chapter three

TOWARD A CONCEPTUALISATION OF POLICEWORK

INTRODUCTION I

Celebrated as guardians of the normal, 'without doubt the most abused, the most unfairly criticised

and the :most silent minority in this country', the police are an inevitable fact of modern life. 1 The

police c~n be defined as those non- but quasi-military individuals organised primarily in terms of a

criminal context that forms the core of policing with a given mandate and powers for certain

purpose' or ends that is, ostensibly, for the 'public' good.2 Every institution is identified and

disting4ished from the other by its purpose and methods or means exclusive to its raison d'etre.

'The necessity to define the police gains salience in post-colonial democracies like India,

wherei~ police as an occupation is defined not only by its specific mandate for a purpose or ends but

also by its specific powers and its specific forms of accountability that's built up during the

authoritarian past that nourished a politically controlled repressive force. More importantly, they (in

italics dbove) fashion the reality of policing that constitutes police activities, police methods, or how I

the police accomplish its mandate. It is this specific form of policing- the police and their everyday

practices - that is the focus of attention. Hence, generalisations about the nature of policing should

rest ll"l;'ost securely upon the examination of the daily operations, specific to the rank-and-file

personnel that staff the police-station.3 Crucial and integral to the policework processes is how they

see and understand their social world in which they play their role and the consequences for the

comm:unities they police.

Thus, the stated framework of the study with focus upon what is described as 'everyday

policing' cannot be undertaken in isolation, but also in relation to the context upon which it I

impiQges. The research is concerned to establish the what and how of the routine policework; such

interest sparked off by the existing texts/literature that so conspicuously lacks any substantial

explanation of policework and, in particular, any adequate framework for understanding the same in

India;4

This study adopts a triangulation of methods to understand the 'what and how of

policfwork', namely, by focusing on the daily operations of the police at the police-station level,

undertaking a content analysis of the core document that is said to be a mirror reflection of all police

activities at the thana, called the 'Station Diary? investigative and observational study of the

ideniified police activities, etc. The study of the official documents of all the four thanas of a single

year :reveal various kinds of police responses and interventions, primarily initiated by citizens, that

1 Robert Reiner, The Politics of the Police, Wheatsheaf Books, Brighton, 1985, pp. 9, 143. 2 Ro)l R. Roberg and Jack Kuykendall, Police and Society, Wadsworth Publishing Company, Belmont, 1993, p. 13; R.K

Rashavan, Policing a Democracy: A Comparative Study oflndia and the US, Manohar Publishers, New Delhi, 1999, p. 225; David H. Bayley, The Police and Political Development in India, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1969, pp! 59, 97; Stephen Hester and Peter Eglin, A Sociology of Crime, Routledge, London, 1992, p. 149.

3 A tange of studies conducted by Anglo-American scholars of police studies like, Robert Reiner, Jerome H. Skolnick, James Q. Wilson, M. Banton, E. Bittner, M. Cain, P. Manning, M. Chatterton, R. Ericson, M. Punch, Grimshaw and Jefferson, et al. confirm the importance of the powerful cuning-edge level of the organisation. See Rajnarayan C~andavarkar, Imperial Power and Popular Politics: Class, Resistance and the State in India, c. 1850-1950, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1998, pp. 180-81; Mike Brogden, et al, Introducing Policework, Unwin Hyman, London, 1988, pp. 1-2; Robert Reiner, op. cit., p. 85; Mike McConville and Dan Shepherd, Watching Police, Watching Communities, Routledge, London, 1992, pp. 148-49.

4 Testimony to this lies in the supportive observations made by R.K. Raghavan, the then serving but currently former Director ofCBI, Arvind Verma, former IPS officer and currently an academic in police studies, and P.O. Sharma.

5 Fqr details on 'station diary', see Introductory chapter of this work.

85

determine the role of the police not solely as crime-fighters or law-enforcers but also as providers of a

range of services, the variety of which can be observed in the course of this work. Besides, other

techniques adopted by the researcher for this study will also help ascertain the role of the police. The

experience of participant-observation as also the interviews of the 'publics' provide critical

information on policework, at the same time it also confers evidentiary value to the SD entries and

corroborate the data obtained from other sources.

To provide an adequate understanding of the complex nature of police operations in a

liberal democracy with an emphasis on its impact on the community in which it operates, it requires

an attempt to integrate the theoretical discussions on the processes of policing, the critical research

findings, and the available historical evidence of police operations, to understand the specific content

of actual police practices, the relation between the police and the community and the impact of this

relationship on current police practices in a comprehensive yet analytic manner.

THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVE ON POLICING IN A DEMOCRACY

Policing is bedeviled by definitional problems owing to the origin and complexity of the contextual

mesh in which they operate. Thus, an agreed definition can be attributed to a functional aphorism.

'Policing is what people (in khaki, or whatever colour), police officers do'. fu Skolnick puts it: "For

what social purpose do police exist? What values do the police serve in a democratic society?"6 In

essence the question to be addressed is: What is policework? This encompasses two major

constitutive concerns: functions of the police and its work in a liberal, democratic setting. The

Anglo-American literature on police studies are besieged with the definitional problem as because of

the lack of consensus over the role of the police in their heterogeneous, liberal democratic societies.

Whereas policing in India is traditionally "low" in the minds of the public as well as of scholars.

There does not seem to be as much concern about the functions of the police in India in public

discussion. 7

Divergent and antithetical views prevail over police responsibilities, as a result not only that

a vast array of roles of varying nature dawn on them but lack of consensus has evolved sharp conflict

over the rationale for police action consequently contradicting its expected roles. Robert P. Rhodes

contends that perceptual difference on policework are frequently linked to contending role

expectations and incompatible ends, held by 'publics' and police per se.8 Conflicting role ascription

to the police as evident in the literature shows that policework is more complex, contradictory and

lacks any uniformity as the debate engages in prioritizing the functions. Though there is no

unanimity on the legitimate functions of the police, manifest and latent aspects of function together

with the array of mechanisms available for police operations within a given context constitute the

organic processes of policework. Bittner has probably put it most aptly as thus that the topical unity

in this very incomplete list of lines of policework is that, "the role of the police is to address all sorts

of human problems" when and insofar as their solutions do or may possibly require the use of force

at the point of their occurrence. But still the research evidence will be the source of identifying the

6 Jerome H. Skolnick, Justice Without Trial: Law Enforcement in Democratic Society, John Wiley & Sons Inc., New York, 1966, p. 1.

7 Paul G. Shane, Police and People: A Comparison of Five Countries, The C.V. Mosby Company, St. Louis, 1980, p. 24.

8 K.M. Mathur, Internal Security Challenges and Police in a Developing Society, RBSA Publishers, Jaipur, 1989, p. 9; Roy R. Roberg and Jack Kuykendall, op. cit., pp. 22-25, 30.

I

role the police is required to perform in response to the kind of problems it encounters and how it

go.Jerns the same that constitute policework, what Manning calls the "impossible mandate".9

The police holds out an "impossible mandate" owing to a historical problem of

appropriating an accurately articulated role that gets accentuated in a society that subscribes to

governance by rule of law. More so, the Indian police with a colonial legacy acquires significance as

'acrors in history as much in politics' because the legal context in which they operate within a

democratic political system is the product of imperial governance. Hence the challenge to the

de$nition of the police role as also to the nature of its work processes.

Policing thus, as observed by Chevigny, has always been a "governing political issue." 10 The

nature of the work will remain to be always contested not only for historical but more for political

rdsons because "we do not agree what it is that the police ought to do or because we want to

copceal from ourselves what it is that we ask then to do." Such contradictory reactions of 'is' and

'm;tght' gets bolstered in plural, democratic societies. 11

As gate-keepers of the criminal justice system, the police sets the process of criminal justice in

m~tion whenever it initiates any legal action against the violation of the law or in the prevention of

the same. The very idea of process underlies the locus of policework in a constitutional democracy.

T~e emergent questions that surround police powers and its operations within a context that

subscribes to governance by rule of law reflect the conceptual inconsistencies that inhere the position I

of the police in democracy. As democracy represents freedom and liberty, police represents limiting

such freedom, this understanding accentuates the democracy-police conflict. Thus as characteristics

o( a democracy and the concept of the police are potentially in conflict, the most critical question

would be: are the police to be principally an agency of social control or an institution committed to I

the rule of law. This point to the complex dilemma inherent in the task of policing in a democracy:

fdr instance, the police responsibility to maintain order in a "situational exigency" vis-a-vis the

opligation to follow formal-legal procedural requirements. Policing in liberal democracies will,

therefore, be always a tense one in governance, as it would involve issues embroiled with debate I

between law and order/order and freedom or liberty/order and coercion, etc.

Modern policing, perceived as the most difficult task that entails efficient enforcement of the

prohibitive norms of substantive criminal law, is regarded as an acceptable and legitimate form of

social control. 12 A general understanding of policing as provided by Brogden is that of an occupation

with a mandate for upholding the law. This implies enforcement of the criminal law and

maintenance of order when criminal violations occur. The powers to effect these require the police'

~iscretion, that is, to exercise the judgement as to whether a criminal or disorderly act has taken

9 1Egon Bittner, The Police Charge in Richard J. Lundman (ed.), Police Behaviour: A Sociological Perspective, Oxford University Press, New York, 1980, p. 38.

1d Paul Chevigny, Edge of the Knife: Police Violence in the Americas, The New Press, New York, 1995, p. 9. The term ' police was originally synonymous with all the internal governance of the state. The task of checking crime in colonial ' administrative perspective was a political challenge as it served larger political objectives of the British rule. Thus

policing crime was implicitly a political affair. See Surajit C. Mukhopadhyay, Importing Back Colonial Policing Systems? ' The Relationship between the Royal Irish Constabulary, Indian Policing and Militarization of Policing in England and

Wales, Innovation: The European Journal of Social Sciences, Vol. 11, Issue 3, Sept. 98, pp. 253-65 (Source: EBSCO I Database: Academic Search Elite).

1 ~ David H. Bayley, The Police in India, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. V, No. 45, November 6, 1971, pp. 2287-1 88.

12 Steve Uglow, Policing Liberal Society, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1988, p. 15, Also see Sowesh Pattanaik, , Police-Community Relations: A Case Study of Two Thanas in a District of Orissa, M. Phil Dissertation, (Centre for

Political Studies/School of Social Sciences), Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, 1995, pp. 70-71; Mike Brogden, et al, op. cit., p. 1; Roy R. Roberg and Jack Kuykendall, op. cit., pp. 30-31. The empirical analysis of policework will demonstrate the dynamics of its processes in actual practice.

87

place, which also makes police responsible, on many occasions, for defining criminality. And since

maintaining order in the face of conflict requires restoring a consensus, policework is also about

securing and maintaining consent, that is, to facilitate reproduction of order.

Policing can never operate entirely consensually - it is a mode of dealing with conflicts

through the potential use of legitimate force. Thus no form of policing could dispense with the

reactive elements, although it can aim to subordinate them within a package which makes public

tranquility' a priority. 13 Policing or policework, therefore, implies a range of functions, namely,

enforcing (and sometimes defining) the criminal law and maintaining order by persuasion if

possible, violently if necessary, that imply a need for various strategic functions, for e.g. intelligence

gathering-like activities, and securing consent, all directed towards a singular purpose: upholding the

general legal framework of the state. 14 But, in actual practice, as also theoretically, the forms of state

policework varies in time and place making it considerably more complex and less mechanical than

1 as discussed above. As suggested earlier that generalisations about the nature of policing should be

based upon the examination of the processes of policework at the quotidian level, a normative

understanding of the issues and questions involved in the very process of the nature of work it I

. engages in and the conditions in which it operates is felt needful.

WORK PROCESSES: A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK I

The dynamics of policework inspires a structural-functional approach over how to conceptualise

work processes as existing research evidence suggest that policework is more complex and 1

contradictory. For the lot of criticism of the police, that have come to acquire a regular pattern with

the increasing seriousness of the issues affecting policework, about the use of police powers and the

1 direction of police operations; the research concern evoked by the existing literature not satisfactorily

explaining police activity, more so lacking to offer an adequate framework for understanding

1 organised policework, is therefore to establish the processes that represent the specific content of

actual police practices.

What constitutes work is a complex amalgamation of a host of activities and interactions, I designed to make the organisation succeed within the framework of structure, policy and resources

to achieve its desired goals (that the study has brought out comprehensively as against the 1contrasting and conflicting conceptual perceptions about the police role provided in the available

literature) within a specific context. To conduct its affairs, the organisation depends on an

,arrangement that signifies the essential processes of operation.

Work processes are not merely methods of operation; some that are formal processes

statutorily laid down while others formulated by the organisation, deriving legitimacy from the I former. Though, the formally laid down processes expects the police to follow in the course of their

operations, deviations still occur. 15

Structural, cultural and environmental conditions form the totality of the contextual

framework that factors the actual policework. Conceptions and interpretations of normative

principles associated with policing also come to influence the very processes of actual police

13 Robert Reiner, op. cit., p. 211. )4 Mike Brogden, eta!, op. cit., pp. 1-2. Various studies by scholars and police practitioners give varying accounts of the

functions and role of the police. In absence of a stated official police mandate, it is necessary to explore and restate the ! approximate task of the police that constitute policework. Brogden appears to be more comprehensive in his discussion

on police and policing. 1? This study will examine the formal processes as statutorily laid down and investigate the 'deviations', if any, and then

seek explain them. Prior to it, it is imperative to conceptualise the possibility of such police practices that take place in an operational framework.

88

practices. Collectively, the substantive elements that require examination as potential structures for

the analysis of policework are law, work, and community- that subsumes not only the interrelated

syt of structural, cultural and environmental conditions that in fact fashions the messy realities of

policework processes, but both are isomorphic. 16

To grasp the unity and nature of organised policework is thus to examine the relationship

between its constitutive determinants - law, work and democracy that circle one another to form a

p~werful signifying set- under different conditions. That would help comprehend the complexity of

p<;>licework practices, its relationship to a determinate social formation, in all its significant diversity.

The relationship between the structures would allow a unified sense to be made of all the particular

e~pirical findings about policework that ranges from peace-keeping image of a beat constable-on­

pa:rrol to the more coercive forms of policework, though may be on view episodically. The key to

understanding the relationship is to be found in law, the fundamental determining structure which

as~igns the others their place. Centrality of law is derived, prima-facie, from the public conception of

thy police as agents of the state upholding the law. It is the law enforcing aspect of policework which

is ~een to define the nature of the relations between police and public, a part of the subject-matter of

this study. The police too embraces this common-sense conception of themselves; preventing or

detecting crime is the fulcrum of their self-conception. Besides, the overarching concern of 'order'

reinforces these conceptions. 17

Lavr:

The conceptions of the idea of law, as a core of the police function that posits the police to occupy

the· 'legal-repressive' space in modern society, as advanced by Skolnick, 18 Wilson, 19 and Reiss and

Bordua20 can be summarised as to embody a dual structure comprised of procedural law and

substantive law. The substantive part of the criminal law constitute the 'legal content' component

(the, actual content of laws) of the legal system that identify behaviour either required or prohibited

and 1 impose the sanction for failure to observe that law. It set limits to permissible behaviour and

dealk chiefly with the content of legal precepts. Substantive criminal law comprises of 'law

enfo:rcement' and 'order maintenance' aspects, the former applicable to situations which involve a

'violation of law in which only guilt need be assessed', the latter applicable to situations 'where, in

addition to legal infraction, there is a dispute in which the 'law must be interpreted, standard of

right conduct determined, and blame assigned'.

The procedural law, the legality component of the legal system that has a political function,

is de~igned to regulate the conduct of state officials charged with processing cases of violation of

subst;-tntive laws. Rules as guides, it deals with the process of law, e.g. with the problem of

jurisdiction, allocation of authority, nature and administration of sanctions, proceedings, and also

quesdon of justice.21

'

16 Rog~r Grimshaw and Tony Jefferson, Interpreting Policework: Policy and Practice in Forms of Beat Policing, Allen & Unwin, London, 1987, pp. 3-6, 13-15; Roy R. Roberg and Jack Kuykendall, op. cit., p. 29.

17 Roger Grimshaw and Tony Jefferson, ibid, pp. 3-4, 22-25, 290. 18 Jerome H. Skolnick, op. cit., pp. 6-7. 19 J.Q. :Wilson, Varieties of Police Behaviour: The Management of Law and Order in Eight Communities, Harvard

University Press, Cambridge, 1968, p. 84. 20 A.]. ~eiss and D.]. Bordua, Environment and Organization: A Perspective on the Police, in D. Bordua (ed.), The Police:

Six Sociological Essays, John Wiley & Sons Inc., 1967, pp. 27-28. 21 Roger Grimshaw and Tony Jefferson, op. cit., pp. 9-10, 15; Leopold Pospisil, Anthropology of Law: A Comparative

Theory, Harper & Row Publishers, New York, 1971, pp. ix, 1.

89

Law is a central concept in human society, without it indeed, there would be no society.

Where there is law, there should be agencies to interpret and apply the legal rules to a given

sit~ation. Hence, a legal system comprises of law (substantive and procedural) and an arrangement

of :agencies involved in the administration of the justice system. Law as specialised and

institutionalised forms of social control are subject to an inevitable course: it is manifested in a

de~ision made by a political authority (hence a political function), it contains a definition of the

rel11tion between two or more parties to the dispute, it has a regularity of application (universal), and

it is provided with a sanction.22

In a democratic society, however, there is as much attention to procedural and substantive

law as there is for the agency that uses law as an instrument of social control, for the maintenance of

o.r;der. The significance of police in democracy is best depicted by Jerome Hall as "the living

ef!!bodiment," an implementing arm of the democratic law. 23 Contextualising the working of the

law within a single institutional site of the legal system problematises two distinct phenomena:

distinction made between "law-in-the-books" and "law-in-action," a distinction animating

cpnceptions of law and its enforcement; and the other is by being subject to a given situation of

~bnflict or dispute and interpretation that laws and the nature of legality are defined and

developed. 24

fu a constituent of the legal system, the police as a class of authorities face the problem of

l,l1anaging divergent expectations of conduct as value conflicts of democratic society creates

situational difficulties affecting police's capacity, responsible to maintain order. George Berkeley best

described the difficult position of the police in a democratic society: "Democracy is always hard on

the police." Democracy is based on consensus that guarantees freedom, participation and equality.

The government exists to represent its citizens and operate with their consent. The police, an agency

,1of the government, conflict with some of the characteristics of a democratic society, in concept and

, in practice as their intervention in society is a response to the breakdown of that consensus, hence

,'their function is one of restrain, putting limits to freedom and also force compliance to obey laws.

' The democracy-police conflict described by Herman Goldstein is as follows: "The police , by the

· very nature of their function, are an anomaly in a free society. They are invested with a great deal of

, authority under a system of government in which authority is reluctantly granted and, when

granted, sharply curtailed."25

This conflict of values can be addressed by attempting to emphasize the importance of the

rule of law, a source of and a component of civilised life. The rule of law is the most important

means for dealing with the democracy-police conflict. Laws not only govern social relations, that is

interrelations in a society, but the relation between the governed and the governor is also based on

laws. Or in other words, laws represent not only rules that the citizens are supposed to follow that

the police are charged to enforce, but also that the police while doing so are supposed to follow in

their dealings with citizens. Law contains rules for the maintenance of social order. fu Jerome H.

Skolnick puts it, "the procedures of the criminal law ... stress the protection of individual liberties

within a system of social order." 'Social order' that Christopher Morris and Michael Taylor refer to

22 Leopold Pospisil, ibid, pp. ix-xii, 8-20. 23 Louis A. Radelet, The Police and the Community, Third Edition, Glencoe Press, California, 1977, pp. 73-74. 24 The problemarisation of law is derived from the formal definition of law as social practice as advanced by Hirst (P.Q.

Hirst, On Law and Ideology, Macmillan, London, 1979, p. 112) in Roger Grimshaw and Tony Jefferson, op. cit., pp. 6-7, 16.

25 Jerome H. Skolnick, op. cit., pp. 6, 17; Roy R. Roberg and Jack Kuykendall, op. cit., pp. 6-7, 25; Gary W. Cordner and Robert Sheehan, Police Administration, Fourth Edition, Anderson Publishing Co., Cincinnati, 1999, pp. 14-15.

90

as·: the public or collective good.26 The essence of the legal procedure is the decision-making process

an:d manifested in law is a decision made by a political authority that can interpret but not alter all

laws that is subject to this inevitable course. 27 Thus, police inevitably is concerned with interpreting

legality because of their use of law as an instrument of order. But "law", ostensibly, "is not merely an

insrrument of order, it may frequently be its adversary." The essential element of rule of law,. or its

synonym, the principle of legality is forbidding some and permitting other actions. Most essentially

thei.reduction of arbitrariness or constraints on the activities of the police is placed by the following

pre~ise of Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence:

Standards of conduct must meet stringent tests of specificity, clarity, prospectivity and strictly be construed in favour of the accused. The cognate principles of procedural regularity and fairness commands that the legal standards be applied so as to minimize the chances of convicting the innocent, protect against abuse of official power, and generate an atmosphere of impartial justice.

Besides, it is also contingent on the police that it is to the 'public good that they should be strong,

effective and efficient in preserving law and order and preventing crime'.28

Skolnick conceives that such requirement of maintaining order under the principles of

legality places an unceasing burden upon the police as a social institution to grapple with the

dilemma of order and legality. There are substantial incompatibilities between the two ideas. The

result: is compromise as on both accounts of law, the onus of such consequence lies on the police.

Demc\cracy' s ideological conflict between the norms governing the work of maintaining order and

the principle of legality provides justification for various demands upon the policeman, the

organi~ing and analysis of which constitutes policework processes.29

Order under law suggests procedural supremacy, that is, it is concerned not merely with

achievement of regularised social activity but with the means used, certainly with procedure. This is

because law implies rational restraint upon rules and procedures utilised to achieve order. Hence,

ideal of conformity gets subordinated to the ideal of legality. There may also be quite different

conceptions of order corresponding to the context and nature of the problem that relates to the

prevailit)g social conditions. Conceptions of order are, therefore, subject to varying interpretations

that infl~ence the appropriate modes of achieving it.30 Hence, the procedural requirements are also

subject to varying interpretations for an appropriate application corresponding to the existing social

conditions that contribute to conceptions of order held by the police.

The organisational bureaucratic emphasis on operational efficiency, effectiveness, initiative

and ideas of order stands in contrast to the emphasis of the rule of law on adherence to rules and

regulations, rights of individual citizens and constraints upon the governing agencies that are

susceptibl~ to abuse of those rights. Thus normatively speaking, the former set of requirements

though may rationalise the enforcementability of substantive laws, gets subordinated to the latter

that regul,ates the legal framework of police activity.31 Bur the laws itself as imponderables,

conceptually, provide the police with "the impossible mandate."

So!:;iological and legal scholars look at police-specific functions of the legal system that does

not constit~te to be an impersonal affair. It works in the midst of considerations other than those

26 Roy R. Roberg and Jack Kuykendall, ibid, pp. 8, 25, 265; Paul Chevigny, op. cit., p. 262; Jerome H. Skolnick, ibid, p. 7; Louis A.:. Radelet, op. cit., pp. 73-74. Representation of 'social order' is discussed in the introductory chapter to this study. ·

27 Leopold Pospisil, op. cir., pp. x~ 8, 14. 28 Jerome H. S)mlnick, op. cit., pp. 7-10, 12; Roger Grimshaw and Tony Jefferson, op. cit., pp. 276-77. 29 Jerome H. S)mlnick, ibid, pp. 6, 9-10, 17. 30 Ibid, pp. 9- 1.1. 31 Ibid, p. 6, 9.;10; Gary W. Cordner and Robert Sheehan, op. cit., pp. 16, 52-53; Roy R. Roberg and Jack Kuykendall,

op. cir., p. 9;

91

that: are "merely" legal or tormal. Police make decisions all the ume: when they encounter

"sit~ational exigencies," as also for prevention of any such disorderly situations to occur. It involves

the i,nterpretation of the dynamics of the situation at hand that define their role, respectively. The

fundamental feature of this policework is the notion of constabulary independence. The crucial

implkation of this is that policework is conducted within a discretionary framework Its meaning is

that 'under certain conditions when the law concerned lacks objective criteria to guide a police

pers~nnel' s judgement in problem situations, it contributes to the expansion of the legal basis of

police action allowing the police to exercise their own/independent judgement. Hence, discretion is

an inevitable part of policing that involves making choices and decisions based on a possible criteria

which include laws, organisational rules, their own values, beliefs and norms, political and

com~unity expectations, and the necessary available resources. It is seen that police do not enforce

substantive laws nor follow procedural laws fully, all the required laws all the time. It is not only

because of the lack of resources or that the public do not want all laws enforced all the time but also

that ~any tasks of the police are not related to enforcing laws and maintaining order. Hence,

selecdve enforcement is inevitable in policing as it entails that police has several options or methods '

of de~ing with the wide range of circumstances and situations that it confronts. Enforcement of law

is just, one means employed in policework, rather than as an end in itself. The discretion of using

formal and informal means also depends on the skills and resourcefulness of the police concerned.

Discre,tion though elusive for conceptualisation, is an element of law embedded in its ambiguous

structtj.ral expression that are formulated by conjuring up situations. It is invoked in real situations in

refereqce to the relevant procedures and thereby legally-relevant decisions are made by those that has

the power to induce or force the same.

' The myth of full employment and the reality of discretion creates ethical dilemmas for the

police. ' Police confront situations that offer more goal attainment than would be achieved by

enforcing the law, that is, ends of enforcement of substantive laws become so important or desirable

that it :overrides the necessity to observe means represented by procedural laws and organisational

guidelines in the maintenance of order. These ethical dilemmas of means and ends, as an offshoot of

the str~ctures of law reveals the discrepancies within and between its domains, illustrate the

imperative of studying the processes of police practice through empirical enquiry.32

The terms 'law' and 'legality' as employed for signification surrounding policework, is that

the law :Which defines the duties and powers of the police, is thus a product, at any moment in time,

of statu~ory enactment, common-law right and successive, largely court-based interpretations of

them. <;:onsequently, the legal structure as it relates specifically to policework need be neither

consiste1;1t33 nor coherent34• The procedural aspect of law shall be conceived not merely as a

unilateral set of legal constraints acting upon the functioning police personnel, but the provisions of

the sam~ provides the necessity to discern the legal powers of the police in different situations as the

powers ~iffer between situations, in certain situations being highly discretionary, in others less so;

hence the need for the knowledge of the degree of discretion embodied in these different legal

powers. This confers meaning to the prospect of law being more or less influential depending on the

powers available subject to particular situations. While situations determine legal powers of the

32 Roy R. Roberg and Jack Kuykendall, ibid, pp. 9-12,29-32, 176, 199; Gary W. Cordner and Robert Sheehan, ibid, pp. 18, 28-.31, 35, 52-53; Jerome H. Skolnick, ibid, p. 12; Leopold PospiSil, op. cit., p. 44; Roger Grimshaw and Tony Jefferson, op. cit., p. 273.

33 Laws can' be divergent and inconsistent in form and function and remain laws. 34 Assigning a definitive effectivity to legislation and legal practices means that law can outrun and define its discursive

and categoric forms.

92

police, it suggests that powers if highly discretionary, the less constraining will be the law, and vice­

versa.35

Therefore, the legal demands of the idea of the substantive criminal law as a unified body of

law operating a unilateral determination on the conduct of police officers depend on the situational

exigencieS or the offences that differ in several ways: as to their legal complexity (a function of the

number of legally significant factor they encompass), as to the degree of citizen involvement (as

witnesses) petitioners, aggrieved parties, etc. necessary to meet considerable legal requirements) and I

as also to their legal clarity. These differences ascertain the fact that the effect of the law on police

behaviour will be a function of the particular offences or situations with which they routinely deal -·

that would determine the requirement of the discretionary subjective judgement of the dealing

police personnel. 36

lihus, the legal structure constraining the police role is reduced to the dichotomous

distinction between the responsibilities for order maintenance as opposed to those for law

enforcem~nt; the idea of substantive law offer relatively dear (law enforcement) or more ambiguous

(order maintenance) guides to action. This implies that laws governing police practice are

'permissile' to not only give the police personnel a wide range of discretion to depart from idealised

values of the legal process which the law effectively condones or even demands, but also leaves

considerable leeway for the police culture to shape police practices in accordance with the exigencies

and pressures of the situations they encounter.

What could thus serve to initiate in delivering a general schema for our analysis of the

discourse lon policing is the concept of law. The discourse of law that provides a central discursive

framework for police activity functions as the starting-point for making sense of policework. It

defines t~e principal elements of the police task, as also orients the processes of policework, in

practice and in its entirety, as it organises the positioning and significance of the other structures:

work and .community. I

Work:

How the police understood their social world, their own role in it, and the consequences for the communities they police, is policework.

Crucial to the structure of policework is its practice located in the primary status of law as an

objective ind guide for the police. Upholding the law not only forms a mandatory objective, it also I

legitimises the powers of the police and authorises their operational independence. As a working

institutio~ of the law, a common characteristic of the criminal justice process is the decisions or

judgements made by designated status persons. It is conducted within a framework that inheres

discretion 1

under certain conditions, for example, when the law concerned lacks objective criteria to

guide an &fficer's decisions.37 Police discretion pervades all aspects of policework. It gains salience

from the fact that, firstly, the Indian police have always been unique on a comparative scale for

concentrating not only in the same organisation a variety of policing functions - crime prevention,

detection, peace-keeping, public order maintenance, preservation of security, investigation and

duties dur~ng prosecution, traffic, intelligence-gathering, etc. - but that within a single structural

level of the organisation per se, the quotidian level. Secondly, this level retains considerable

35 Roger Grimshaw and Tony Jefferson, op. cit., pp. 16-17. 36 Ibid. 37 Ibid, pp. 2f8, 290-92; Louis A. Radelet, op. cit., p. 73.

93

operational autonomy as the organisation has a special property that is universal, 'within it discretion

increases as one moves down the hierarchy'. 38

I

,' The police routinely exercise discretion m the way they use their legal powers as the

obligation to uphold the law is not possible absolutely due to finite knowledge, time and resources,

yet as sociological studies reveal that a strong measure of police discretion is both inevitable and

arguably desirable because the nature of policework involves a process of selective enforcement.

Discretion is inevitable factually because the volume of incidents that could be regarded as breaches

of the law would always outstrip police capacity to process them. Thus, the police would never have

adequate resources for full enforcement of every law, so the inescapable necessity for choice about

priorities. It is also inevitable as a matter of logic: translating general rules of law into enforcement

decisions in particular situations can not be mechanistic and automatic, but require a process of

inte~pretation of the meaning of rules, implying an inherently subjective element of discretion. In

addition, the exercise of discretion is also desirable in principle, to avoid the oppressiveness of

involving the full panoply of criminal law to deal with incidents which were commonly regarded as

not ·warranting this. More so, discretion of the police acquire significance in situations that does not

per~it the luxury of time in enunciating deliberation for promulgation of deliberative decision.39

Police action is thus always subject to evaluation, making police discretion to be seen as

pot~ntially problematic. This is because of the understanding that full enforcement of all laws at all

tirnes is consistent with impartiality, while acknowledged discretionary judgement may be

challenged.40 The recognition that policing is not a mechanistic process of adhering or executing the

rules laid down highlights the existence of a legal variant and organisational variant of policework, in

the terminology of American legal realism - 'law-in-action' as juxtaposed to 'law-in-the-books'.

It becomes important to understand the operation of the law, in practice, that could be done

only by initiating an empirical research on the reality of policework. Routine operations have not

been the central concern of police studies and research in India because of the difficulties in terms of

research access to actual police practice. For this study, the researcher adopted the Median approach

o( symbolic interactionism: embraced the primary technique of involvement in the world of the

re~earched as participant-observer to obtain a sympathetic and objective understanding of the action

of others. In addition, a host of other techniques were also employed as stated in the introductory

chapter.

The structural idea of policework encompasses a social perspective that focuses attention on

t~e informal processes whereby the police as an occupational group is subject to a general disposition

to develop certain distinctive cognitive ways of looking at the world, the situations and events they

specifically encounter in their operational environment, that accordingly affects their behavioural

responses and establishes patterns of police activities. Such police practices are perpetuated by a

<:;ombination of elements that characterise the occupational milieux of the cutting-edge level of the

qrganisation. This kind of analysis of policework has important implications as it reveals the

determinacy of the occupational (colleague-group) culture. The first systematic formulation of this

perspective was provided by Skolnick, who in his seminal study referred to such an element that

38 Louis A. Radelet, ibid, p. 77; Roberr Reiner, op. cit., p. 85. 69 Mike Maguire, et al (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Criminology, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1994, pp. 723-24; William

de Lint, Regulating Autonomy: Police Discretion as a Problem for Training, Canadian Journal of Criminology, Vol. 40, Issue 3, July 1998, pp. 277-304 (Source: EBSCO Database: Academic Search Elite); Robert Reiner, ibid, p. 170;

. Roger Grimshaw and Tony Jefferson, op. cit., pp. 291-92; Louis A. Radelet, ibid, pp. 83-85. :40 Louis A. Radelet, ibid.

94

characterise the structure of work as 'working personality', a socially generated analysis not a factor

of individual psychodynamics. It thus seems more appropriate to use the term 'culture' for this

concept refers to the horizontal dimension of the roles, norms, customs, and values that concourse to

form ~he police subculture which construct and guide the attitudes and behaviours of the members

of the ,occupational group.41

' It is the legal context, characterised by constabulary independence and discretion in law

enfor~ement that provides the foundation for the emergence of an ostensibly autonomous

subculture, integral to the structure of policework. Discretion, 'the art of suiting action to particular

circumstances', is effectively guided by the occupational 'common-sense' judgements, in the absence

of clear-cut or appropriate legal guidance, informed largely by the values of the 'cop culture'. Action

comprise of personality (understood as a learned response to doing a particular kind of job in a

particular kind of organisational setting), attitudes (that are socially constructed responses to

situations rather than individual predispositions), and the ultimate behaviour (that is produced

becorpes an activity better understood by reference to the social processes which encourage the

production and reproduction of such behaviour). Action comes from particular interests defined

withih the occupational culture that includes an array of'recipe' rules which guide the police on how

to get the job done in ways that will appear acceptable to the organisation and the public. Hence I

action of the individual is considered to be a product of the interaction between the various

constraining forces present in the situation it encounters and the interpretive abilities of the

individual. The 'common-sense' (or 'recipe rules') of the police subculture is absorbed through a I

proc~ss of socialisation, that constitutes both formal and informal learning processes, rather than a

matt~r of predisposition.

Learning how policework is done involves:

1. The probationer in acquiring a formal knowledge of the law as the pnmary requisite and

embryonic images of what it is like serving the community as a police. But in this job it is not

always possible to work by the book (a plastic policeperson) as formal training is unlikely to fully I

prepare a police recruit for the wise exercise of police discretion.

11. 11he embryonic images are made more real in the next stage of training, as Bittner and Bayley

mention, that needs to focus much more "on the particularities of policework as experienced by I

serving officers and ...... analysing that experience and making it available to future personneL"

Thu~ much of policework has traditionally been learned on the job about the rules of the ground,

the acceptable ways of dealing with practical situations. The verbally transmitted folklore of the

station also implicitly prepare the personnel for unforeseen circumstances. "Common-sense plays a

large part in policework and that's the angle that the practical copper sees the rules from."42

Studies suggest that the socialisation of police recruits follow a typical pattern: after a

temporary liberalising effect of initial training, exposure to practical policing develops in the

41 "Culture" refers to features of human activity that are characteristic of different groups and determined by membership in the group. The occupational culture, relevant to the social environment in which police activity takes place, refers to

the behaviour, cognitions, and evaluations that people in a group share with one another that are distinctive to that (dccupational) group. It also comprise of the patterns of interaction between the members of the occupational group and the social setting iri which it operates. Jerome H. Skolnick, op. cit., pp. 42; Roger Grimshaw arid Tony Jefferson, op. cit., pp. 7, 18-19; Nicholas R. Fyfe, Policing the City, Urban Studies, Vol., 32, Issue 4-5, May 1995, pp. 759-78 (~ource: EBSCO Database: Academic Search Elite). Also see David H. Bayley (ed.), Police and Society, Sage Publication, London, 1977.

42 Mike Brogden, et a!, op. cit., pp. 6, 18, 30, 32-35; Mike Maguire, et al (eds.), op. cit., p. 725; Roy R. Roberg and Jack Kuykendall, op. cit., pp. 161-63; Gary W. Cordner and Robert Sheehan, op. cit., p. 40.

95

personnel a distinctive constellation of values and perspectives that is better understood as a cultural

adaptation to the exigencies of policework.43 To say that the constables do not remember what was

taught at the academy would not portray the effects of training in perspective of fairness for the

officers at the thana level too reveal that the actual place of learning is the technical environment

where they are to produce in response to a situation of their concern. The body of knowledge

necessary for application in work is that acquired while on the job over a period of time.44

Situations that the personnel have to deal with can not be simulated in training, nor can

every nuance of police response be duplicated. It is the skills that is required of a personnel

responding to a given situation to perform successfully that is primarily learnt informally from the

operational environment. The overbearing implications of constabulary independence and discretion

has rendered the realities of policework messy as more than straightforward application of any rules

laid down has become a rarity in any situation of concern to the police.

The rank-and-file staff of the police-stations and their subordinate posts were emphatic and

unanimous over the fact that discretionary judgement characterises most of the policework as

decision-making often amounts to a process of weighing the relative importance of various factors

that apply in a given situation. Therefore, policing is critically dependent upon occupational values

that effect how of the police action and not on the legal and organisational rules and norms. Such a

policing activity is instrumental in evolving informal mechanisms of police functioning, e.g.

resorting to informal sanctions for the settlement of disputes that in turn shape the methods and

strategies of policing. Police studies also suggest a lot about practical policing styles, as Wallace,

Roberson, and Steckler stress the need for organisational flexibility for initiatives on the part of lower

ranking personnel, suggesting that field personnel like those on-patrol are motivated to deal in their

style for the set goals.45

The above account Imparts credence to the oft-made argument that legal rules and

departmental regulations are marginal to an account of how policework is conducted. A central tenet

of the highly practical culture of policing is that 'you can't play it by the book'. Observational

studies have documented consistently that the decision-making process of the personnel on the

streets or at a problem-spot is not governed by the terms of legal discourse. This does not entail that

legal rules are irrelevant to or completely determining of police practice. Focus should be on the

question of the interplay between legal rules and police practice, rather than seeing these as

1 hermetically sealed distinct entities. 46

Research on policing by the Policy Studies Institute, London, expressed this issue well with

impressive clarity in terms of distinctions among three sets of rules:

Working rules are those which the police actually have internalised so that they become the effective principles which guide their actions. These derive largely from the informal culture of the police and bear a problematic relationship to official police policy and legal rules;

Inhibitory rules are those official rules which are perceived as likely to be effectively sanctioned, having a deterrent effect and therefore influence practice even if they are not accepted as legitimate by the cutting-edge personnel;

43 Mike Maguire, et al (eds.), ibid., p. 732. 44 Information collected from the field research at the four thanas. 45 Dilip Das and Arvind Verma, Street Cops as Problem Solvers: A Tale of Three Cities, Police Forum, Vol. 11, No. 2, April

2001, p. 11. :

46 Robert Reiner, op. cit., pp. 85-86; Mike Maguire, et al (eds.), op. cit., p. 730.

96

Presentational rules are those official rules which have no bearing on police practice, but which nonetheless are used to impart an acceptable gloss to accounts of the actions actually informed by different 'working rules'. 47

However, the dynamics of the interactive processes by which the police at the cutting-edge level

operate in the wider structural environment, informed largely by their occupational subculture needs

t!o be understood. The subculture has certain key features that equips the police personnel with a

day-to-day attitudinal and behavioural framework for its activities. Through this 'working

wersonality', the police learns how to resolve the dilemma of order and legality. It aids in explaining

how the social environment of police affects their capacity to respond to varying demands.

The policeperson' s 'working personality' is most highly developed in his constabulary role,

as every personnel of the cutting-edge level is required to serve as a patrolman. This common

background of constabulary experience, the archetypal representative of the 'normal' in policing, is I tatalytic to the emergence of a subculture as an occupational grouping.48

The process by which this subculture is developed has certain key characteristics, as provided

by Skolnick and Reiner. They being 'suspicion', 'isolation', 'solidarity', 'conservatism', 'mission­

action-cynicism-pessimism', 'machismo', 'prejudice', and 'pragmatism'. The researcher observed that

the rank-and-file share quite a strong belief in superstition. According to the officer-in-charge of the I Lekhpur thana, it is because as the police encounter situations that are mostly unpleasant, it makes

the police all the more superstitious in believing about the event of things bearing a reason.

What constitutes the structure of policework processes is the outcome of situationally

specific interactions, informed largely by the intervening concept of occupational culture, situated

~ithin a wider structural environment, legal, organisational and social.

The policeperson' s role contains two principal variables, danger and authority, which should

be interpreted in the light of a "constant" pressure to appear efficient.49 The element of danger is so

integral to a policeperson' s work that it makes the police attentive to signs that portends trouble with

rotential for violence and lawbreaking. As a result, the policeperson is generally "suspicious" as it is

required to face situations where the risk lies in the unpredictable outcome of encounters involving

people in a dispute or conflict. The policeperson' s conception of order in such situations is shaped

~y persistent suspicion. Suspiciousness help to develop a common view of the elements posing a

threat to 'law and order', and hence to themselves. The police thus tend to develop cognitive maps

~f the social world to readily predict and handle the behaviour of a wide range of others in many

different contexts. Police stereotyping of likely offenders is an inevitable tool of the suspiciousness

~ndemic to policework. Suspiciousness, considered by Skolnick as a healthy police attitude, is a

consequence of specific training, to perceive things or changes in its working environment that

~ndicate anything unusual as the probability of disorder. 5° As one of the constables of an outpost of I $ewaknagar thana narrated of their brief during patrol:

While on patrol in a given sector at a particular time the most imporrant thing to record is what constitutes to be normal, that is, every detail of life as it takes place in the area. For instance, he needs to know when the shops close, the way the colonies or houses look at different points of time at night, the movement of people, etc. So during patrolling, anything that sounds, seems or feels to be unusual alerts their sense of suspicion.

47 Robert Reiner, ibid, p. 86; Mike Maguire, et al (eds.), ibid. 4s Jerome H. Skolnick, op. cit., pp. 43-44. 49 Ibid, p. 44. ~0 Ibid, pp. 44, 47-48; Robert Reiner, op. cit., pp. 87, 91-92; Mike Maguire, eta! (eds.), op. cit., p. 733; Mike Brogden,

eta!, op. cit., pp. 17, 35-36.

97

~ inevitable aspect of policing, the individual policeperson's "suspiciousness," may not be an

atqtude of any personal experience that could be objectively described as hazardous but transmitted

frqm colleague's encounter with any such danger.s'

The element of danger is inextricably linked to another integral component of the police

mipeu, that is, authority whose essence lies in the potential use of legitimate force as a deterrent. The

en(orcement tasks of the police comprise of regulation of public activity, like monitoring the

mqvement of people during religious, social and political events or at times of regulating public

mo,rality, check on the 'down and outs', layabouts or 'hangouts' of youth, 'drunkenness', etc. that

tak~s place in public space. It involves authority-based problems as director of the citizenry invoking

restrain on their freedom. In such situation, the police enjoys much administrative discretion

ran~ing from effecting an arrest to merely issuing a warning to prevent any untoward occurrence in

the 'interest of maintaining proprieties of public order. But citizen's response to such restraint can be

one: of resentment towards the police that could be reflected in antagonistic reformulation of the

policeperson's role, e.g. utterances like 'the police should be concerned in apprehending criminals than

being after us'. But such resentment can be because of the citizens' suspicion of the policeperson' s self

righteousness, suspicion that police do not themselves conform to the moral norms they try enforce.

k a: result, such hostility only belittles the authority of the police as also accentuates the "dangerous"

portion of the policeperson' s role. 52 I

k visible embodiments of social authority, it exposes them to dangers from those

recal~itrant towards authority as well as to ambiguities and tensions in all their social relationships.

The 'researcher heard many such instances of danger to the police while on duty, and also found a

few FIRs to that effect lodged by the affected police personnel in their respective thanas. One such

FIR ~egistered at the Sewaknagar thana on the basis of a complaint by a constable reveals of a serious

affront to its authority and danger to its life while on patrol work. The gist of it is as follows:

The reporter, a constable, was out on patrol duty along with few of his colleagues. While on vigil at a public park, he noticed rowdyism by a group of youth. When he confronted them for creating nuisance at a public place, he was abused physically assaulted. No one from among the public came to his aid, until his colleagues heard him shout for help.

The predicament of the police can be further discerned from the following narration of another I

const~ble at a subordinate post of Sewaknagar thana:

While on patrol duty on a bicycle, the constable noting the furtive movements of a young man tried to stop him for questioning. The suspect defied him. The constable got more suspicious and compelled him to not leave before answering his questions. But the suspect turned hostile and attacked the personnel and fled. Though badly injured, the constable kept on pursuit and after a long chase and stiff resistance from the suspect finally overpowered him. He received no assistance from the public who stood as mute spectators despite his fervent appeal for help. 53

These :illustrations testifY to an extent a character of policework that makes the police undesirable to

associa:te with. The police believes that their status as agents of the state responsible for policing

should. not absolve the public of their responsibility towards it, rather in the least aid them when

most sought. However, the public's perception about policework being dirty and dangerous,

51 Jerom~ H. Skolnick, ibid, p. 48. 52 Ibid, p. 44, 56-57; Robert Reiner, op. cit., p. 88. 53 One of the three-fold duty that is legally obligatory on the members of the public, as provided ins. 37(a) of Cr.P.C, is

to pro,vide aid or a5sistance "in the taking or preventing the escape of any other person whom such Magistrate or police officer is authorised to arrest." In the kind of conditions the police operate as narrated by the constable, the non­coopetation of the public makes it more difficult. Despite the law in place, the public do not assist the police where legitinjately required and the police inexplicably has never invoked the necessary penal provisions as provided ins. 187 IPC against such omissions of the members of the public that amounts to infraction of law. In the reported incident, the police did not initiate any action for the disregard of its reasonable demand made on the public.

98

generate an apprehension that it would implicate them in such tainted activities, if involved. This

s~mehow makes the police feel that it obscures their humanity. 54 A glaring incident representative of

stich a phenomenon witnessed by the researcher is as follows:

The Sewaknagar thana received a telephonic information of an Unnatural Death case in its area. The researcher accompanied the police to the spot. The necessary 'inquest report' and 'dead body challan', as it was a case of 'suicidal hanging', was prepared by an officer that required at least a couple of witnesses to attest the said documents. Nobody from the neighbourhood that were watching the police proceedings volunteered for it despite repeated appeals of the dealing officer. Even the next door neighbours of the deceased refused to get 'involved'. One of the onlookers, when approached by the participant-observer to serve as a witness, quipped, "the police have been making so much of enquiry over a dead body, how can one expect that we'll be spared after getting involved in it." Even worse was that, out of fear, nobody even helped the spouse of the deceased to

carry the dead body onto the cycle rickshaw that he himself drove to the hospital.

l't is thus evident that the elements of danger and authority in policework impedes the police

personnel's gregariousness. Apart from the tendency to be suspicious of strangeness or oddity, the

police deliberately maintains a safe social distance from the public that is aimed at instilling an

element of fear/inhibition within the public that understandably fosters respect for the police, a

conservative outlook. 55 As part of that functional strategy, such social isolation is deliberately

.cultivated also with the need for 'impartiality' in policework, giving effect to constabulary

,independence and strengthening occupational autonomy.

The engagement of the police in dangerous and violent cases and the cumbersome processes

, of work intimidates the average citizen. Preoccupied with situations of potential danger, the police

'develops a perceptual shorthand to identifY certain kinds of people as "symbolic assailants," who are

, seen as embodying not only disregard for and attacks on the authority of the police but as the

' potential for disorder. The average citizen may not approve of this police perception and alienate

from its activities. 56

Danger and authority are thus interdependent elements in the policework. The element of

danger isolates the police not only from that section of the population that it sees as potential threat

' to the public order but also from the conventionally respectable citizenry who too thinks

participation as implicating themselves in dangerous policework. As a consequence, the effect on

police solidarity is comprehensible from the general police complaint of lack of public support in

' policework. The dangers of policework draws the police together as a group. Janowitz noted that,

"any profession ... continually preoccupied with the threat of danger requires a strong sense of

solidarity if it is to operate effectively." The element of authority reinforces, the impact of danger,

the social isolation of the police. Police themselves are aware of their isolation from the community

it serves that in fact does not make them feel accepted, and are apt to weight authority heavily as a

causal factor. This results in the police to develop resources within its own world to combat social

rejection. 57

All occupational groups, according to Skolnick, share a measure of inclusiveness and

identification, and police as an exceptionally socially active occupational group show an unusually

high degree of occupational solidarity. Several writers like Westley, Banton and Wilson have noted

that the experience of public hostility isolates the police and from the perception that the police

cannot be trusted they are drawn together and become dependent upon one another. 58

54 Jerome H. Skolnick, op. cit., pp. 53-54. 55 Ibid, pp. 35, 65, 95. 56 Ibid, pp. 45, 53-54; Louis A. Radelet, op. cit., pp. 86-87. 57 Jerome H. Skolnick, ibid, pp. 44, 50, 53-55; Robert Reiner, op. cit., p. 88. 58 Jerome H. Skolnick, ibid, pp. 52-53 (also see fn. 16).

99

The degree to which police may exercise authority are also important considerations in

und~rstanding the dynamics of the relation between authority and solidarity. It is not only a concern

of h~w much absolute authority police are given, but how much authority they have relative to what

they: had, or think they had before. Westley found that any reaction of the public like talking back,

con~idered as disrespectful, is also considered as a challenge to the police authority that can not be

ignqred as it constitutes danger to policework, so it would be appropriate to "punish" the citizen. 59

The researcher discovered that the common outburst of the police to a situation where they

do not get a response from a member of the public as desired, even the silence of a person on

que~tioned, is considered a sign of challenge to police authority and hence as misdemeanor rhat is

often met by impulsive abrasive reaction. A very common phenomena in police culture, universally

see~ to have been in use (non-directive too) that takes place at a subliminal level as part of their

exp:ressions, is being retributory to anything that appears threatening or defiance to their authority.

If, as Westley concludes, physical force is frequently a response to a challenge to the policeperson's

au~ority, so too a perceived reduction in authority result in great solidarity.60

Internal solidarity and social isolation are mutually reinforcing. Isolation is the product of

organisational aspects of the work system which is "always on duty" in India, hence erratic work

schedule, difficulties in switching off from the tension engendered by the job, aspects of conflicting '

demands, and the indifference, hostility or fear that citizens may exhibit to the police. This makes

th~ members of the police occupation develop similar cognitive inclination that manifest itself in I

th~ir behaviour, making it a socially cohesive group.61

Internal solidarity is a product not only of isolation but also of suspicion, as Reiner puts it

gqtphically: beset by all those threatening elements (of danger and authority interpreted in the light

o£ constant pressure of efficiency), the police become a solidary group.62 An instance of such work

e~periences that generate the tendencies of social isolation was narrated to the researcher by a senior

officer of Sewaknagar thana

While on patrol one evening, the officer saw a two-wheeler being driven at a dangerous speed with three pillion on it shouting obscenities. The police intercepted them on charges of roadrage, violating driving rules and creating nuisance in public roads. The officer chose not to initiate any legal action and they were let off with a warning. But no sooner had the same officer got back to the station after patrol work, he was reprimanded by his own senior of the thana, who had got the flak from a supervisory officer on the complaint by the parent of one of the errant boys, that belonged to the high and the influential of the society, alleging misbehaviour and harassment by the patrol party.

Subject to such difficulties in work, was heard a seemingly beleaguered policeperson's outcry:

We're a tight-knit community. We've got to stand by each other because we're getting it from all angles. We get it from outside, the general public, we get it ... from our own bosses."63

It is thus observed that solidarity coalesces from the intense shared experience of working in the

s:ame environment confronting the same dangers and pressures. Internal solidarity is also the need to

IDe able to rely on colleagues in a tight spot, and the resultant bonding from having done so serves as

':a protective armour" to shield the infractions of the individual police or that of the group from

.public knowledge.64 Justice Muktodhar Commission (1978) in Rameeza Bee case in Nallakunta

police station of Hyderabad was horror struck to note that the gazetted officers of the police force

~9 Ibid, p. 58; Roy R. Roberg and Jack Kuykendall, op. cit., pp. 164-67. ~0 Jerome H. Skolnick, ibid, p. 52. ,61 Mike Maguire, et al (eds.), op. cit., pp. 733-34; Robert Reiner, op. cit., pp. 92-93; ,62 Mike Brogden, et al, op. cit., pp. 35-36; Robert Reiner, ibid, pp. 93, 97.

•63 Quoted in Robert Reiner, ibid, p. 97.

:64 Ibid, p. 93; Mike Maguire, et al (eds.), op. cit., p. 733.

100

who were guardians of law and order stooped to the lowest depths in their effort to save their

subordinates, knowing fully well that they had committed the most heinous crimes.65

' Strong cognate expressions over an ostensibly disturbing event reflecting an assertion of

solidatity in an occupational group, as most intensely and commonly visible amongst the members

of the,police-station, is quite comprehensible that no matter who the one amongst them is a victim

but a definite issue threatens them all and they all feel equally implicated. At such moments, it is

norm.U to find the members equally disturbed. The researcher was witness to one such occasion

where: the entire Sewaknagar thana were palpably anguished over the news about a couple of their

colleagues being formally charged of committing atrocities and against it a cognizable case had to be

regist~red at the same thana under the direction of the SP by the in-charge of the thana.66 In that

situation, the melancholic laments of a senior police officer of the thana is noteworthy:

The IPS officers would never cease to mistreat the state police. They have no understanding of the nuances and ' intricacies of work at the thana level, nor the conditions in which we function and handle the kind of situations.

They issue all sorts of directions, mostly verbal that are often illegitimate, for us to comply, failing which is held as defiance or disobedience and thus will be subjected to all sorts of harassment including arraignment in false cases. Moreover, if we follow tHeir orders, the collateral danger is that the onus of the wrong-doings still lies

1 squarely on us and therefore exists the possibility of being implicated and proceeded against.

The overall picture thus emerges as one of an embattled occupational group at odds with the public, ;

its own organisation, and the principles of legality. This embattled image is a consequence of, to put

it sudcinctly in Manning's words, "an impossible mandate": the contradiction between public

expectation and organisational demands of efficiency, judged in terms of 'arrest' or 'dear-up rates'

on the one hand, together with the requirement of strict adherence to legal and organisational rules,

on th~ other.67

The police in a liberal democracy, faced with the dilemma of managing the demands of

legality and efficiency, resolves this conflict by illegal corner-cutting, that is, infringing the I

procedural rules in order to achieve the 'pressures to produce'. Cain suggests that though this

pract~ce evolves out of occupational necessity, illegality (police primary deviation) is engendered.

Rein~r contends that the twin traits of 'a sense of mission' concerning their work and 'a sense of

com~itment' to the values of real policing, feeds and reinforces each other even though they may

appdr superficially contradictory because the 'sense of mission' may be hidden behind a surface

vene9r of cynicism and resentment at the obstacles of inhibiting 'real' policework. The cutting-edge

level therefore faced with the pressure of producing 'results' or demand for 'efficiency', that originate

not dnly from external means but a basic motivating force within police culture, will result in

obviqus deviations from the principles of legality. 68

The space for this deviation between police practice and rule of law is created, of course, by

the low visibility of routine policework that often permits the police the freedom to interpret their

role. for instance, the commonly observed police tendency, as Bittner shows in his study, to under-

65 P.DI. Sharma, Social justice, Weaker Sections, and Police in India, in Jaytilak Guha Roy (ed.), Policing a District, liP A, New Delhi, 1992, p. 98.

66 It is pertinent to note that in such situation of adversity, all members of the thana were found to coalesce with the singularity of feeling of being in 'danger'. The researcher observed that, which is quite often a common sight in the poifce-stations in such moments, the older-hand was surrounded by the rest of the staff, including the not so new and the probationers, with all ears to the narrations of stories of yore. Such events have its functions too as the narration of the officer's experiences constitute the folklore of the station and the 'war-stories' that was transmitted verbally strdngthens the morals of the members and also impacts on the 'fledglings' as it serves as a socialisation process into the occupational culture and acquaints with the profane reality of policework.

67 Roger Grimshaw and Tony Jefferson, op. cit., pp. 7-8. 68 Ibid; Mike Brogden, et al, op. cit., p. 35; Mike Maguire, et al (eds.), op. cit., p. 735; Robert Reiner, op. cit., pp. 88-91.

101

I

enforce ~he law by dealing with many incidents in 'peace-keeping' rather than 'law-enforcement'

style has often come to be lauded as a wise and desirable approach.69

the low visibility of its daily operations strengthen the occupational culture and its apparent

autonomy to open up a discretionary space so that the 'working rules' of police culture bore almost

no rela~ionship to official rules. Police policies and legal procedures amounted only to

'presentational rules' specifYing how to render 'what-police-actually-do' invisible and unrecorded.

They were not seriously inhibitory because of the defacto power provided by the low visibility.70

This conception of a deep gap between the 'law-in-action' and 'law-in-the-books'

characte~ised as deviance is engendered by the conflict between order and legality. Thus, for routine

deviance! it requires 'cover up'. Hence cultural norms like secrecy and loyalty become important and

are reinforced in policework as it enables them to conceal their 'solutions' from external scrutiny.71

To mak~ it possible, the police tend to close ranks to shore up their own internal solidarity, and to

defend themselves as a close-knit, self-protective colleague organisation, what Pfiffner called 'guild

protecti9nism'. Such an organisation in effect renders the police as impervious even to the

supervision and exhortation from their supervisory ranks. 72

The operational environment of the police being so distinctly unique to itself in comparison

to that of other occupations in the conventional world that the police experience an exceptionally

strong tendency to find his social identity lay quite fixed wholly within his occupational milieu.73

Hence tHe issue of policework processes get confined to the question of the interaction between the

various constraining forces74 present in the situational exigencies confronted by the police within the

general social environment that influence the dilemma of order and legality.

The paradoxical co-existence of danger and authority universally found in the task of the

police utilavoidably combine to frustrate procedural regularity and fairness. For example, while I

managing conflict, the police attempt to maintain civic peace amid circumstances in which

contendi.p.g parties often disagree on what constitutes a fair settlement. In such situations, the police

is frequently aware of hostility toward it, of challenges to its authority as may be represented by

'disrespect', and of the ever-present danger of violence. Danger typically yields self-defensive

conduct, !conduct that strain to be impulsive because danger arouses fear and anxiety so easily that it

can result in a reduced ability to recognise alternative courses of action and to communicate, which

can lead ~o tunnel vision. Authority under such conditions becomes a resource to reduce perceived

threats or perception of danger rather than a series of reflective judgements arrived at calmly because

danger undermines the judicious use of authority. Hence the ability to be discreet is also affected. Ar;;

a result, procedural requirements take on a "frilly" character, or at least tend to be reduced to a

secondary position in the face of circumstances seen as threatening. Strongly motivated to control

the situation, without losing authority, the police as deems necessary adopts means, often without

too much attention to its by-the-book legality. It is willing to back up a challenge or hostility with

all the fo~ce it can command. The job as the police sees it is to maintain public order and restraints

69 Mike Brogden, et al, ibid, p. 36. 70 Ibid, p. 35; Mike Maguire, et al (eds.), op. cit., p. 730. 71 Cain tenJs the former as 'secondary deviancy' that is fed by rhe suspicion rhat whatever they will do will be used against

them hence to protect the need to protect rheir own interesrs and rhe latter that calls for sticking together in the event of criticism from outsiders is termed as 'easing behaviour'. Roger Grimshaw and Tony Jefferson, op. cit., p. 7; Mike Brogden) et al, ibid, pp. 34-35; Roben Reiner, op. cit., p. 93; Paul Chevigny, op. cit., p. 141.

72 Louis A. Radder, op. cit., p. 86; Mike Brogden, et al, ibid, p. 35. 73 Jerome H. Skolnick, op. cit., p. 52; Mike Brogden, et al, ibid, pp. 28-29. 74 'Danger', .'authority', 'pressures to produce', and 'the interpretive abilities of the police' interact to influence the police

action that is dependent on a given situation and its conditions.

102

upon the initiative will only, from the police point of view, reduce its capacity to fulfill its assigned

task. 75

:Thus, if the element of danger is less, its ability to undermine the element of authority is

propor~ionally weakened. But when the police and its authority is exposed to greater danger or

threat, the police will be expected to be less judicious, less discreet in the exercise of its authority and

complaints regarding the illegal use of its authority would also rise.76 It can, therefore, be suggested

that strilctural and cultural conditions influence the response of the police in any encounter.

· Police culture is a response to the inevitable problems of policework situations tn

conteaiporary societies. The culture of the police which inform their conduct is not a monolithic,

universal, unchanging or invariant entity. Though there are certain common tendencies which are

genera~ed by the basic features of policework in any contemporary industrial society, the strength

and style of their manifestation can vary over time and from place to place. This variation among

different organisations is a product of the particular social and political contexts in which they

operate, and may also be affected by deliberate management philosophies and policies of the

departf11ent. Informal rules are not clear-cut and articulated, but embedded in specific practices and

nuanced according to particular concrete situations and the interactional processes of each

encou~ter. Nevertheless, certain commonalties of the police outlook are found universally at any rate

to some degree because they are rooted in constant problems which the police face in carrying out

the ro~e they are mandated to perform in industrial capitalist societies with a liberal-democratic

political ethos. The police culture has developed as a patterned set of understandings which help to

cope with and adjust to the pressures and tensions which confront the police in such societies. The

major: analyses of police culture do not represent this as a freestanding phenomena; successive

gener~tions of police are socialised into it, but not as passive or manipulated learners. The culture

survives because of its 'elective affinity' with the demands of the "rank-and-file cop condition" .77

I

Structural Explanation of Policework:

Expla~ations of policework have to be rooted tn a more fundamental structural level which

deten'nines the culture itself. Cultural analyses gives an often accurate account of important

influ(inces on police practice. But they must be supplemented by structural analyses of the police role

(which underpins the culture), and of the context in which policework is carried out in order to

ascer~ain what countervailing pressures are present inhibiting the straightforward translation of

policee values into operational practice. It would give an account of the social functions of

polic~work.78 As against the background of the conception of police culture, as argued to have taken

the f0rm as it does because of the permissive legal structure, what is imperative to this discussion is

to an,:Uyse the sources of police attitudes and conduct.

Modern policework is structured by the problems of crime and disorder and organisation of

the police within the social order. But in practice, it is the centrality of the norms and values of the

occupational culture which inform the situational dynamics of encounters that provide the I

'organisational reality' of policework. As Reiner emphasizes, it is the dynamic relationship between

75 Jerome H. Skolnick, op. cit., pp. 43, 65-67, 89-90; Louis A. Radelet, op. cit., pp. 86-87. 76 Jerome H. Skolnick, ibid, pp. 67-68. n Mike Maguire, eta! (eds.), op. cit., pp. 735-741; Robert Reiner, op. cit., pp. 86-87. 78 Mike Brogden, eta!, op. cit., p. 6.

103

formal rules of law and procedure and the sub-cultural rules which are the guiding principles of

police condU<~t. 79

Within this highly permissive legal context, the occupational subculture equips the police

operatives with the knowledge of how to deal with their substantial (legally granted) discretion on a

day-to-day basis. Police culture is structured in a complex fashion by the place the police occupy in

the social order, not an independent variable determining police practice. It equips the police with

particular views of the social structure. Such views sensitize the police to particular features of

encounters that help define situations in particular ways. The police learns who to expect to be doing

what, where :and when. 80 Such learning equips the police with a set of particular stereotypes that are

situational tb produce a particular pattern of attention focussed on certain groups. Cicourel,

Wilkins, Ditton and Young suggest that the police as an agency of social control has considerable

latitude because of the permissive nature of the law in defining criminality and thus the ways

available to :deal with suspects lead to amplification of deviance. The police is equipped with the

understandihg of how to recognise and label certain act or behaviour as deviant. Thus, according to

the emphas~s placed on different criminal activity as per the organisational initiatives and decisions

depending 6n the nature of the problems at the local level, different priorities and different practices

are determined as also in terms of the available resources and manpower. The occupational culture

also equips, the police with the knowledge of what is appropriate or inappropriate behaviour in

specific cir<,:umstances by which it could constantly monitor and reflect on the situations balancing

the various ~demands made of it at any specific instance. 81

Po1ice culture both reflects and perpetuates the power differences within the social structure

it polices. , The cognitive social map of the police is differentiated according to the power of

particular ~roups. Such categories informed by police suspiciousness, stereotyping and amplification

of the apparent deviance of these groups reflect the power relations in society as filtered through the

specific prpblems of policework. The basic determinant of police culture is the role the police are

assigned, which is moral street-sweeping that takes place in those same public spaces regularly used

by the 'pe.bple'. Studies of policing in all industrial societies and throughout modern police history

show the social residuum at the base of the social hierarchy as the main grist to the mill of routine

policing. The lower the social class of a person, the more their social lives take place in public space

as they have restricted access to private areas for either work or leisure.82 Hence, in view of the

dominan~' elite groups, they constitute a threat to the tranquillity of the public space and, therefore,

considere~ a threat to their cultural norms, the values and the ways ofliving.83

'f;hey are police-relevant categories generated by their ostensible tendencies to cause

problems; and their congruency to the police value-system. Such groups have been graphically

described by Lee as 'police property'. A category becomes 'police property' when the dominant

powers df the society (in the economy, polity, etc.) leave the problems of social control of that

category 'to the police. Brogden observes that this category of the society present itself as the most

79 Ibid, pp; 156, 166-67; Mike Maguire, et al (eds.), op. cit., pp. 741-42; Robert Reiner, op. cit., p. 174. 80 In a pr~vious illustration of a constable's account on patrol work, the narration of what governed the activity was

basically the local knowledge of things as they take place so that the unusual can be easily discerned. 81 Mike Btogden, et al, op. cit., pp. 35-42; Robert Reiner, op. cit., pp. 91-92, 124. 82 It has lo;ng been recognised that police practice is fundamentally structured by the legal and social institution of privacy.

Privacy is socially panerned by class, age and gender. Those groups who have the least opponunities of access to the private:enclaves of living and their activities visibly take place in the open spaces make themselves more vulnerable to

be watched/surveilled. 83 Robert Reiner, op. cit, pp. 87, 92-94, 109; Mike Maguire, et al (eds.), op. cit., pp. 726, 742; Mike Brogden, et al, op.

cit., p. ,98.

104

accessible and 'processable' pool to fish as they excite the least general public sympathy and are the

most~ distrust, strata which has the least power to combat police harassment. Such groups find many

of thbir routine activities on or dose to the borders of illegality given the nature and thrust of the

law, and the more likely they are to come to the attention of the police for infractions. The

occupational subculture that embodies the popular stereotypes of the dominant culture helps

construct stereotypical ideals of normality (hence those infringing it are constituted as deviants) that

inform the police discretion in stigmatizing and criminalising of those social groups that are I

powerless, socially deprived and economically marginalised with high visibility. These structural

aspects are the hardcore of police conflict with what has come to be signified as the 'underdass' or

the 'dangerous class', that constitute the main clientele or the enduring targets of the police, in the

interest of organisational 'efficiency' and occupational 'ease'.84

Their social powerlessness not only makes them prey to the police, moreover it allows the

police to neglect their victimisation by crime. They thus tend to be overpoliced and underprotected.

The pattern of discrimination and the map of the population found in police culture are isomorphic

and bound within the wider structure of disadvantages in the society, socio-cultural, economic, and

political. The prejudiced attitude of the police is more a product than a cause of the differential use I

of po~ice powers, which is itself a result of the socially structured nature of the police mandate. 85

Thus, police practice has shown consistently that police discretion is not an equal

opportunity phenomenon. Some groups are more likely than others to be at the receiving end of the

exercise of police powers. Situating policework in its operational context show how elements of law

and rihe occupational culture of the police interact to produce the pattern of discriminatory police

attention. Police culture, thus, reflects the wider power relations and reproduces it through its

operations. The police is a microcosmic mediator of the relations of power in a society, facilitated by

the values of the occupational subculture that act as "subterranean processes in the maintenance of

power."s6 I

Polic~ng: A Moralising Act

Studies of police oppression and brutality centre on these disadvantaged groups that are considered

to be outside the notion of 'public propriety', a class-based construct of the dominant culture in the

society. According to it, they are considered to be a threat to the established social values, hence

deem~d dangerous to the social order. Police response to such stereotypes is thus a bias or prejudice

in the exercise of their discretion, maintaining a form of moral control over those problem

population, in the interest of efficiency: a function masked by a facade of' acceptable' police service.

In congruence with the above schema of policework that involves identification of enduring

targe~s is the issue of law and morals, that is, the assumption of the need for enforcing conventional

mor~ity through law as a means of maintaining society. Such activities of the police may well

initiate conflict in plural societies. Social patterning of policing attention on constructs of 'public

propriety' was with the normative purpose of remoralising the 'police property'. Society's use of

criminal law as an instrument for achieving moral conformity could well affect police capacity to

opera~e within the procedural constraints of law. The consequences of legal moralism are that it '

strengthens totalitarian tendencies by "criminalising" the environment that correspondingly alters

84 Robert Reiner, ibid, p. 95; Mike Maguire, et al (eds.), ibid; Mike Brogden, et al, ibid, pp. 94-99, 146-49. 85 Robert Reiner, ibid, pp. 91-92, 117-21, 135-36; Mike Maguire, et al (eds.), ibid, p. 725-26, 742; Mike Brogden, et al,

ibid1 pp. 18-19. 86 Rob~rt Reiner, ibid, p. 87.

'

105

the police conception of the environment. Such laws for enforcing morality would induce in the

police.' a more rigid definition of 'normality' (conception of order) which would have resultant effect

in hei~htening the perception and presence of danger in the environment, making the police more I

suspi~ious, hence intrusive as guardian of public morality. 87

Such dealings of the police in moral enforcement takes them into enclaves of forbidden

transactions, where police response take two characteristic forms of conduct antagonistic to the rule

of la~. One is that the police themselves may become a party to the illicit trade and tender

ratio~alities to justify such collaboration and means employed by 'responsible' personnel in such

activity. Going by the principles of economics, any activity that is forbidden such as prohibition

laws, 'not only encourage an increase in the purveyors of the forbidden but it also offers a "protective

tariff" to lure voluntary participation, thereby making such activities highly advantageous.88 The

other is the character of the laws to be enforced is such that it makes itself "unenforceable,"

frustiating the police with the constraining rules of procedural law. For instance, enforcement of

laws :in forbidden activities like prostitution, gambling, trade in illicit liquor, etc. for which there are

no citizen complainants, it is extremely difficult for the police to proceed by principles of legality.

For such "unenforceable laws" of"victimless crimes,"89 the police is itself obliged to play the role of a I

surn;>gate complainant for an anonymous (and perhaps non-existent) third party. It was found that

all tl;'le FIRs that were registered at the four police-stations, u/s. 47(a) of Bihar and Orissa Excise Act,

wen! on the complaint by the police personnel of the thana, who while on patrol duty seized the

con~raband, most often illicit liquor, in a stop-and-search exercise or raid at any place on suspicion

or on the basis of reliable information. The researcher did not find any FIR on so called "victimless

crimes" whose informant has been a member of the public other than the police. Sanctions attached

to such offences are so high that it also encourages the police to be zealous in enforcement by

developing "operational code" that though inimical to procedural requirements of law, are

con~idered as occupational necessity. The pursuit of policing such crimes in the process modify the

character of the administration of criminallaw.90

An instance of such policing anomalies as narrated to the researcher by an indignant third

par~, a victim of the forbidden activity that in fact was said to be the source of all social problems in

the· slum is as follows:

The trade in illicit liquor was conducted with the express knowledge of the police who visited the slum on a regular basis, but not to enforce laws rather to procure their share of the profits of the trade. Occasional raids were either pretentious, merely for an impression in the official statistics as well as in the public minds, or when the trader ever played truant in sharing the proceeds. After the trader legitimised its trade by obtaining a license, the visits of the police became irregular but raids and threats for severe action that were existent before was now directed at disrupting the business with the intent to reinvigorate the flow of gratuities. The police were totally indifferent to the adverse social implications of this forbidden activity. For instance, it caused enormous insecurity amongst the women folk against which the narrator had repeatedly reported to the police but to no avail as police response were ineffeccual. 91

Po,lice Attitudes towards Criminal Law:

Another important characteristic of police culture that tempers police practices is their perspectives,

attitudes toward criminal law and the emergence of craft rules that contribute to the building up of

87 Jerome H. Skolnick, op. cit., pp. 204-07, 227. 88 tbid, pp. 207, 227. 89 In case of laws that deal with offences against morals, also called social laws, the nuances of criminality is different.

'Herein, the persons affected are those who take part in the act on their own free will and are responsible for the suffering which is self-inflicted. S.R. Sankaran, Police Reforms: Need to Review Power to Arrest, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. XXXV, No. 47, November 18,2000, pp. 4082-83.

90 Jerome H. Skolnick, op. cit., pp. 207-11, 227. 91 .Story of a slum under Sewaknagar thana.

106

the o~cupational common-sense. The most of the debate that manifests in the operations of law

enfon:ement organisations is the dilemma of form and substance of law. The contention is not

merely the maintenance of order but the quality of that order and the procedures appropriate to

achieve such order. This dilemma makes forceful normative claims upon police conduct. An

understanding of the perception and attitude of the police toward criminal law will enhance in

deter~ining the complexities of policework.

There are apparently two major models of criminal process prevalent in the domain of police

perceptions and operations. The 'due process model' that views criminal process as conforming to

the rule of law, emphasizes legal guilt over factual guilt, although it considers 'frailty of authority

under pressure' as a possibility of human error. It considers the procedural criteria as sacred and that

the q1eans to determine the criminal process can only be those that have the sanctions of law. The

'crim,e control model', by contrast, emphasizes factual guilt. Its chief driving principle is 'efficiency'

through rational administration. This model stresses social control over individual justice .. Its

oper~tive norms are conditioned by principles of productivity and thus success gauged by the

quaritum of apprehensions and convictions effected in the context of mass administration of

crirn:inallaw.92

Universally, it is seen that the police are drawn toward the crime-control model for reasons,

as Skolnick summarises: the ability of known "offenders" to frustrate and harass law enforcement; I

the <;:ommitment of the organisation and the perceived demands and 'pressures to produce'; and also

the Strive to make evident to its superiors of its ability and initiative - all combine, in the context of

nontotalitarian norms about the initiative of workers (informed by police culture), to bring the

police to interpret procedural requirements as the major impediment to efficient functioning. 93

If the claims by the police that instances of factual guilt not meeting legal criteria in major

crimes, like rape, homicide, etc. are that what impels them toward the crime control model, are

within the realm of the possible, then there is equally, if not more important, the presence of the

pro~edural requirements in routine cases, where the character of the defendant is clear. The factors

contributing to this process could be examined by analysing the legal processing of cases of

cogpizable offence that could show how the self-conception of the police as a "craftsman"

contributes to the seeming irrationality of procedural requirements based upon the rule of law.

Policework as Craft:

The officer-in-charge of the investigation of a case, in Skolnick's perception, sees itself as a craftsman

ch~rged with carrying out assignments that, when stated generally, seem simple. But in their own

complex particularities, these tasks, however, seem to demand considerable skill. This is one of the

reasons why James Q. Wilson refers to policework as a craft, that what Mastrofski and Uchida speak

of as the knowledge of the police themselves - experienced in the practice of their craft that is I

different from classroom training that makes a professional whose work is a straightforward

application of that knowledge. Crafts are traditionally learned by way of apprenticeship. Police as

craftsmen entails that they always have to adopt their skills according to the materials and situations

92 jerome H. Skolnick, op. cit., p. 182. 93 ~bid, p. 183.

107

with,which they work, with each outcome being somewhat unpredictable and a little bit different

from any other.94

The tasks in investigation, for instance, are (i) finding facts and (ii) that finding them in

such· a way as to allow them to be introduced as evidence, that is, it can stand the test of trial in the

courl:, and (iii) finally, the facts must be strong to meet legal standards of proof and inference. It

shows, therefore, that the officer's own experienced judgement about the guilt is not enough, what it

pro~ides should also meet legal criteria to transform personal knowledge and feelings into a

conviction or acquittal. 95

I

· The researcher from its observations and investigation of selected cases from the four police-

statipns studied, that would be presented and analysed later, seems to agree with Sherman who in his

study of 'Policing Domestic Violence' seems to give credence to the existence of non-scientific craft

kno"Fledge in policework. While Sherman believes that officers can and should be trusted to make

clin~cal decisions in the field, Mastrofski and Uchida seem to disagree on the uncritical acceptance of

crafi: wisdom as the best to offer in terms of policework.96

There may be an apparent reluctance of the duo to romanticise the infallibility of the police

craft but on the basis of the empirical findings the researcher somehow groups the policing scenario

as it currently prevails as more craft than science. But the understanding of the utility of

craftsmanship and as a compulsive recourse to the frustrating procedural requirements is fraught

witn dangers. Evidence confirm that the bias and prejudice of the police, at times, in the exercise of

discretion to deliberately manipulate 'legal processing' is the work of craftsmanship in certain cases

that belittles procedural obligations.97

It can thus be opined that Sherman's trust on the police's craft knowledge to take decisions

appropriate to the situation it encounters, indeed has the potential to perpetuate discriminating

police action in the garb of law enforcement that amounts to police corruption. The civil libertarians

consider the cause of such police deviancy as the increasing dependence on occupational common-

' sense and the craft knowledge of the police to achieve the ostensible goal of maintaining order, to

wh,ch it is committed as well, because the pressures for efficiency trivialises the procedural provisions

con,sidered as impediments to policework.

The working basis for policeperson's conception of criminal law highlights its prejudice of

viewing the criminal procedures with an administrative bias of the craftsman. The police sees the

world in probabilistic terms, a function of suspicion that stimulates his discretionary powers to act

on 1the basis of judgements that it claims to be correct as it has the requisite expertise and specialized

abiJities to be the master of the trade. On the contrary, the police finds the system utterly

unjustifiable to have imposed a series of "obstacles" that impede the exercise of his expert opinion

and at the same time permit the offenders to frustrate the stated aims of the community as expressed

in substantive criminal law. It is interesting to discover the different meaning of the word "law" as

used by the police and by civil libertarians, from the moral distinction between criminal law and

criminal procedure as drawn by the former and that by the latter. Such understandings are a

consequence of the administrative bias of the police, visible in craftsmanship. Another conceptual

94 Ipid; Gary W. Cordner and Robert Sheehan, op. cit., p. 40; Stephen D. Mastrofski and Craig D. Uchida, Transforming the Police, Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, Vol. 30, Issue 3, August 1993, pp. 330-58 (Source: EBSCO Publishers' Database': Academic Search Elite).

95 ]~rome H. Skolnick, ibid. I 96 Stephen D. Mastrofski and Craig D. Uchida, op. cit.

97 The empirical findings are dealt with in relevance to the different functions of the police that are discussed in the following chapters.

108

.distinction to help understand the attitude of the police towards legal constraints is that in contrast

·to the criminal law presumption of one being innocent until proven guilty, the police tends to

. maintain an administrative presumption of regularity, in effect, a presumption of guilt. The

administrative presumption of regularity prevail among all in the system, although in differing

degrees. For the police, procedural laws are not merely a set of constitutional guarantees for the

defendant, but also a set of working conditions. The courts on their own presumption of regularity,

offer liberal opinions based on abstract principles making the task of the police all the more arduous.

The very presumption of the defendant to be innocent until proven guilty is considered to be the

first in a series of frustrating obstacles and the state that, on the one hand, requires the police to be

increasingly knowledgeable and competent in general areas as well as those relating specifically to

policework, and on the other, requires the police to work in a milieu filled with extraneous and

irrational requirements since they do not conform to his experience.98

The police is primarily interested in factual guilt. Hence, the very notion of making a

presumption so frequently contrary to fact, that is, to "presume" a defendant to be innocent when

the action so strongly suggest guilt, violates his craftsman-like conception of self, and induces a

negative attitude towards procedural laws. As administrative presumption of regularity prevail

among all designated status persons in the system, with the senior supervisory officers putting

emphasis on 'efficiency', and the courts failing to prosecute deviant police officers as and when they

discover during the trial of cases, demonstrates that it is at once possible for the people to disagree

with the rules of the game but at the same time carry out the enforcement of the required

substantive laws only if it has the required skills to translate them into action, through

interpretation.

Legal Controls: Impediment or Imperative in Policework:

The most celebrated device for enforcing police lawfulness in the history of jurisprudence is the

"exclusionary rule" of evidence, popularly known as Miranda Rules, a creation of the Supreme Court

of the USA in a case of stating the rights of a suspect, that has even withstood the campaigns of the

Presidents of USA to overrule it, has become established in police practices and now the 'law'. This

rule as a control device is simple to present in its broadest form:

... evidence obtained from the defendant in violation of his constitutional rights to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures will be suppressed by order of the coun.

Briefly stated, the exclusionary rule rejects illegally seized evidence.99 In India, in addition to the

constitutional guarantees for individual rights and liberties, there are other statutorily laid-down

procedures of police conduct and the court-based interpretations of the laws aimed to refine the

stated provisions for better clarity for the enforcement agency to follow them while carrying out

their duties. The sweeping presumption of the judiciary of suspiciously looking at the police

evidence renders it inadmissible in the court of law, a more radical controlling aspect than that exists

in the American system.

The exclusionary rule posits two consecutive problems for the police. One is the cognition

regarding 'what constitutes legality'. Secondly, the police is seized of the necessity to make his

behaviour take on the appearance of legality, if their actions were in contrary to the former. In the

opinion of the police, the court's stipulations of right conduct encumbers the already troubled

98 Jerome H. Skolnick, op. cit., see Chapter 9. 99 Ibid, pp. 211-12; Neil Skene, The Miranda Ruling: Equality of justice, Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report, Vol.

49, Issue 23, 6/8/91, p. 1546 (Source: EBSCO Database: Academic Search Premier).

109

officer with more procedural obligations and compels the functionary to evolve new ways to short­

shrift the same. 100

When the courts focus on the legality of police actions, they find their actions more closely

constrained, at least legally. On the contrary, if the focus would have been on the reasonableness of

police action, that would have granted considerably greater latitude as required by the police for its

functions that are based on the presumption of factual guilt. In the American system, the standard

procedural laws, like that of arrest, search and seizure are based on a certain norm of precedence that

is given priority by the courts to judge the bonafide of police action that would accordingly

determine the legality of its eventual outcome. 101 It is often difficult for the police to ascertain the

qualifying condition of 'reasonableness' of the 'suspicion' or 'information' on the basis of which the

police could initiate necessary action that would accordingly be considered legitimate, e.g.

conditions that necessitates arrest. In India, while on one hand, the presumption of the court goes

against the evidence produced by the police, on the other hand, an arrest even if illegal does not

affect the trial of the case. 102

The problem of the police is also that they are called by the courts in numerous cases to

explain in each the factual situation that warranted the contentious action. The police thus feels that

the courts have provided insufficiently clear standards for routine decision-making .in policing. In

situations where the line between legality and illegality appears hazy, the police usually moves in the

interest justifying a contention of legality. The focus remains in legitimising its work, irrespective of

the actual practice. Bearing in mind the obligation to fulfill the requisite procedural norms, the

police strategy is to locate as many congeries of events as appear to legitimise their activities.

Policework, thus, no more constitute only the simple task of performing its required functions, but

it also involves the need of putting up the legal validity appearance to its actions. It may be perceived

as thus: the police respects the necessity to 'comply with the laws', hence the 'compliance' is by a felt

necessity to construct a post hoc description of the preceding events that appear in conformation with

the legal requirements. This happen in situations when the police sees the case law as a hindrance to

its action that it considers necessary in relation to the given factual situation that compels such

presentation of appearance of compliance. It is obvious then that this does not happen where the

police feels capable of literal compliance. But this may not be the general feature of all policework.

There may be deliberate manipulations with wrongful intent. 103

An instance of such police action that invited the scorn of its superv1soryr officer was

witnessed in the Sewaknagar thana:

a junior officer along with a constable picked up a youth on the verbal complaint by his father for causing serious trouble. He was detained at the thana as a reformatory measure, but this was not in observance of any formal procedures. When the in-charge of the thana learnt of the same, he exhorted that "such interventions in a domestic problem may be noble as it is directed at moralising the 'delinquent', but it is not free from the 'dangers' for having not followed the mandatory procedural rules. Such overzealous acts may put us in trouble."

The empirical evidence across all the four thanas show that, in such cases of low-scale conflicts where

the police intervention is required, possible or probable actions range from issuing a warning to the

errant or defiant individual(s) to making an informal arrest\detention in order to restore a semblance

, 100 Jerome H. Skolnick, ibid, pp. 212-13. 101 Ibid, pp. 213-14. 102 See Chapter V, Section 41 of Cr.P.C.; The Orissa Police Manual, 1940, Vol. I, Government of Orissa, Cuttack,

1980, Chapter XI, Rule 221(a), p. 99; Ratanlal and Dhirajlal's Code of Criminal Procedure by Ratanlal Ranchhoddas and Dhirajlal K. Thakore, 15'h Edition (Revised by Justice Y.V. Chandrachud, et a!), Wadhwa and Company Law Publishers, Nagpur, 2002, pp. 53-55.

103 Jerome H. Skolnick, op. cit., pp. 214-15.

110

of peace or normalcy. Generally, in such situations, actions are entirely based on the discretionary

judgement and skills of the officer to effectively deal with the complexities as well as the element of

in¢rtitude in best possible manner.

In dealing with such events, the police certainly do not approve of the strict statutory or

judicial guidelines on the ground that first, it suppresses their skills that enables them to effectively

anp efficiently perform the tasks of policing, and secondly, the police response though may be

sit~ationally correct would tantamount to illegality. Skolnick observes that the impact of such legal

col:1trols, as may be visualised by the police as placing limitations on its space to function has not

b~en to guarantee greater protection of the freedom of "decent citizens" from unreasonable police I

zeal nor the rights of the accused but certainly had the effect of "actually facilitating" the activities of

the "criminal element". 104 According to the police, the encumberency of its practices are more due to

the inhibitory rules that has ostensibly contributed to the prevalent adverse working conditions and

its effects all the more demoralising which is reflected in the criticism of the authors of such rules.

Fred Inbau while admitting that "in any democratic society police efficiency must necessarily incur a

considerable measure of sacrifice in deference to the rights and liberties of the individual," also

cbntends that "some sacrifice of individual rights and liberties has to be made in order to achieve and

maintain a safe, stable society in which the individual may exercise those rights and liberties." 105

In view of the police deviation, it is argued that the rights of the citizenry would be

¢nhanced by imposing the legal standards of "reasonableness" on police practices. The counter

~rgument calls for its validity to vary with the type of citizen about whom one is expressing concern.

The police excludes the inclusion of rights of the guilty within that of the conventional law-abiding

~itizenry for obvious reasons. More so, police judgements on the basis of reasonableness in high­

crime areas have the probability of adversely affecting many honest citizens. The researcher on the

basis of his personal experiences endorses the view that given the cognitive disposition of the police,

.their distinctive lens could otherwise view innocent citizens not conforming to their images of

:respectability, for instance, Skolnick's incidental illustration of the, "bearded college students".

:These pointed and practical questions illuminate the difficulties of the requirement of indiscriminate

: application of procedures, irrespective of the nature of the situations. The effect of the procedural

' requirements and judicial controls over police conduct are best understood when examined through

· the filter of police culture that informs the working philosophy of the police to see the procedural

. rule as something to be observed rather than obeyed, that is, it recognises the obligation to appear to

· be obeying the letter of procedural law, while often disregarding its spirit - all in the name of the

"higher" justification of maintaining order or reducing criminality. 106

The police complain that the practical concerns of policing do not enter the thinking of the

judiciary on the problem of how they should act in carrying out their duties. Though supervisory

officers within the organisation also constitute one among the sources of control over police practice

at the quotidian level, the judiciary's capacity to evaluate policework is vehemently criticised. The

researcher on many occasions heard the rank-and-file expressing wonderment at the wisdom of the

judges, whose occasional sham of their overzealous attitude evoke no regrets but indi.gnation for

intruding on its domain. It seems relevant to cite an incident that was narrated by an officer of the

Sewaknagar thana to his colleagues on an occasion where they were all sharing the tribulations of

104 Ibid, pp. 216-17. 105 Quoted in ibid, p. 217. 106 Ibid, pp. 217-19,227-28.

judicial apathy toward policework that well-illustrates the antagonism between the judiciary and the

police:

.A habitual offender (a member of a burglary gang) was once beaten up by the police out of frustration as everytime he would be apprehended in cases of theft and burglary as also for his furtive movements and 'proceeded u/s. 110 Cr.P.C., he would always get back on bail and remain to be a source of tension for the :police. With visible injuries on his body, he went before the magistrate of that region and showed it. The magistrate rook immediate cognizance and on prima focie evidence, suo moto initiated stringent legal actions

. against the concerned personnel of the thana under relevant sections of the I PC. That ensued a crisis as without any initial summons, he right away issued warrants against the accused staff that included the high and the low

: in the thana. The SP and other higher officials were greatly perturbed over such a magisterial action. Considering the situation, the in-charge of the thana somehow managed to pacify the magistrate to keep the

· warrants in abeyance for some time.

: In the meanwhile, to reach a lesson to the magistrate, the police staged a burglary at his house. The police forced : the complainant, the burglar, through both intimidation and allurement, to commit burglary in the house of

the same magistrate. The burglar had to accept the deal not only for being a permanent resident of the thana's , jurisdiction bur he saw in it an opportunity to gain the goodwill of the police. According to a well-planned

strategy, the burglars along with his associates burgled the house and kept the loot at a safe place. It was obvious that the magistrate came running to the same thana and had to approach the same officers that he had

' proceeded against. The police tried to harass him by feigning preoccupation with more important tasks and let ' him undergo the trouble generally faced by any other common citizen. The police then faked the process of

investigation and detection of the 'crime', and also the apprehension of the guilty that were brought before the magistrate and according to the plan , they did not confess to their crime. The magistrate expressed his wonderment over the fact that how could they dare to break into a judge's house and egged on the police to beat the 'suspects' to obtain confession. After informing the magistrate of the so-called 'confession', the police

' rook him to the spot where all the 'stolen' articles were 'hidden'. The magistrate then withdrew all the cases that he had filed against the police, apparently more out of the realisation about what the burglar best deserved.

It shows that antagonism between the police and the judiciary, understandably so, is inevitably an

outco,'me of the conflicting interests.

Skolnick elucidates the existence of an invidious contrast drawn between the supervisory

police officers and the judge. The judge may only be concerned of compliance of the procedures and

need :not find it a necessary part of its job to inquire into the consequences of his ruling for police

orga~isation and efficiency. The police thinks that the right to inspect its operations ought largely to

be a matter within the jurisdiction of supervisory police officers. When the supervisory law enforcers

evaluate policework, their frame of reference encompasses all the obligations a police personnel has.

They are also concerned of 'how the cutting-edge personnel "shape-up" to eventually promote

effectiveness and efficiency. They find it hard to understand why a judge should have so much "say"

over: their work. 107

In a police-oriented supervisory arrangement, according to Richard Bendix, subordinates are

enc~uraged to introduce their own strategies and ideas into the working situation. This maximises

the exercise of discretion by subordinates that encourages worker's initiative to achieve efficiency, the

dict~ted goals of the organisation. It allows officials to initiate their own means for solving problems

tha~ interfere with their capacity to achieve productive results. Thus, internal controls over the rank­

and~file reinforce the importance of administrative and craft values. These controls are more likely to

emphasize efficiency as a goal rather than legality, or more precisely, legality as a means to the end of

efficiency. Since the organisation interprets its fundamental duty as maintaining order that includes

disc;:overy of problem activity or its potential, yet finds its endeavours contingent upon a secondary

obligation, that is, to remain within the boundaries of legality. The police responds to it by

attempting to infuse the character of legality - perhaps after the fact - into his action. 108 This

prdcess, for Goffman, is more a process of impression management, that is, the police is capable to

107 Ibid, pp. 225-227. 108 lbid, pp. 227, 231-237.

112

give the impression of competence in a way which is acceptable to colleagues, the wider community,

and the courts. 109

Competence is demonstrated by fitting the appropriate appearance to the appropriate

occasion. In any situation of police intervention all that is required is a display of competence and

expertise that is dependent upon the officers' ability to interpret, signify and construct appearances

in all these instances. This approach suggests that policework should be understood as a process of

negotiation in which the officer weighs up the alternative strategies, that Bendix sees these

innovations as "strategies of independence", on a stage bounded by the demands of the organisation

and occupation on one side, and the public and the courts on the other. The police personnel

continue to maneuver, interpret and differentiate from situation to situation, in the process of their

policing functions as they come to acquire greater ability, knowledge and experience - all that makes

the job manageable for them. This necessarily does not entail that the police simply 'reads off the

appropriate response strictly from the knowledge informed by the occupational subculture. There is

also space for a degree of individuality in its discretion in which the norms and values of the

, subculture help in the application of methods appropriate for the situation in which it finds itself.

But the powerful controlling effect of the norms and values of the occupational culture that

constitute a framework for the police to manage their day-to-day activities explains broadly the

' generic nature of the express attitudes and observed behaviour of them all. 110

Such conduct of the police tend to develop in them a conception of self as a 'worker' or a

' 'craftsman' as it operate mainly on grounds of administration efficiency that will hamper the

capacity of the rule of law to develop. It is because the principles that govern police action are

governed by the rule of law in a democratic society, they act as constraints upon the worker

initiative. Any limitation that is imposed on the police initiative is defined as a "handcuffing" of law

' enforcement, and may unintentionally further weaken the police's attachment to the rule of law as

' an overriding value. One often views the police upbraid the judiciary for being unnecessarily so

. intrusive and interfering with their capacities to practice their craft. The police feels that as the

judges do not appreciate or share its conditions of the operational environment, it fails to respond to

' judicial interpretation of legality. It views the distant judiciary as saboteurs of its capacity to produce,

that is, what it sees to be efficient is to satisfy the requirement of social order. 111

The laments of the same old-hand of Sewaknagar thana provides a picture of the working

conditions that the police regard it as harsh and unfavourable:

The police are perennially in rhe throes of rheir routine policing activities. It gets no support, neither from the public nor from rhe judiciary rhat is part of the same system co which it belongs. The "working conditions" are paralytic as the police is in a perpetual state of alienation because of being constantly perceived with fear and suspicion by all. Moreover, the task is made more difficult as our work is formatively seen with suspicion by rhe judiciary and the law rhat we help enforce does not admit our submissions. There is no witness. There is a lot of privileges provided co the offenders rhan co the enforcers who are co handle rhese elements. Enforcement has become all the more difficult in victimless crimes where the peddlers even when caught get away because of rhe wane of witness. Moreover, rhey feign ignorance before the judge and say rhat they were tortured to accept the guilt. The courts are always eager co acquit one or gram bail. Nobody trusts rhe police. How can anyone work in such adverse and hostile conditions, constraints all the way, all around?

Procedural laws will remain and will continue to make the working life and conditions of the non­

~echanical work of the police more difficult when it constrains their practices. Hence, regulative

l)odies will inevitably be viewed with hostility by the regulated.

1 ~9 Mike Brogden, et al, op. cit., p. 43. 110 Ibid, pp. 42-45, 166; Robert Reiner, op. cit., p. 86. 11

•1 Jerome H. Skolnick, op. cit., pp. 227-238.

113

0EMOCRACY/COMMUNITY112

I

Tl).e democratic structure form a part of the powerful signifYing set along with the legal structure to

determine the nature of the policework. It becomes the instrument and object of the processes of

po,licework. As Reiss remarked, the police mediate between the law and the community; they always

onerate as an interrelated set to produce current police practices - the changing forms of policework

prpvide this mediation. The democratic structure, the third substantive element of the structural

mfchanism of policework, has largely been identified as the 'community' or the 'plurality of publics'.

The 'community' has broadly been conceived either unilaterally - a single entity composed of a

uq.iformly 'hostile public' - or as differentiated along conventional lines relating to population

c9mposition (based on class, caste, race, religion, etc.), 'crime-proneness' (law-abiding vs. deviant),

Olj attitude to the police (hostile or supportive or apathetic). The recognition of a differentiated

pt,~.blic imposes consequent differential effects on organisational strategies and police behaviour.

Tlms, these differentiations are not unimportant, but they remain insufficiently developed as a

m,eans of understanding how 'the public' or 'the community' affects police behaviour. What is

p~rtinent is to consider the nature of the constraints imposed by the 'community' as do legal and

o~ganisational constraints, that is, police practice is linked not only to legal and organisational

cqnstraints but also to the composition of the community and its prevailing political administration.

I.q. other words, the need is to reconceptualise the role of the public in relation to policework as a

d~mocratic structure. This shows that policework is determined not only by a legal structure and a

w,ork structure, but by a democratic one too.

MacPherson in his book, The Real World of Democracy, points out that the concept of

democracy has acquired a variety of meanings, as a variety of different societies - be they 'capitalist',

'c;ommunist', or 'underdeveloped'- have all proclaimed about their respective political systems to be

d~mocracies. In order to clarifY its usage in line with this study, its fitting as Grimshaw and Jefferson

fqund it helpful to draw on Hindess' work on parliamentary democracy that focus attention on the

'specific determinations and limitations' of'any putatively democratic mechanism'. He points at the

n1eed to look at concrete practices and discourses ('mechanisms') in relation to particular institutional

s~tes. This study focuses on the functioning of one of the working institutions of the law,

p1olicework. Grimshaw and Jefferson, inspired by Hindess, provides the most relevant clue to relate

policework and the democratic structure, by emphasizing on the conditions under which the

fl1lechanisms operate. This when transcribed to police decision-making, like the decision on

i.r;lVolving the legal process or not, allows to ask a legitimate question: under what conditions are

VfLrious 'publics' (constituencies) able to have an effect on policework practice? In an exploratory

sense, the problem would be, which decisions in relation to which constituencies and which

cpnditions are subject to extra-legal, 'non-police' determinations? An empirical enquiry of subjecting

the selected cases and events collected from the field to examination of such particularities would

rfveal the complex network of causal factors, that is, the interplay of various considerations,

enmeshed in the decision-making processes of the police. Thus, the conception of the democratic I

s~ructure in relation to policework practice amounts to being able to specifY the relationship between

'constituencies' (or 'publics'), decisions (or 'practices') and conditions, in all the respective cases of

empirical enquiry based on documentary evidence and the interview of the 'publics'. For this, it is

' 112 Roger Grimshaw and Tony Jefferson, op. cit., pp. 3-26; 269-96; Roy R. Roberg and Jack Kuykendall, op. cit., pp. 29-31.

114

imper~tive to state the nature of police 'constituencies' (depending on the ways citizens come in

conta~t with the police or related to its work processes).

The differentiated roles in which the community can come into contact with the police, and

throu:gh such contact, potentially influence police behaviour. The contacts between police and

citizens can be distinguished as individuals - as potential witness, victim, complainant, accused, or

caller;, as representatives of the community (elected leaders, leaders of different political formations,

gentry, leaders of different socio-cultural organisations, etc.) or as members of organisations with

whoin the police have institutional contact (NGOs, media, etc.). According to the nature of the

citiz~ns' 'contacting' role, it is expected that there will be difference in their ability to influence

poli~e behaviour, some more, others less likely, depending on whether the police could resist it or

not. Beside these, in relation to each of these 'citizen's roles', there can be a number of further ways

in which potentially significant differentiations can be made. Citizens in each 'contacting' role can

be :seen as respectable or otherwise, known locals or strangers, community representatives or

individual citizens. The nature of the contact can be reciprocal in which each party having

soiliething of value to exchange, or even one-way, that can be either sporadic or recurrent.

Furthermore, the nature of the issues bringing citizen(s) and police into contact can be one about

which there is a high degree of consensus, or it can be highly contentious. More information from a

Gramscian influence on the construct of a conception of policing which recognises that its

conditions and effects are influenced by its position in an unequal society. Social inequality as an

important determinant of police operations would involve cross-cutting divisions of interest,

p~oviding a certain pattern of policing. In the 'contacting roles', the element of politics also

cqntributes to the critical significatory operation in most policework.

Study of these concrete conditions will facilitate in identifYing the extent to which other

fl!tndamental conditions, notably the key social characteristics underpinning the social order, affect

the decision-making of the police. In short, contact between police and 'publics' can take a variety of

forms, and each form of contact can vary in numerous ways. This recognition underlies the notion

of the 'community' and its influence on police organisation and practice (at the thana level), that is,

the notion of a democratic structure as a potential constraint on policework practice.

115