normative accounts of culture finds some of its roots

in critiques of the conventional reform analysis by McBarnet eg 1981) and

Ericson eg 1981). They stressed the breadth of law as a resource, its crime

control commitment, and its role as retrospective legitimator of police action.

McBarnets work, in particular, had a major influence in shifting the focus of

policing studies. However, the limitations of this analysis have now to be

acknowledged. Her theory of law was never fully articulated, and remains an

underdeveloped combination of structuralism and radical realism which lent

itself to excessively deterministic conclusions Dixon, forthcoming chl). The

inherent problems are is exemplified in McConville, Sanders and Lengs The

Ca se f o r the Prosecution 1991). The controversy over interpretations of how

policing in England and Wales has been affected by legal regulation shows the

need for a more positive view of the role of law in policing, and consequently

for the prospects of using legal regulation s one of the tools of police reform


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Crime, Criminology and Public Policy

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Dixon 1992).Shearings analysis is rather ambivalent here. He acknowledges

that new rules are important because changing the framework within which

action can be justified does shape action. This accords with the argument in

Policing

for

a

ew

South

Africa

in which Brogden and Shearing include legal

regulation of state policing

as

a significant part of their program for change in

South Africa 1993:114).However, he goes on to say that the framework of

rules does not directly instruct and that this must be done via the creation of

new stories. While it is clearly true to say that rules are not self-executing, it

seems to me to be too narrow to claim that their influence must be transmitted

through stories.

An additional contribution to our understanding of culture is Shearings

insistence on the link between Afrikaner culture and police culture in South

Africa. He begins here to deal with one of the crucial questions in

contemporary police studies: how do we distinguish and relate apparently

universal and specific aspects of policing? His account allows police culture

to be seen as being remarkably adaptable to contexts, and as being able to

express varying cultural messages. The practical significance of this is that it

shows the need to focus on local contexts of policing ts social, political,

economic environments.

This

has particular importance in Australia, where

police culture is often used loosely as a reference to all that is wrong in

policing. Shearings account emphasises the need to see police culture as an

expression or extension of a broader political or social culture. This arises

most directly in relation to corruption. Australian states such as Queensland

and New South Wales demonstrate the need to see police corruption as

intricately related to broader patterns and traditions of corruption. Similarly,

responses to other police misconduct must take account of social attitudes:

authoritarian pragmatism has constituted a serious obstacle to the reform

process in Queensland in the very material shape of juries and magistrates

refusing to convict police officers of palpable offences in dealing with real

criminals Bolen 1996). The implications for reform are clear enough:

attempts to tackle undesirable elements of police culture have little chance of

success if the contextual culture is undisturbed.

Conclusion

Shearings paper introduces several crucial developments in the contemporary

study of policing. Instead of the orthodox focus on England and America,

policing elsewhere in the world is taken seriously. It is considered not just as

the appropriately grateful recipient of gifts from North and West, but as a

source of inspiration and education see also Findlay Zvekic eds 1993).

Secondly, a radical challenge is made to the identification of policing with the

state: policing is seen as not just a concern of, but also an activity carried out

by civil society. Thirdly, police culture is rescued from its status as little more

than clich6, and is subjected to critique and development. Fourthly, a concern

to use and develop theory permeates the work. Fifthly, there is an exemplary

articulation of the proper relationship between academic work and political

action. In all these respects, Shearings work demonstrates what is currently

best in policing studies.


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66

1995)

The

Australian and

ew

Zealand Jou rnal of Criminology

References

Bolen, J

1996)

Prospects for sustained police reform Current Issues in

Criminal Justice

forthcoming.

Brogden, M Shearing, C

1993)

Policing for a New South Africa

Routledge, London.

Chan, J (

1996a)

Changing police culture, British Journal of Criminology

forthcoming.

Chan, J

1996b)

Changing Police Culture: Policing in a Multicultural Society

Cambridge University Press, Melbourne.

Dixon, D

1992)

Legal regulation policing practice, Social Legal

Studies vol 1, pp

51541.

Dixon, D forthcoming)

Law

in Policing: Legal Regulation and Police

Practices Clarendon Press, Oxford.

Dixon, D, Bottomley, AK Coleman, C A, Gill, M Wall, D

1989)

Reality

and rules in the construction and regulation of police suspicion,

International Journal o the Sociology o Law vol 17, pp 185-206.

Ericson, R 1981) Rules

f o r

police deviance, in C Shearing, ed

Organizational police Deviance Butterworths, Toronto, pp 83-1 10.

Findlay, M Zvekic, U, eds 1993) Alternative Policing Styles:

Cross-Cultural Perspectives Kluwer Publishers, Deventer, The

Netherlands.

Guelke, A

1995)

Policing and the South African miracle, Social and Legal

Studies vol

4,

pp

413-19.

Johnston, L

1992)

The Rebirth o Private Policing Routledge, London.

McBarnet, D 1981) Conviction Macmillan, London.

McConville, M, Sanders, A Leng, R 1991)

The Case f o r the Prosecution:

Police Suspects and the Construction of CriminaliQ Routledge, London.

Shearing, C D 1992) The relation between public and private policing, in

M

Tonry N Morris, eds

Modern Policing

University of Chicago Press,

Chicago,

399-434.

Shearing, C D Stenning, P

1984)

From the panopticon to Disney World:

the development of discipline, in Perspectives in Criminal Law eds AN

Doob EL Greenspan, Canada Law Book, Toronto.

Shearing, C D Stenning, P, eds

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Change in Policing, Changing Police