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Domestic violence and abuse (DVA) is repetitious, and much of the demand is attributable to repeat victims and perpetrators. Targeting resources at repetition could be an effective method of reducing demand. Targeting repetition requires accurate information on repeat victims and perpetrators. This thesis uses data from Lancashire Constabulary to investigate: what data do the police have on DVA; what are the problems with the current structure of police data for measuring DVA repetition; how can police data be improved to measure DVA repetition? Analysis of existing police datasets found the data unsuitable for measuring DVA repetition for four key reasons: different units of measurement; inconsistent recording of personal details; misuse of DVA markers; and information lost in free-text. The framework for measuring DVA repetition and assessing police interventions, was derived from the DVA literature. Observations of the response mapped out the complexity and identified relevant data sources. Information from multiple sources was recoded into a new dataset following the measurement framework. The new dataset estimated that 51% of victims were repeats, compared to 21% in the original crime dataset. A series of analyses were conducted, designed around existing debates in the DVA literature, for instance whether DVA is gendered and escalatory. The analysis demonstrated the potential for police data to measure patterns of DVA repetition, and assess the impact of police action. The thesis contributes a process map of the police response to DVA; a measurement framework for measuring DVA and assessing police actions; criteria for future police data collection; and a methodology for restructuring police data. Though the outputs are methodological, the thesis is driven by the substantive implications of improved police data on the ability of the police to measure, respond to and reduce DVA. The thesis has implications for police practice, policy, and Criminological theory.

This thesis seeks to explain the behaviour of frontline police officers engaged in incident work. Policymakers try to improve police legitimacy by changing how individual police officers interact with the public at police incidents. However, police practice has been particularly resistant to change, and professional and academic work that explains why this might be the case is underdeveloped. This thesis explores these issues from an interactional perspective; asking the questions - how do police officers behave, and why do they behave in that manner? The classic grounded theory method was used to collect and analyse data from officer interviews and body-worn video footage from police incidents within an English county in 2019. It is argued that officers seek to balance the level of effort they use at an incident against the value that they perceive that the incident represents. An incident is of value if an officer is afforded an opportunity to perform the role of an imagined police identity involving socio-culturally constructed notions of 'real' crime, 'real' victims and 'real' criminals. If value and effort are 'unbalanced', then an officer feels frustration and seeks to correct that imbalance by subconsciously shaping the behaviour of incident participants. Officer behaviour can be categorised into one of two types: binary retreat or binary deconstruction. Officers alternate between these two behaviour types to shape the behaviour of incident participants; trying to achieve a balance between value and effort. The theory can be used to improve police practice by changing how training is designed and how policy is created. The significance and relationship of value and effort in driving police behaviour have, to date, not been explored within existing literature as an explanation of frontline police practice.

Police are increasingly viewed as front-line determinants of HIV risk among vulnerable populations. The negative impact of egregious police behaviors on HIV risk (e.g., sexual or physical violence, condom confiscation) has received more attention in the literature over recent years. However, the impact of routine law enforcement practices on HIV risk has not, and even less common are attempts to understand the drivers for those practices. Given the pressing need to engage police in the HIV response, examining the drivers for and impacts of policing on cis-gender (individuals assigned female at birth who identifies as a woman) female sex workers' (hereafter FSW) HIV risk warrants attention. This thesis aims to examine the role of policing on FSWs' HIV risk, with a particular focus on understanding the drivers behind policing approaches. The thesis is grounded in an initial systematic literature review, a study that sought to elucidate the extent of the quantitative literature exploring specifically policing as a determinant of HIV. Specifically, the study included 16 studies and found that the majority used a single measure to capture police behaviors, with studies predominantly focused on 'extra-legal policing practices'. All studies found an association between police behaviors and either a HIV/STI outcome or related risk behavior, but amounted to a small body of evidence. The review pointed to a need for more studies focused specifically on police behaviors as structural determinant, in addition to development of more nuanced quantitative measurement. Based on the findings of the systematic literature review the remainder of the analysis via a ethnographic study, conducted collaboratively with Baltimore City Police Department and a quantitative cohort study with street-based FSW in Baltimore City, USA explores the nature and impact of policing on the HIV risk of FSW. The ethnographic study used 281 hours of 2 observational data in the form of police ride-outs completed over a 8 month period ( July 2015 - February 2016), to probe the question often missed by the literature: "Why do police do what they do?" Specifically, the study explored what factors influence police practices already identified in the literature as adversely affecting street-based FSWs' HIV risk and human rights and police officers' ability and willingness to adopt a more public health and rights orientated approach to street-based sex work. The ethnography highlights ecological factors at the structural (e.g., criminalization), organizational (e.g., violent crime control), community and individual level (e.g., stigmatizing attitudes) that are key to shaping individual police practices and attitudes towards FSW. The quantitative study draws upon baseline data collected over a 10-month period (April 2016 to January 2017) from 250 FSW from the Baltimore-based SAPPHIRE study. The study characterized FSW encounters with the police and explored the contribution that both day-to-day and abusive police practices may have on a risk environment that promotes client perpetrated violence. The study found that police interactions had a profoundly negative association with each additional type of abusive interaction being associated with client violence in adjusted analysis. While marginally non-significant, the association of the patrol-enforcement activities in adjusted analysis with client violence were of the same magnitude as the abusive interactions. These findings suggest that even nonabusive encounters, which occur on a much more frequent basis than abusive ones, also contribute to a risk environment that can facilitate client-perpetrated violence. Collectively the findings support existing calls for decriminalization of sex work, supported by institutional and policy reforms, neighborhood-level dialogues that shift the cultural landscape around sex work within both the police and larger community, and innovative individual-level police trainings to address abusive and coercive policing.

This thesis is an exploration of (in)visibility and missing persons, specifically the impact of the police response to reports of missing persons and subsequent investigations into the disappearance of people. The literature review builds on a review of harm and missing persons in which invisibility was foregrounded and provides the context for (in)visibility in the thesis. (In)visibility is selected to represent a spectrum of visibility through to invisibility and indicate something of the dynamic nature of the concept of visibility – invisibility, as a dualism rather than as a binary. A qualitative methodology is used in the belief that quantitative research (particularly in the field of missing persons) on its own has the tendency to neglect the essence of life. The study is underpinned by a broadly constructivist ontology linked to an interpretivist epistemology. Using a grounded theory approach, a series of semi-structured interviews provided the data for analysis and a thematic network analysis is used to decode the evidence and to recode it into a series of conceptual and theoretical themes. Wrapped around the analysis and discussion of the data is a narrative based on an expert knowledge of the field. The thesis contributes to the evidence base by providing knowledge in relation to policing processes which create(in)visibility in missing. It identifies and explains (in)visibility and missing persons and challenges a paradoxical nature of the police response to missing persons. Brought to attention is the markedness of absence; absence, like missing, is not a ‘thing-in-itself’, it is always in relation to others and a symptom of wider causal factors. The thesis answers the need to make visible missing people’s absence and to examine what happens when they are gone. The thesis is positioned as an interdisciplinary contribution in the field of policing studies with overlaps into social geography, sociology, psychology and other disciplines. Drawing on a range of views and argument, the research blends philosophical sensibility and a pragmatic eye revealing what might work in the policing response to missing; in doing so, the politics of missing are enhanced.

This study looks at how UK police forces make use of video interpreting services to complete standard police procedures. Two frontline police services were examined: video relay service (VRS) calls to a Police Scotland's force control room (FRC); and video remote interpreted calls (VRI) to a Police Scotland custody suite. Both contexts were identified as areas for potential VRS/VRI expansion by Police Scotland. The research questions focused on how co-operation was negotiated during a video-mediated interpreting interaction in a frontline policing context and how co-operation affected the delivery of the combined service. To chart how co-operation was received or negotiated, this study combined Positioning Theory (Davies & Harré, 1990) with Actor-Network Theory (ANT) (Callon, 1986; Latour, 2005; Law, 2004). Using this hybrid framework, this study traced the capacity and willingness each participant displayed as they assumed, negotiated, or challenged the shared rights or duties (an interactive position), and considered the role non-human entities (e.g. technology, policies, artefacts) had in shaping these positioning moves. This study found a range of positioning moves that either work towards or become a copositioning arrangement. The establishment of co-positions means different actors have established a unified group of rights and duties that are mutually shared. The findings reaffirm the challenges of remote communication, as well as which features of communication promoted by call handlers, custody sergeant and interpreters appear to be mutually effective for frontline policing interactions. The police participant and the interpreter have a shared objective: to learn about the citizen and to construct an understanding of the issue at hand. Issues still exist regarding knowing how to adapt standard police procedures or generic responses to become meaningful to someone who is a deaf BSL user. Interpreters will sometimes become involved in these matters, advocating the deaf person's right to receive parity of service beyond the VRS/VRI call. By focusing on standard police procedures and understanding what works and why, we can identify where and when VRS/VRI services could be used to increase citizen access to other areas of police services.

This thesis examines how confidence and legitimacy are maintained through the processes of neighbourhood policing; an area particularly important for the legitimation of the police, but which has come under severe pressure from austerity-driven budget cuts. These pressures have been accompanied by a shift away from community-driven police priorities and towards concerns for risk, vulnerability and 'hidden harms.' Together, these changes could have serious consequences for police legitimacy. This study, for which fieldwork was undertaken between June 2016 and September 2017, looks at neighbourhood policing in a single London borough. It was undertaken as an embedded case study, enabling comparisons between wards. Interviews were carried out with neighbourhood police officers, ward panel members, council officers and local councillors, as well as senior police officers. These were supplemented with observations of panel and public meetings. The study found that the mechanisms by which neighbourhood policing were originally intended to deliver confidence were still valued. However, they required face-to-face engagement with the public, and so were particularly susceptible to resource limitations. The London system of ward panels could support neighbourhood policing in unexpected (although not entirely unproblematic) ways. However, the study also found that resident priorities and values were highly variable, and often differed from police priorities, and that these disagreements could also be exacerbated by resource constraints. The research concludes that legitimacy and confidence are locally and situationally contingent, as are ideas of 'fairness' and other values. This means that maintaining confidence and legitimacy in a complex modern society needs a model of policing that includes processes to determine what residents value. Such a model must also include a community-driven element; it is not sufficient to decide what it is that policing should achieve and then hope that confidence and legitimacy will follow. This has important consequences for the way that neighbourhood policing is conceptualised, organised, and supported.

The aim of this research is to investigate whether the police use neurotypical practices by exploring the interactions they have with neurodivergent citizens, examining whether the language used in police policy, procedure and practice is predominately neurotypical and assessing partnership relations between the police and organisations that support neurodivergent people. Incident report data from North and South Yorkshire Police was analysed in order to explore the nature of contact between the police and neurodivergent people. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with police practitioners (N = 19) about their understanding of neurodiversity and their interactions with neurodivergent citizens, and with practitioners from organisations that support neurodivergent people (N = 8) about their partnership working with the police. This research found that neurodiversity was not a concept frequently understood by the police, nor was it considered a policing priority. The language used by police practitioners and partner agencies was predominately neurotypical, medicalised and conflated autism with mental health, vulnerability and risk. Police responses rarely involved partner agencies, with partners only being contacted when it was necessary to obtain information or expertise. Police practitioners were keen to highlight their individual agency and discretion in developing initiatives to support neurodivergent citizens. However, there was little by way of strategic or organisational support for such initiatives. This thesis concludes that neurodiversity needs to be embedded into police organisations, not just through tokenistic initiatives or through informal partnership working, but through profound structural, cultural and linguistic change.

Investigative interviews are a central part of policing. Police interviewers use the information obtained from interviews to develop investigative leads or to make effective decisions. Therefore, it is important that the information is as detailed and accurate as possible. The recognized importance of interviewing has resulted in substantial research efforts being placed into the development of techniques that enhance information provision. One proposal for how these techniques lead to greater information provision is via increased rapport between the interviewer and interviewee. Although numerous interviewing models recommend rapport, the impact of interview style on rapport has rarely been tested directly in interviews with suspects. There has also not been a consideration of how rapport would be affected by repeated exposure to specific individuals and law enforcement in general. In this thesis, I aim to test whether rapport once established can be maintained between multiple interviews and across multiple interviewers. This is a critical gap in our knowledge, as in police interviews it is common practice for suspects to be interviewed more than once and by different interviewers at different times. It is therefore important to know whether previous interactions with the police could affect future interactions in terms of rapport. A second key aim of this thesis is to test if nonverbal mimicry measured via motion capture suits can serve as an objectively rated behavioural proxy of rapport as several studies showed that behavioural mimicry is higher in people with well-established rapport and further, mimicry results in increased rapport. My findings suggest that the interview style impacts on rapport and mimicry. However, I could not find evidence for a link between rapport and disclosed information, or rapport and mimicry.

Police officers in the UK are granted additional powers to allow them to protect life and property crime. Of these powers, the sanction to use stopping, potentially lethal, force given to Authorised Firearms Officers (AFO) is arguably the most salient. Each decision made by an AFO to discharge their firearm or not has great impact and so it is important we research the cognitive processes that lead to such a decision. One challenge of researching these cognitive processes is eliciting ecologically valid behaviour while maintaining internal validity. We approached this challenge by developing combined electroencephalography (EEG) and virtual reality research methods. Using these methods, we produced scenarios that reflected features of AFO training. First, we tested simple versions of the scenarios on a novice population. Following this, we increased the complexity of the scenarios and collected data from both AFOs and novices. We found that participants were fastest when responding to threatening scenarios. Further, AFOs had consistently faster response times than novices. In line with similar 'Go/No-Go' paradigms, we found greater increases in pre-response frontal-midline theta when participants did not shoot versus when they did. Comparisons of EEG between AFOs and novices revealed greater pre-response increases in frontal-midline theta and central delta when they equipped a firearm. Greater differences in delta activity were also observed between different levels of threat in the AFO group. Together, these findings suggest that differences in performance between experts and novices may be due to their greater attention towards threat. Further investigation of expert decision making should build on our use of naturalistic stimuli and expert participants to ensure that findings are ecologically valid. With increasing accessibility of modern game engines and virtual reality technology, this approach will be beneficial to researchers in many fields where ecological validity is required.

This study investigates how the statutory divide between children and adults is manifested in the language of police interviews with 17- and 18-year-old suspects. In England and Wales,persons up to and including age 17 are classed as children and therefore considered by default vulnerable. In the context of the legal process, this vulnerability means that suspects are entitled to a number of special measures, the most prominent of which is the mandatory presence of an appropriate adult (parent/guardian or social worker/volunteer) during the police interview. The day a person turns 18 and thus acquires the status of an adult, they are no longer eligible for additional support and are expected to navigate the legal system on their own. Crucially, the change form child to adult happens overnight. Given this statutory divide and the associated special measures for vulnerable interviewees,this study examines how the language of police investigative interviews is affected. The data consist of 19 audio-recorded interviews from two police forces in England, that is, ten interviews with 17-year-old suspects and nine interviews with 18-year-old suspects. Drawing upon a multi-method approach combining tools from Conversation Analysis and Critical Discourse Analysis, the data are analysed inductively. The findings reveal both interviewers and suspects discursively orienting to the age divide and associated ideological assumptions by means of marked lexical choices, terms of address, and references. Examinations of the cautioning exchange show a tendency for interviewers engaging in verbal behaviour consistent with tick-box consent (Rock 2016).Finally, this study presents the first qualitative linguistic enquiry into verbal contributions by appropriate adults in interviews with juveniles. It is revealed that whilst their role is overall passive, particularly familial appropriate adults are called upon by suspects to provide practical information, and as a means of corroborating their statements in an attempt to gain credence.

This dissertation examines the origins of transnational political policing in mid-nineteenth century Europe based on the norms, personnel and interstate political policing activities of Prussia and of the Habsburg Empire. Focusing on the timeframe between the post-Napoleonic era and the German unification (1871)/the Austro-Hungarian Compromise (1867), this treatise analyzes the reactions of the Prussian and Austrian state apparatuses against political unrest from a transnational perspective. The fact that Prussia and Austria were most heavily affected by the revolutions of 1848-49, along with their wider parallel historical trajectories and proportionally similar size, justify their common examination. Putting Prussia and Austria at the center of this study also serves to relativize conventional teleological views of struggle for mastery in Germany, and place their administrative and policing development in a broader European context. The dissertation is above all thematically concerned with questions of state formation and statehood using Prussia and Austria as core case studies. It argues that the decades after 1815 saw the birth of transnational practices of political policing encompassing most of Europe in response to growingly internationalized radical and revolutionary movements. My dissertation follows closely the Prussian and Austrian official and unofficial policing personnel as well as informal surveillance operations on the spot, usually carried out by non-strictly policing personnel such as diplomats and consuls. The Prussian and Austrian interstate security measures are examined as a whole at a European scale and according to thematic and spatial lines. After the introduction, chapter one offers a general overview of political and police history of Prussia and Austria in the given period alongside a literature review. Afterwards, the second chapter uses microhistorical and biographical methods to trace the careers and personal agency of selected spies, secret agents and police officials abroad. Chapters three, four and five then discuss the larger-scale Prussian and Austrian interstate policing and surveillance measures across three territorial zones respectively: i) Western and Southern Europe, covering broadly Britain, France, Belgium, and the Italian states; ii) the Eastern Mediterranean encompassing the Ottoman Empire and Greece; iii) the German states, which in this case also includes the western and eastern German borderlands. The exact topics touched within these regional frameworks concern: transnational police collaboration; information and know-how exchange; interstate legal assistance; and joint border controls and policing.

British police custody is one of the most challenging of police environments, with the treatment of prisoners a source of public and media concern, especially regarding deaths in police custody; and where every action by staff is recorded audibly and visually. These kinds of issues threaten staff well-being (measured as role well-being, low workplace stress, mental and subjective well-being, energy and engagement). To address these issues, the study targeted five roles of custody inspector/sergeant, detention officer (public and private) and custody officer assistant in a four-wave panel survey of seven English police forces (with each separated by a lag of five months). Study engagement was 333 (a response rate of 46.57%) across 33 custody sites which, together with repeated returns, provided a quantitative data set of 370. In addition, self-report open comments at the end of surveys and other communications, numbered 178 (i.e. 131 from the current study and 47 from earlier custody-related research). This provided the study with an original multi-strategy approach that was: 1) Quantitative. Informed by an expanded version of a model first introduced in Werner-de-Sondberg et al. (2018); instrumental in identifying cultural subcomponent tensions, influential mediator and moderator relationships, contrasting role well-being and negatively affective vulnerabilities; 2) Qualitative. Conducted as a thematic analysis of self-report open (survey) comments and other communications, where quantitative results were explained deductively and inductively; and 3) Quantitative and qualitative. Where a single (embedded) case study identified eight propositions to be supported or rejected regarding: police custody (officer and police staff) vulnerability/ability to cope; status of custody; staffing levels; ITS inadequacies; large new-build custody sites; twelve hour shifts and private sector outsourcing. In addition, a multiple case study identified five synthesised crosscases in terms of similarity and difference. The study concluded by discussing a range of issues: theoretical; methodological; reflexive; practical; and future focused.

The programme of research holistically explored the experiences of Police officers and civilian Police staff whose role involves exposure to Sexual Offence Material (SOM). Study one comprised qualitative questionnaires and semi-structured interviews with 11 participants. Use of the Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) methodology ensured each participant’s unique experience was explored in depth. In study two, a survey was created using the emergent themes from study one and was completed by 384 Police personnel respondents. Qualitative responses were thematically analysed, and the quantitative data was subject to correlational analysis and analysis of variance. Factor analysis identified the factor structure of concepts such as adverse impact, coping strategies, motivation and role choice. Multiple regression analysis identified factors predictive of adverse personal impact and overall difficulty levels. Study three involved piloting the self-assessment tool ‘Impact of Sexual Offence Material Exposure’ (ISOME). The pilot involved 349 respondents. The findings of the programme of research provide substantial new knowledge about the impact of working with SOM, and the coping strategies, organisational factors and operational issues which can either exacerbate or protect against this impact. Findings relating to the impact of negative coping beliefs, parental status, and having personally been a victim of sexual abuse all contribute to trauma theory, by identifying key risk factors for traumatic stress following sexual trauma exposure. The finding that avoidance-based coping is predictive of higher levels of traumatic stress and detachment-based coping is linked to lower levels of traumatic stress adds to coping theory around the consequences of using passive and active coping strategies. The findings of the research can be directly applied to practice and a broad range of recommendations for organisational policy have been made.

AIM. The primary aim of the research presented in this thesis was to establish if emergency vehicle markings and warning systems influenced the way in which either a civilian or emergency driver responded when interacting during emergency driving situations. This was achieved by utilising a variety of research methods and a wide range of data types, including self-report questionnaires, Police collision reports, and real-world video data. The intention was that the findings could be used to inform approaches towards improving the on-road interaction between civilian and emergency drivers. BACKGROUND. Numerous emergency vehicle interactions occur without incident, yet some result in near misses, and collisions – both minor and serious in nature. Previous research (Shultz et al. 2009) has reported that civilian drivers often act in an adverse manner such as a panicked reaction (Gormley et al. 2009), due to poor vehicle salience, or modern vehicle soundproofing and technology distractions, when interacting with a responding emergency vehicle. Consequences of these negative interactions include feelings of frustration by the emergency driver, blame apportionment, and financial and reputational damage to the organisations themselves. Following an extensive review of the literature, research therefore firstly established the opinions of emergency and civilian drivers. Subsequent analysis of data, involving use of both marked and unmarked Police vehicles then helped to establish whether near misses and collisions occur as a result of marking type, through poor conspicuity (salience and warning systems) or as a result of behavioural change in the drivers themselves. METHODS. The research was conducted through four studies, using a multi-methods approach, to establish i.) The attitudes and opinions of emergency service drivers towards the public through questionnaire survey. ii.) A comparison between both marked and unmarked Police vehicle collision data and the effect of emergency warning systems on collision liability, over a 4.5 year time frame utilising telematics data from both vehicle marking types. iii.) Analysis of Police real world video footage observing the interaction between a civilian driver and a responding Police vehicle. iv.) Civilian drivers' perceptions of how they interact with the emergency vehicle when allowing for its presence on the road through questionnaire survey. RESULTS. Important findings identified through self report questionnaires showed that Police drivers believed they were the least aggressive drivers, in comparison to their emergency service driver peers. Ambulance drivers were the most frustrated with other road users but were more willing to discuss their feelings, whilst Fire Service drivers were more likely to take risks in order to arrive more quickly at an emergency situation. Evidence gathered and reviewed showed that the public reacted in two distinct ways when giving ease of passage to an emergency vehicle. On high speed roads, civilian drivers showed an initial delayed reaction, but having observed the approaching vehicle, moved away in a calm manner. For interactions within an urban environment the civilian driver was more likely to commit a driving violation such as mounting a pavement or travelling through a red light. However, this was mainly due to the Police drivers making rapid progress when near to other vehicles, forcing the civilian driver into their subsequent actions. Analysis of telematics data showed that Police drivers in marked vehicles were more likely to be involved in ‘blameworthy' collisions when the emergency warning systems were operational compared to when they were switched off. For ‘blue light' use, this increased Police collision liability by 69%, for ‘flashing headlights' use by 78%, and for ‘sirens' use by 120%. However, importantly this behavioural effect was not seen in an unmarked Police vehicle as collision liability was found to be due to operational tasks such as stopping offenders. As a result, this study suggests that poor conspicuity was not a factor in collisions/events but was an outcome of Police driver behaviour and driving style. CONCLUSION. The results are highly informative in providing an understanding of collisions between marked and unmarked Police and civilian vehicles as driver behaviour influenced the collision liability. It is anticipated that the results from this thesis could be used to influence emergency driver training through increased focus on emotion management in driving, and active occupational policies which engage with drivers. Training should focus on the increased risks of driving a highly conspicuous emergency vehicle, compared to its unmarked counterpart, and the influence warning systems have on collision outcomes. This would lead to an increase in the safety of all parties. In addition, it could potentially lead to reduced organisational costs whilst aiding the development of public education campaigns including advice on appropriate civilian driver response to approaching emergency vehicles through use of government literature and social media.

Literature Review: The literature review explored the extent and predictors of work-related distress amongst community corrections personnel. Following the systematic search of five databases, 19 quantitative papers were identified as relevant to the current research question and included in the review. Sixteen addressed burnout and the remainder investigated secondary trauma, vicarious trauma, and compassion fatigue. Synthesis revealed community corrections personnel reported burnout at levels akin to other professions working in forensic contexts, though reports of secondary trauma appeared higher. Predictive factors encompassed personal characteristics, role-based, and organisational-related factors. Research to date has little examined responses to indirect trauma. Given evidence if elevated secondary trauma, this should be privileged in future research. Empirical Research Project: The role of investigative interviewers can involve in-depth exploration of trauma experienced by vulnerable interviewees. Such indirect exposure to others' distress may have adverse impacts for police staff that is likely further influenced by organisational culture, support and awareness. The present study aimed to qualitatively explore investigative interviewers' experiences in undertaking their role in the context of working in a UK police force. Sixteen participants, employed as investigative interviewers across three UK police forces, participated in individual semi-structured interviews. Data were analysed using framework analysis to explore emergent themes encapsulating investigators' experiences. Five super-ordinate themes were elicited reported as influencing responses to interviewing work comprising: organisational structure; organisational culture; emotional coping strategies; role challenges; and role fulfilment. The research described the emotional impact of investigative interviewing, highlighting organisational, cultural and role based factors that provide further challenges for this population. The findings had several clinical and organisational implications for police services, and future research ideas were discussed.

Placed at the intersection between policing and volunteering, special constables – unpaid, warranted, part-time, uniformed police officers within the United Kingdom –represent a unique, and underrepresented, figure within the research literature in both fields. This thesis explores the ways in which these volunteers construct their identities, perceive their roles, and experience the policing environment by reflecting on the features of volunteering and policing which frame and shape their volunteering activity. This mixed-methods, comparative study enhances the understanding of the role that volunteer characteristics and motivations have on the way that volunteers interact with the organisations to which they contribute. By examining the motivations and experiences of volunteering within the Special Constabulary, this thesis demonstrates the ways in which different special constables – with different volunteering motivations and experiences of volunteering their time to policing organisations– construct their identities and understand their role within the policing organisations. By examining the special constables in such a way and by placing their volunteering characteristics at the centre of its data analysis, this thesis provides evidence which illustrates how these policing volunteers interact with, and perceive, the structural, organisational and cultural features of the policing environment, as well as the impacts that these features have on their understanding of the role they play within the policing organisation. This analysis, which places the volunteers and their individual experiences in the policing context, is used to develop a typology and to characterise the different types of special constable that may exist in the United Kingdom. Using qualitative and quantitative data, this thesis puts forward the case that the Special Constabulary represents its own unique policing culture. This thesis considers how the experiences and management of the Special Constabulary could be improved by focusing on the special constable as a volunteer with unique volunteering needs, rather than focusing on them as a policing resource.

In this thesis, I examine the challenges that police encounter in building public trust. An action research design utilises community engagement in two U.S. communities to discern the values and behaviours that generate trust in the police and to explore how those values may be integrated into policing policies and processes. While there is general agreement that compliance emanates from the practice of the principles of procedural justice which are interrelated with trust, normative alignment, and legitimacy, it has proven to be to more difficult to test, translate, and embed these ideas in police organisations. With these factors in mind, I tested a process to increase trust and normative alignment between the community and police and to answer the primary question: How can police trust and legitimacy be increased? I conducted four phases of qualitative research and document analysis to determine which values community members desire in police officers, how police organisations can align their values with the community’s values, how to select police officers who possess the community’s values, and how police organisations can reinforce the community’s values in their officers. I used focus groups, interviews, and document retrieval to gather the data and used content analysis, word coding, crosstabulation, curriculum mapping, and gap analysis to analyse the data. The results show that trust from community members can be increased if police officers are first characterised by Cultural Competence, Servant Leadership, Emotional Intelligence, and High Character and then trained in the legal and technical skills necessary for the fulfilment of their policing duties. In other words, hire for character and train for competence. I also discuss definitions of a ‘good police officer’, compliance, procedural justice, trust, normative alignment, legitimacy, organisational considerations, and police officer selection.

Police joint working is a messy area of enquiry, which has thus far been somewhat compartmentalised in previous research. This thesis reflects the complexities of police joint working amidst an era of austerity. It advances complex adaptive systems (CAS) as a theoretical construct, through which to study and comprehend the process of joint working. The principal aim is to provide a deeper and richer understanding of joint working, by drawing primarily on observations and experiences of warranted police officers and civilian police staff. The more specific objectives are to identify the utility of police joint working as a solution to social problems; investigate how joint work is accomplished using an ethnographic approach; contribute to understanding how joint working challenges might be approach differently. Through the application of CAS, a holistic and contextualised account of joint working is provided. In this respect, the thesis differs from previous atheoretical studies and literature employing a ‘communities of practice’ (CoP) approach. Whilst acknowledging the relevance of shared cultural factors, this thesis seeks to shift attention to wider – personal and structural – contextual influences that give rise to the ‘punctuated’ progress in working together, generally overlooked in existing joint working theory. Ethnographic methods were applied as a key to unlock the intricacies and diversity of joint working experiences – both front- and back-stage – as the researcher was immersed in a large police force in England for 18-months. Fieldwork insights exposed the fragmented, unpredictable and interconnected ways in which joint working changes over time. Thus, networked policing was revealed as messy, evolving and seemingly out of control. The implications section stresses the importance of developing a formalised supervision model as a source of stability through, which employees can find ways to navigate change ‘churn’ and ‘surf the chaos’.

This research studies the intersection of formal and informal social control processes in two high crime and two low crime neighbourhoods in the cities of Karachi and Lahore in Pakistan. The comparative case study design explores the significance of ethnic heterogeneity, political capital, social cohesion, and spatiality in explaining the neighbourhoods’ crime levels. Moreover, this study highlights the existential value of informal networks and kinship in preventing victimisation and nurturing survival in uncertain political and economic conditions. It further demonstrates that, in context of minimal state efficiency, social order is negotiated on the principles of expediency and accommodation. In particular, this study indicates that, when faced with mistrust of state institutions and selective fatalism, arising from economic vulnerability and chronic misgovernance, residents are willing to overlook some of the crimes which do not affect the harmony and stability of their neighbourhoods. By examining the ways in which social control is configured between the police and moral entrepreneurs in highly stratified neighbourhoods, this study stipulates that the optimum outcome of such an arrangement is most likely the maintenance of the status quo. Nonetheless, this study notes the limits of informal control mechanisms when these mechanisms are not buttressed by the agents of formal control or when the sheer intensity of crimes warrant self-preservation and inaction. Furthermore, this study illustrates that the legacy of colonialism lives on not only within the police forces but also within the public imagination. Consequently, the police are expected to behave in a repressive and highhanded manner, especially when dealing with offenders. Given this public conception of the police, this study discusses the grim prospects of the Western notion of democratic policing in Pakistan. Finally, this study raises questions in terms of applicability of some Western constructs and methodological tools in studying crime and policing in Pakistan.

The aim of this research is to ascertain whether a Middle Eastern quasi-military organisation with a hierarchical structure and centralised decision-making ethos can change its transactional leadership model to a transformation model that reflects a new community-based style of policing. It examines whether western-developed transformational leadership principles are culturally transferable, and it analyses the methodologies used by both the donor and recipient of the leadership development capacity building programmes. This research examines the strategies and challenges for introducing a community policing style in the Lebanese Internal Security Forces (ISF), a journey which began in 2013 and continues to the time of writing (Summer, 2019). It also highlights the necessity to adopt a collaborative participatory active research approach when researching a closed Middle Eastern security organisation where access is difficult, and the motives of researchers can be viewed with the utmost suspicion. The research examines the literature in relation to culture and highlights the negative effects of an ethnocentric approach to capacity building programmes that fail to give cognisance to culture and context. It suggests that equal partners taking a collaborative approach can successfully adapt western models of transformational leadership and a community policing style to meet the needs of their organisation.

Policing and mental ill health are inextricably entwined. Operationally the police respond to distressed persons and depending on the circumstances act as pseudo mental health practitioners or law enforcement officers. Likewise, due to operational and organisational stressors policing can be detrimental to the mental health of those delivering the service. Due to the prevalence of mental ill health in society, it is inevitable that police officers and police staff will either experience, work alongside and/or manage colleagues with a mental illness. Therefore, it is vital that the attitudes of police officers and police staff to mental ill health are established. The research employs a mixed methods approach to quantifiably measure police attitudes to mental ill health and benchmark them against the public alongside qualitative data gleaned from survey responses and interviews. The results indicate that police officers/staff share with the public similar attitudinal scores to the public. However, police officers and staff display social distancing whilst being less supportive of community-based interventions. The police qualitative data portrays an organisation where mental health related stigma and discrimination is evident, where disclosure and help seeking is avoided, officers and staff feel isolated and having a mental health issue seen as career destroying. Previous studies into UK police attitudes to mental ill health have been confined to single forces. This national study has established a measure and explanation for police attitudes to mental ill health across England and Wales.

As police forces are information intensive organisations, the use of advanced Information Systems in policing has led to the transformation of the social and the organisational life in forces. Nevertheless, the results of a pilot study conducted after four years of the roll out of mobile Kelvin devices in a medium-sized Constabulary in the UK have revealed officers’ resistance to using the full range of functionalities offered by these devices. The Kelvin devices’ initial training did not accommodate for differences in officers’ IT skills, experiences, roles, work contexts and police culture (ensuring the existence of a good-fit between all these factors). Hence, officers were unable to efficiently appropriate the Kelvin devices’ functionalities in different contexts and to various tasks. Therefore, guided by the data collected from the pilot study, a Fit and Appropriation Model for training (FAMT) is posited. FAMT aims to rectify the causes of officers’ resistance by not only creating a learning environment that bridges the gap in technical knowledge and skills but also enables learners to use their work experiences to link technology features to various tasks and contexts. The impact of using FAMT on the learning process sheds light on the key deteriminants of delivering effective technology training in organisations. The findings of the study delineate fundamental super-user’ characteristics and police culture aspects that can influence the learning process during training. Furthermore, the study highlights the significant role of providing IT support during technology training. This role should not be underestimated by mangers as it impacts profoundly on the effectiveness of female learners’ technology sense-making. Besides, incorporating collaborative training methods into FAMT have enhanced learners’ ability to extend the use of features to different contexts. Therefore, using FAMT has been perceived by officers as an effective training method that facilitates a personalised technology training and extends their knowledge about useful features in their Kelvin devices.

This research was commissioned by Organisation 1, a police force in England, in order to clarify the incidence of dyslexia within newly recruited officers and to identify strategies and systems which can support them in their role. From researching the subject areas, it was clear that little previous evidence existed and as such, this was considered ‘grounded research'. From a review of the existing literature of dyslexia, the impact of self esteem appeared key, particularly in formative education (e.g., Burden 2008, 2010; Taylor 2015 & Crivellie 2013). Within other public services, it was evident that neurodiversity (Griffin & Pollak 2009 and Pinkowski 2017) and disclosure were key factors in identification and services response (McCusker, 2014; Rosenfeld 1979 and Doyle, 2014). New interventions developing across the HE sector were focused on technological support, with coaching and mentoring appearing key in supporting self esteem with those identified with specific learning-difficulties in the work place (Crivelli 2013 and Price 2016). When regarding the links between dyslexia and self esteem, the research report establishes that traits of dyslexia are linked with levels of self esteem, with a statistically significant, negative correlation (p > 0.012 level, r=-.235). The higher the levels of dyslexia ‘traits' within the cohorts of newly trained recruits, the lower the self esteem. Other independent variables, such as demographic data were not collected so a simple, linear regression analysis (F (1, 5.3) = 17.86 p= .000) revealed the power of this relationship. A further small, self-selected sample of interviews gathered follow up qualitative data. This revealed the views of new recruits who were at least ‘at risk of dyslexia' from the screeners. Discussions regarding these new recruits' perceptions of anxieties, stresses and frustrations are revealed. There arelimitations to this data, for instance the size of the female only sample, which are discussed. However, this study forms an important foundation for considering the new recruits' perceptions in the police role. Finally, a service evaluation draws deeper perspectives across the police service, comparing views of both officers with a diagnosis of dyslexia, as well as line managers who are all experienced police officers (Person-Goff & Herington, 2013). The survey identifies a number of collaborative views on the weaknesses of police officers with dyslexia as well as the sorts of intervention which appear to have made a difference (Taylor, 2015 and Reid et al 2008 and Doyle, 2014). However, there do appear to be differences in opinion regarding strengths of officers with dyslexia in their role, or the levels of support from line managers and peers (Strauss, Griffin & Rafferty, 2009). The collaborative information from this thesis gives clarity on the impact of dyslexia on the police officer in role, for both newly qualified and experienced staff members. The voice of the officer with at least traits of dyslexia matches a number of views from the experienced officers, sharing concerns about administrative tasks and timescales and reflecting on variations of line management support. The echoed concerns and positive views of self in role, can assist the support structures in providing safe transitions, support and mechanisms for improving the quality of police work when challenged with dyslexia (Poda & Popea, 2013, Brown, 2007 and Strauss, Griffin & Rafferty, 2009).

This research investigates the extent to which police leadership would benefit from consideration of the concept of ‘followership'. The research approach is influenced by Critical Leadership Studies (CLS) principles of challenging assumptions about asymmetrical power dynamics and leader-centric leadership styles. The research question asks how an appreciation of followership theory could contribute to the development of police leadership, in turn improving follower wellbeing. Four research aims informed the research approach. 1) Examination of police leadership through a CLS lens from the perspective of followers. 2) Analysis of the leader follower relationship. 3) Provision of an evidence base informing the development of leadership models to meet current policing challenges whilst satisfying the wellbeing needs of followers. 4) Analysis of the factors which effect leadership, followership and wellbeing. A mixed–method approach was designed to answer the research question and satisfy the research aims. Research method one featured quantitative analysis of a national online questionnaire, producing data on leadership style, followership typology and the relationship between leaders and followers. Research method two involved analysis of qualitative data from the questionnaire and a series of interviews conducted with practitioners and academics; expanding on the questionnaire findings whilst further exploring the individual, organisational, external and theoretical factors which influence the leader follower relationship in contemporary policing. The unique contribution of the study is the provision of the ‘Ideal Follower Leadership' theoretical framework which reveals the most important factors informing optimal leader follower relationships. The thesis also maps, for the first time, the wide range of factors influencing the formulation of such relationships and how these factors could be enhanced, enabling better leadership, followership and wellbeing in the future. The potential impact of this study is to contribute to the design of police leadership training by developing an appreciation of followership from theory into practice.

The aim of this thesis is to further develop our understanding of the relationship between neoliberalisation and authoritarian state reconfigurations in Britain. The emerging literature on authoritarian neoliberalism has contributed substantially to our knowledge in this regard. However, it has only paid limited attention to aspects of physical coercion and policing which are crucial to this dynamic. Thus, I ask: What is the relationship between neoliberalisation and policing in Britain—and what can it tell us about authoritarian state reconfigurations? This question is addressed by bringing together methods and insights from different disciplines. Drawing on literature from international political economy, criminology and urban studies, I employ a historical and conceptual analysis of policing, state coercion and neoliberalisation. I examine political narratives and speeches, consider crime statistics and socio-economic metrics. Most importantly, I provide a qualitative case study based on semi-structured in-depths interviews in marginalised and transforming communities in South London that have been particularly exposed to authoritarian neoliberal reforms and coercive policing. The main finding of the thesis is that neoliberalisation has entailed a more authoritarian state configuration as expressed through an increasingly central role of the police and policing logic for the state, especially with regards to the police’s involvement in the provision of welfare services. This is especially true for the period since 2010 where a clear, yet paradoxical, increase of authoritarian policing could be shown as originating in austerity measures. However, these transformations have relied upon a large degree of continuity with previous periods of capitalism. Key continuities were the reliance on the coercive control of the racialised poor or the general role of the police to fabricate social order, which were intensified and transformed in the neoliberal era. These findings are significant because they help us qualify the novelty and distinctiveness of neoliberalisation, add to debates about its proper periodisation and, through the focus on policing, contribute a perspective on authoritarian state institutions that has not been developed in the canon of authoritarian neoliberalism.

The concept of policing a state has had to undergo a change of mindset due to the global nature of today’s world. There was anecdotal evidence that the training was outdated and did not take into account the cross-cultural differences that exist in Qatar. This study investigates this hypothesis and evaluates the quality of training at the Police Training Institute in Qatar After conducting an exhaustive literature review covering cross cultural differences, systems thinking and different delivery methods a methodological evaluation of public sector training was conducted using the Soft Systems Methodology of Professor Peter Checkland. The key findings to come out of the SSM Analysis were: the police training did not meet the participants’ expectations, course content failed to provide trainees with new skills, the delivery of the courses lacks interaction and courses were not useful or challenging. A conceptual model was developed that dealt with: • new content • cultural differences and; • new delivery methods A new course was designed, delivered, tested and evaluated. This was a course on Systems Thinking. Also, an App was designed for mobile phones which enabled the course to be delivered in a more modern manner which used the concept of social media. The final analysis showed that the Systems Thinking ideas were well received and more courses need to be designed at all levels. It suggested that there is a future for mobile technology in training and it encouraged organizations to experiment with this form of delivery. Recommendations were made for future training at the Police Training Institute and these were well received by the Ministry of Interior of Qatar. It also suggests that the PTI is an ideal candidate for a learning organization, which would help it to understand what is happening in the outside environment and produce creative solutions using the knowledge and skills of all within the organization.

As work roles become more sedentary, new interventions to promote physical activity (PA) and reduce sedentary behaviour (SB) are required. Mobile health (mHealth) technology (including wearable activity monitors and smartphone apps) is increasingly popular, low cost and accessible. The project consisted of a systematic review of the existing evidence for mHealth interventions for PA and SB in workplace settings, followed by a real-world pre-post pilot study of a specific mHealth intervention in the police force (the Physical Activity Wearables in the Police Force, or PAW-Force study). The review findings indicated that mHealth is a potentially effective, feasible and acceptable tool for promoting PA in a workplace context, at least in the short term. The longer-term impact and acceptability, and the impact on SB and wider outcomes (such as health, wellbeing and productivity) were less clear. The methodological quality of many existing studies was low and there were few mixed methods and qualitative studies. The study aims were to address the evidence gaps identified in the review, including the use of mixed methods, a detailed exploration of feasibility, acceptability and engagement in both the short- and longer-term, in addition to the impact on PA, sedentary time, health and wellbeing, perceived stress, perceived productivity and sickness absence. This was the first known study of an mHealth intervention for PA and SB in the police force. Police officers and staff (n = 180) within the Devon and Cornwall and Dorset Police received a 12-week intervention (a Fitbit® activity monitor and ‘Bupa Boost’ smartphone app) with 8 months follow-up. The results suggested a potential short- and long-term impact of the intervention on PA, particularly for less active officers and staff. Although the intervention was perceived as acceptable and feasible at various organisational levels, the findings highlighted the importance of contextual factors and opportunity, particularly for reducing SB. As in previous studies in other workplace settings, the impact on health, wellbeing, stress, productivity and sickness absence was unclear. The fields of workplace wellness, mHealth and behaviour change are brought together in this PhD. The findings will inform future interventions in addition to policy and practice in the police force.

This dissertation presents findings from analyses of three large datasets of domestic abuse records sourced from multiple police forces in England and Wales. It seeks to address research questions in relation to the extent of repeat and serial abuse, concentration and escalation of harm, and the forecasting of future serious crimes. Using a variety of statistics, it shows that most victims and offenders report domestic abuse to the police forces just once in a multi-year period. Among these cases however, are many of the individuals who comprise very small 'power few' groups that account for most of total crime harm. Using the Cambridge Crime Harm Index as the instrument of measurement, analysis shows that 80% of cumulative harm is attributable to fewer than 3% of victims and offenders, and almost half of these most harmed victims or harmful offenders have only one record of domestic abuse in police databases. Police forces are therefore presented with a substantial challenge when it comes to preventing serious harm from domestic abuse, because in more than 40% of the most harmful cases they have not dealt with the victims or offenders of domestic abuse before. Furthermore, among the victims and offenders who are linked to multiple records of domestic abuse, analysis detects no pattern of escalating severity. In fact, the first crime reported is, on average, the most harmful domestic crime reported to the police. This runs contrary to popular theories of escalation and further illustrates the forecasting challenge facing police agencies. Contemporary harm reduction strategies have placed some emphasis on the management of serial perpetrators of abuse, but analysis shows that these do not offer a complete solution for harm reduction either. These analyses show that serial offenders account for only between 10% and 15% of all domestic offenders and contribute no more to the 'power few' than repeat offenders who have just one victim. However, analysis of the non-domestic crime records of domestic offenders does show that serial perpetrators are less specialised in domestic abuse than repeat or single-time offenders - they commit more non-domestic types of crime and account for more total crime harm overall. Serial and repeat offenders with the greatest generalist tendencies were shown to be attributed to the most domestic abuse harm of any domestic offender types, indicating potential relevance to non-domestic offending records in the pursuit of predicting serious domestic crimes. How then, might police agencies seek to identify the most harmful cases before they occur? This research explores a large bank of records relating to arrests for any type of crime, using a statistical model created by a supervised machine learning algorithm. This model processes each arrestee every time they enter custody and using predictors from 35 pieces of information primarily concerning the prior offending history of the arrestee, generates a forecast of future arrest for a domestic crime within two years. The forecast has three classifications - no arrest, an arrest for a 'less serious' domestic crime, or an arrest for a serious domestic crime. In this fashion, the model could, at best, predict 49% of future serious arrests. The other 51% of serious domestic crime arrestees have no prior arrest record in the two years preceding their serious domestic crime and so there is no opportunity to forecast their crime based on police records alone. However, within the 49% of serious domestic crimes that are possible to forecast, the model accurately predicts more than three quarters. Hypothetically then, using this method of forecasting the police could identify 37% of all future serious domestic arrests up to two years before they occur. This presents the foundation of a major opportunity to reduce the prevalence and harm of domestic abuse. Taken together, these findings illustrate the scale of the challenge the police and other agencies face with reducing domestic abuse. A small proportion of individuals generate the majority of harm, but there are very limited opportunities to identify these individuals before the harm occurs. Yet, modern statistical techniques such as machine learning can help to target harm reduction strategies more precisely and even identify a sizeable proportion of serious cases before they occur. This dissertation presents with a series of ideas about how these objectives may be achieved and how the research can be developed further still.

The fact that crime clusters spatially has been known since at least the early 19th century. However, understanding of the extent and nature of this clustering at different areal units, and the fact that crime also clusters at different temporal scales is relatively new. Where previously the most at-risk areas (or `hot-spots') of crime were defined over areas the size of city districts and for periods of months if not years, the last decade has seen the focus shift to micro-places - areas of only a few hundred metres across - which are only `hot' for days or even hours. The notion that visible police presence in crime hot-spots can deter crime is not new and has been the basis of police patrols for two centuries. This deterrent effect has been well evidenced in many previous studies, both by academics and police practitioners. However, evaluations of these more recent micro-level hot-spot patrol strategies face significant analytic challenges and data quality concerns. They also often assume levels of police activity at the micro-area level (an `intention-to-treat' design) rather than measuring it directly. The aim of this thesis is to investigate the accuracy and precision of data that can be used to evaluate micro-level hot-spot patrol strategies and the implications this has for any analysis conducted using such data at these micro-level geographies. This thesis begins by outlining the relevant literature regarding place-based policing strategies and the current understanding of how crime clusters in both space and time. It continues by highlighting the data challenges associated with evaluating micro-level police interventions through the use of an illustrative analytic strategy before using a self-exciting point process model to evaluate the effects of police foot patrol in micro-level hot-spot under the assumption that the crime and patrol data being used are accurate. This is followed by two chapters which investigate the quality of the two datasets. Finally, the point-process evaluation is re-conducted using simulated data that takes account of the uncertainty of the datasets to demonstrate how data quality issues effect the result of such an evaluation and ultimately, the perceived efficacy of these highly-focussed policing strategies.

Police-led boys' clubs were established across England and Wales, in industrial towns and cities, during the interwar and immediate post-war period. They were founded and organised by Chief Constables, and high-ranking police officers. Their activities were reported upon in local, regional and national newspapers. Club organisers aimed to harness the 'high spirits' of boys in a positive way, removing them from the streets and the temptations of juvenile delinquency. They were run on a daily basis by working-class Police Constables, who were motivated for a variety of reasons to volunteer in them during their free time. Police-led boys' clubs were endorsed by royals and members of the aristocracy, facilitated and financed by local dignitaries, and attended on by doctors and dentists. The daily activities of the clubs were dominated by sports such as boxing and gymnastics. Camaraderie between the boys and the police officers who instructed these sports was encouraged. These pursuits used aspects of masculinity and physicality to engender self-restraint, a strong work ethic and produce model citizens. Camping, both in weekend and summer camps, was an integral part of the club programme. Camp organisers aimed to create good citizens through emphasis on character-building exercises, friendship and engagement with nature. The example of the police-led club is used to inform youth justice today. Comparisons are made between how boxing clubs aim to temper violent tendencies exhibited by certain types of masculinities; and how the example of the clubs speaks directly to youth crime prevention approaches outlined in the UK Government's Serious Violence Strategy. However, the potential for the recreation of the police-led club in a modern setting is somewhat limited.

This thesis presents the findings from narrative analysis of oral history interviews with 16 participants, retired and serving police officers, who joined the police service between 1965 and 2015. Informed by a theoretical and analytical framework of virtue ethics - formulated by MacIntyre (2012), the interviews sought to gain a greater understanding of the participants’ perceptions concerning moral alignment, legitimacy and the practice of virtues in support of morally good policing. The narratives revealed how 11 of the 16 participants regarded their authority, power and legitimacy to derive from the rule of law, their oath of allegiance to the Queen and from the constitutional significance of the ‘Office of Constable’. This perception was, to an extent, inconsistent with the wide body of literature concerning procedural justice and legitimacy. However, analysis also revealed a number of narrative insights from the participants’ childhood and early years and the development of virtues which motivated, aided or frustrated them in their quest to deliver morally good policing. These included the influence of religion on heightening understanding of community; justice and injustice; discretion; and mixed outcomes from procedural justice encounters. The narratives also revealed how the advent of policing risk, coupled with policies which reduce discretion, have resulted in a remote understanding of policing communities and a confused understanding of policing by consent.

To generate an understanding of the public's perception of police officers has taken precedence for reform efforts in recent years, especially in post-colonial societies like Trinidad and Tobago (T&T) with the aim of getting their police institutions to forge closer working relations with their citizens. Developing closer and harmonious relationships between citizens and the police bodies are more likely to foster and increase public trust and confidence in officers, implement consolidated working relationships between both parties and reduce citizens fear of crime, especially when the increasing crime rate in T&T during the past two decades has been considered out of control. Due to the lack of research on the subject of policing and furthermore on the public perception of police officers in T&T, this study was aimed at addressing the deficiencies in the literature by providing insights and understanding on the perception of police officers through the following research questions: (I) What are the variables that affect citizens perception of the police in T&T? (II) Do citizens demographic characteristics affect their relationship with the police and if yes, how and why? (III) In what ways can citizens perception of the police in T&T be improved? This study used a qualitative approach in order to bring some prospective on citizens subjective experiences by interviewing 50 adult members of the public within two geographic locations in T&T relative to people and police, contact, legitimacy, services and performance. The snowball sampling technique was used to obtain participants and the adaptive theory approach was used to analyse the data obtained. The study focused on key variables such as contact, age, socioeconomic status, race/ethnicity, police behaviour and justice. The results obtained suggested that these key variables were consistent with previous studies, however, new Page | 3 variables such as politics, gender and gang involvement were identified and acknowledged as being further responsible for how citizens perception of the police in T&T are shaped. As a result, the theoretical concepts used in this study could be expanded to include these new variables. The findings from this study suggested that the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service (TTPS) colonial legacy have an active participation on the role and function of the police in T&T and this created an impact on the performance of the police. This study further suggested that police reform in T&T would become an important factor for improving the public's perception of police officers. Because of previous failed police reform attempts in T&T where officers were identified as being reluctant to participate, this study has proposed training methods to improve officers' attitude towards accepting changes as an initial priority before applying methods to improve the relationship with the public.

Under what conditions do white Americans support police violence? And what are the terms by which they do so? This thesis explores how those who evince the strongest support for police, namely white Americans, “experience” incidents of excessive force, and examines the ideological mechanisms by which they make appraisals about policing. Across two online surveys of white American adults, varying the racial identity (white/black) of a police officer and suspect in a fictional scenario of violence showed no effect on respondents’ assessments of the encounter. Instead, ideological commitments to individualism, as measured in in just-world (Lerner 1980) and libertarian-authoritarian (Heath et al. 1994) attitudes, were associated with strikingly high levels of support for excessive force. I situate these empirical findings within a broader theoretical argument about white American identity, and the ideologies, mythologies, and pathologies that sustain it, namely the American Dream emphasis on desert, merit, and self-enterprise. I argue that excessive force is made legible through a frame of personal responsibility, with national and political identities influencing how white Americans, specifically, perceive and reconcile inequality. I suggest this way of “seeing” may explain why so many white Americans, in particular, continue to support the police. This research moves beyond identifying socio-demographic correlates for the approval of police violence, and uses rich theoretical examination and original survey data to investigate the role that racism and political ideology play in explaining white Americans’ beliefs about the appropriateness of excessive force.

This thesis explores the police role in shaping the right to protest and in particular the visibility of protest. The thesis sets out an inter-disciplinary theoretical framework drawing on law, criminology, surveillance studies and geography, seeking to go beyond existing models of public order policing, which focus primarily on the prediction of disorder, to consider the protection of human rights. It explores the idea of a ‘right to protest’ and how this can be protected, in practice, in terms of rights to assemble, to freedom of expression, to privacy and to freedom from intrusion. Using ethnographic methods focussed on approximately 50 protests and comprising 150 hours of observation, conversation with participants, print, broadcast and social media analysis, the thesis focuses on a specific location as a unit of comparison: central London, particularly Parliament Square and its surroundings. This location is of special significance to protesters, law makers, and law enforcers and is subject to location specific laws and regulations. The regularity of protest in this area allows for temporal and geographic comparisons to be drawn. The research describes and explains how law and geography shape the policing of protest in a site of symbolic significance to protesters, law enforcers and lawmakers. It shows how the police seek to control protest and examines the reactions of protesters in terms of their use of space. The key finding is that police and other public authorities’ use of legal powers can serve to reduce the visibility of protest, with a potential impact on the right to protest. The thesis explores the intentional and unintentional ways in which this occurs, including the ways that transgressive and non-transgressive protests are treated. Police tactics, legislation and by-laws regulate behaviour in the key sites of Parliament Square and its surroundings so as to reduce the vitality of protest and limit protest and expression. Drawing on the language of Nils Christie, the thesis concludes that the police ‘steal the protest’ from protesters.

Taking a critical action research approach this thesis examines the psychological outcomes of emotional labour for police officers in England and Wales. Using a sequential qualitative mixed method design this research is broken down into four phases: · Phase One takes a Sociology of Knowledge Approach to Discourse analysis of selected media items that include police representation. · Phase Two conducts narrative analysis of 137 audio diary entries of serving officers. · Phase Three examines the interviews of 4 serving officers and 6 ex-officers using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. · Phase Four engages serving officers in two workshops using role play, underpinned by Psychodrama, to encourage problem solving and to identify realistic operational options for improving officers’ psychological wellbeing. Findings show that that emotional labour for police officers begins in the public arena and feeling and display rules operate in every aspect of an officers’ life, including with friends and family. The most expressed feeling and display rule is that emotional display is a sign of weakness and an inability to carry out the role of the police officer. Rules are enforced by penalising measures and are described as career limiting or ending. This results in a significant amount of emotional suppression, burnout and dissociative behaviour. Moving away from the traditional quantitative measures for emotional labour has allowed this study to capture the depth and complexity of officers’ lived experience of emotional labour. Audio diaries have captured the thinking and motivation behind officers’ emotional regulation and has identified how officers depersonalise prior to burnout as compliance with feeling and display rules. Interviews of ex-officers has enabled an association to be made between feeling and display rules and psychological outcomes. Contributing to theory, alongside stress and burnout, emotional labour can now be associated with dissociative behaviour as a psychological outcome.

The social media provided police agencies with many worth capabilities to promote their crime control activities, which grounded in gaining the trust of the citizens. The literature review unearthed a lack of empirical studies on examining the potential role of Facebook (FB) users’ trust in facilitating crime information sharing with the police through various social media platforms. This study endeavoured to replenish this knowledge gap by identifying the causes and factors that could build Facebook users’ trust in participating in the Abu Dhabi Police FB regarding crime information sharing. The study developed a conceptual model based on the e-servicescapes concept of Harris and Goode (2010) and Harris and Ezeh (2008), which considered trust, communication efficiency, and customer’s purchase intention as crucial factors for successful online service, while Hohl’s work (2011) tested trust in police from a citizen perspective. The study employed FB, due to its global popularity, to investigate i) possible integration of FB as a tool in crime detection based on gained public trust; and ii) social acceptance towards disclosure of crime news on the ADP’s FB. The developed model answered these research questions i) How did the ADP employ FB in police-community communication to gain the desired public trust?, and ii) Did the gained public trust play a role in driving the users’ interest in sharing information regarding the detection of non-serious crimes? The mixed-method addressed these questions. The survey participants (n=300) retrieved from the ADP’s database and conducted interviews with FB experts (n=20). The generated findings revealed that graphic design, functionality, content quality, and secure access to the ADP’s FB page were crucial in building users’ trust to support participation intention regarding non-serious crime issues. The findings illustrated demographic features of the survey participants, where the males between 40-49 years represented 77.51% of the men (n=169), whereas females between 30-39 years represented 76.93% of women (n=39) whose trust motivated them to participate regularly in the ADP’s FB. The study concluded that the gained trust of FB users enhanced reliable information sharing dedicated to non-serious crime detection. This study contributed to developing a police FB model to explain how the ADP officers considered the impact of public trust on deploying FB in their policing routines regarding non-serious crime detection. Keywords: Public trust; Police social media; Facebook; Non-serious crimes; Crime information sharing; Participation intention; Socio-cultural norms; the UAE.

This thesis adopts a broad qualitative standpoint. It examines police involvement in partnerships before and after the implementation of the Crime and Disorder Act, 1998, legislation which mandated the police to work in partnership. A case-study of Staffordshire Police explores experiences of officers working in partnerships pre and post 1998. The research is used to provide insights into the complexity that is partnership, which has wider applicability beyond policing. The thesis examines also the concept and specific mechanisms of policing in partnership that have, in the main, been championed by successive government administrations since New Labour in the late 1990s and are now largely assumed as being an 'effective and efficient' way of working. The thesis identifies an important hitherto strangely underexplored fact, namely: that the foundational policy document, which framed the Crime and Disorder Act mandating police-partnerships, the Morgan Report (1991), produced zero-evidence as to the efficacy of the partnership approach it advocates. Despite being unevidenced, the Morgan Report set in motion a national framework, bureaucratization and professionalization of partnerships. Consequently, there now exists a complex web of professional clustering's around pre-defined problems. Significantly, the research identifies, that the formality of partnership has encouraged the police to withdraw from elements of their pre-Morgan service and care functions. Equally, partnership has little or no connection to current policing strategy. More recently Police and Crime Commissioners provide a new dynamic to partnership governance and their increasing 'influence' is being felt. However, government fiscal austerity has shifted contemporary partnership discourse with evidence presented of organizations withdrawing support and re-entrenching core activity. The thesis concludes by framing a new conceptualization for assessing partnership effectiveness.

Problem-oriented policing (POP) is one of the various proactive policing strategies that have been developed since the 1970s. It has been claimed that POP has had a considerable effect in reducing crime (Weisburd et al., 2010). However, its role in the crime drop that has been experienced in England and Wales and across the world since the 1990s (Tseloni et al., 2010) is not yet known (Weisburd and Majmundar, 2018). Therefore, this thesis explores the role of POP in the burglary drop at the police force area (PFA) level in England and Wales between 1988 and 2007/08. The theories that underpin both POP and this study are opportunity-related theories (rational choice and routine activity theories), social disorganisation theory, and the new public management concept. The empirical component of the study is divided into three phases, where each phase employs different methods (e.g. multilevel negative binomial regression) to analyse a rich array of data sources (e.g. the Crime Survey for England and Wales). The results of this thesis can be summarised as follows: 1. A number of police forces in England and Wales were consistently committed to POP over time. 2. There seemed to be a relationship between POP and the fall in burglaries and repeat burglaries in a number of POP-committed PFAs between 1995 and 2007/08. 3. Although POP-committed police forces experienced fewer burglaries in 2003/04, POP did not result in a statistically significant reduction in burglaries between 1995 and 2003/04. 4. Conversely, POP-committed police forces saw a statistically significantly higher number of burglaries in 1997. 5. Police forces with a higher number of police officers per 1000 residents experienced a statistically significant reduction in burglaries in 2003/04. In light of the above findings, this thesis sheds new light on the crime drop and policing literature. Consequently, the findings inform the theoretical and practical aspects of POP that can be used by police and other crime prevention agencies to reduce burglary victimisation.

This thesis represents a qualitative study of the lived experiences and perceptions of policing from the perspectives of Dutch-Africans resident in the Netherlands, as well as from the perspective of serving Dutch police officers. It seeks to question how these experiences resonate or depart from known studies on the negative experiences of BME populations and policing in the United Kingdom and the United States. Whilst the emphasis is upon perceptions from Dutch-African residents,attitudes, views and experiences of officers are also included. The theoretical stance adopted by this study is an intersectional lens as conceived by the Critical Race Theory (CRT) perspective to provide "whole person" accounts of experiences of discrimination, and how the intersectional racializing experiences affect Dutch-Africans during encounters with the police. The study also critically evaluates the relevance of police occupational culture to Dutch contexts. This research represents the first study to date of Dutch-African experiences of policing in the Netherlands, incorporating interviews and focused observations of Dutch-Africans and police officers on patrol. It is also one of the few empirical criminological studies to use an intersectional perspective in examining these experiences. It further illuminates the process of categorisation in the Netherlands and how the definition of being Dutch is associated with whiteness within the context of the Dutch police organisation and Dutch society, and how this shapes the Dutch-African encounters with the Dutch police. The study also finds an overwhelming evidence of Dutch-Africans' acknowledgment of their marginalised status as a "suspect community" based on their experiences of police interaction.

This thesis investigates how members of the public report neighbourhood problems in telephone inquiry calls to antisocial behaviour, environmental health, and mediation services in the United Kingdom (UK). It provides the first comparative analysis of how similar kinds of concerns (e.g., noise, smells, property access) are designed for different organizations that, in their own way, have a remit to provide service. Despite neighbourhood problems, and neighbour disputes, being such a widespread and pervasive concern in the UK, little is known about the service provided by the somewhat diverse organisations that exist to remedy them. This research examines actual interactions that take place in these institutional settings, focusing on the ways in which people formulate complaints about their neighbours conduct, and how different services offer (or reject) assistance. In so doing, the thesis contributes in new ways to our understanding of how institutional identities, relationships, actions, and activities are shaped in these encounters. Further, it enriches our knowledge of the organisational features of social interaction. The empirical basis for the research comprises a corpus of over 340 telephone recordings of interactions between members of the public and antisocial behaviour, environmental health, and mediation services. The data were transcribed and analysed using the approach of discursive psychology (DP), as embedded within the methodological framework of conversation analysis (CA). The four analytic chapters are organised around different aspects of service provision, and in their own way, address the two core CA concepts of comparative analysis (i.e., comparing interactional features in or across environments) and recipient design (i.e., formulating talk designed to display an orientation to co-present others). The first analytic chapter examines how noise disturbance is initially recipient designed and establishes two predominant formulations callers use - agentive (neighbours are invoked) and agent-free (neighbours are omitted). In mediation calls, the agentive formulation is always used, whilst in environmental health calls, agent-free design is predominantly used. The second analytic chapter investigates the emergence of service-side business and demonstrates how concomitant shifts (i.e. from caller experience to institutional concern) by call-takers treat certain information as adequate, and how callers are given interactional space (or not) to complain in various ways. The third analytic chapter comparatively examines how third-party agencies (TPAs) are recipient designed when making the case for aid specifically, as service-referrals and service-mentions , and brings into focus, the interconnectedness of organisations that manage similar problems. The final analytic chapter investigates call outcomes through offers and signposting to TPAs. Offers might recruit callers in future courses of action or may only be treated as offers by next-turn-proof-procedure. Signposting typically involves rejecting the case for assistance sometimes in normative terms, or in the vehicle of an offer. Through comparative analysis, this thesis contributes significantly to our understanding of the interconnectedness of services and underscores the flexible ways in which neighbourhood problems are recipient designed for, and managed by, call-takers in organisations. This thesis lays the groundwork for future research by introducing new institutional environments for service provision antisocial behaviour and environmental health agencies.

In urban areas, crime and disorder have been long-lasting problems that spoil the economic and emotional well-being of residents. A significant way to deter crime, and maintain public safety is through police patrolling. So far, the deployment of police forces in patrolling has relied mainly on expert knowledge, and is usually based on two-dimensional spatial units, giving insufficient consideration to the underlying urban structure and collaboration among patrol officers. This approach has led to impractical and inefficient police patrol strategies, as well as a workload imbalance among officers. Therefore, it is of essential importance to devise advanced police patrol strategies that incorporate urban structure, the collaboration of the patrol officers, and a workload balance. This study aims to develop police patrol strategies that would make intelligent use of the street network layout in urban areas. The street network is a key component in urban structure and is the domain in which crime and policing take place. By explicitly considering street network configurations in their operations, police forces are enabled to provide timely responses to emergency calls and essential coverage to crime hotspots. Although some models have considered street networks in patrolling to some extent, challenges remain. First, most existing methods for the design of police districts use two-dimensional units, such as grid cells, as basic units, but using streets as basic units would lead to districts that are more accessible and usable. Second, the routing problem in police patrolling has several unique characteristics, such as patrollers potentially starting from different stations, but most existing routing strategies have failed to consider these. Third, police patrolling strategies should be validated using real-world scenarios, whilst most existing strategies in the literature have only been tested in small hypothetical instances without realistic settings. In this thesis, a framework for developing police patrol strategies based on the urban street network is proposed, to effectively cover crime hotspots, as well as the rest of the territory. This framework consists of three strategies, including a districting model, a patrol routing strategy for repeated coverage, and a patrol routing strategy for infrequent coverage. Various relevant factors have been considered in the strategy design, including the underlying structure of the street network and the collaboration among patrollers belonging to different stations. Moreover, these strategies have been validated by the patrolling scenarios in London. The results demonstrate that these strategies outperform the current corresponding benchmark strategies, which indicates that they may have considerable potential in future police operations.

Teargas has followed a markedly different trajectory to its chemical weapons (CW) counterparts over the twentieth century. While the Geneva Protocol of 1925 and the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention prohibited chemical agents as means of warfare, from the early interwar period teargas gained legitimacy as a technology for domestic policing across the world. Moreover, this role in domestic riot control later became a means for some states to justify its use in military operations. This PhD therefore asks: how did teargas, in the case of British policy, become associated with riot control and policing in the twentieth century, yet prohibited as a means of warfare? Drawing from key concepts in STS and related social sciences, I argue that we can take the technical characteristics of 'teargas' (its 'non-lethality' or low toxicity) as being co-produced with its social role as a crowd control agent. Furthermore, I argue that by doing so we gain insight into how the 'non-lethal' status of teargas was situated within a 'civilising' governmentality in Britain. This governmentality both legitimated, and was legitimated by, the authority of scientific expertise. The thesis makes this argument by tracing a historical sociology of teargas in Britain and the empire from 1925 to 1965. Using declassified records from the UK National Archives and sources from newspaper archives, it examines three significant moments in Britain's construction of teargas as a domestic technology. The first addresses the initial transition from military to colonial policing contexts that teargas made in British policy during the interwar period; the second focuses on Britain's first use of teargas on populations within the UK during civil defence gas tests during WWII; the third traces the widespread use of teargas throughout the empire from WWII until 1965, examining the emergence of CS gas with the conception of riot control later in this period. Ultimately, I contend that CS, the 'teargas' of our contemporary moment, emerged from a sociotechnical imaginary of non-lethal chemical control grounded in 'civilising' modes of techno-politics.

Assaults against police officers are an enduring aspect of the risk posed to police officers, with the underlying risk of conflict prevalent in all encounters with the public. Egon Bittner (1975) highlighted that police officers hold the threat of and ability to use force to resolve conflict between and with citizens. As a result, police officers put themselves in situations where there is an increased risk of being assaulted or injured. Police officers make quick decisions to interfere in the lives of others, deciding whether to use force and on how best to control potentially violent individuals. The main research questions for this thesis focused on the impact of the police role and the informal rules of the 'occupational police culture' on the risk of conflict escalation. It explored the importance of cultural talk as a way of making sense of the police role but also in guiding the way in which officers approach future incidents. To provide this detailed understanding of cultural traits, the study concentrated on the observation of police officers in action at live incidents as well as their behaviours and actions in the parade room and police vehicles when discussing and explaining incidents of violence. The thesis explored how both male and female officers engaged with gendered discussion and the differences between officers in how they approached incidents and reacted to facing aggressive non-compliance. In doing so, the study moves away from quantitative overviews of assault data, including location and temporal analysis towards understanding the realities of policing, the dynamics of incidents, how officers support each other and the influence of informal cultural values in explaining some assaults and the general reactions to being attacked. The study reveals that there is a strong connection between how an officer performs according to informal rules and guidance and the increased risk of being assaulted. The approach of an officer, coupled with a desire for action and a need to (re)assert authority create situations whereby there is often a higher risk of conflict escalation. The police role also influences the risk of assault with a clear impact of workload and call demand stressors on the police response to incidents, including the danger that an officer under stress can over-react to challenges to their authority, creating conditions by which assaults sometimes occur. The final key finding suggests that the demands of assistance based calls present new risks and challenges to police officers from the misunderstanding of needs to problems in morally applying force and establishing authority. This study extends knowledge of assaults against police officers in England and Wales and leads to wider debates about the influence of informal cultural values and discretion on assaults alongside the impact of assistance based calls. Recommendations are made for police policies on personal safety training, the encouragement of reporting assaults and the provision of information on the effects of drugs and mental health concerns on a person's behaviour. The conclusion also raises opportunities for future research on this emotive subject.

Police Support Volunteers (PSVs) are citizens who give their time freely to perform tasks that complement the duties of police officers and staff. Emerging over the last 25 years or so, PSVs feature in every police service in England and Wales, carrying out a range of tasks including administration, front counter duties, and community engagement activities. However, the evidence base around PSVs is distinctly underdeveloped with little in the way of empirical studies. This PhD study seeks to expand the currently narrow field of research through the first focused study of PSVs in the Metropolitan Police Service. The study considers the motivations of PSVs and influence these have on their experiences. It goes on to explore PSVs’ contributions, the importance they attach to ‘being useful’, the experiences they have alongside officers and staff, and the extent to which they feel recognised and valued for their time. Finally, the study turns to the organisation itself – the infrastructure in place to support, manage, develop, and involve PSVs – features that are recognised as central to volunteer experiences. Maximising opportunities for the police service and community to capitalise on the benefits of a police workforce that includes PSVs – engagement, communication, innovation, and a source of labour, skills, and expertise – requires a more developed understanding of the issues explored in this study. Indeed, failing to build such an evidence base to guide the involvement of volunteers, at best, risks oversight of the value that PSVs bring – at worst, the reputation of both volunteers and the police organisation. The study concludes with a call to rethink the way volunteers are involved in policing, reassign tasks, and reimagine the PSV within a landscape where the police service is faced with changing priorities and demands to do ‘more for less’.

The central contention of this thesis is that the recent budgetary cuts and associated developments within policing in the UK challenge the historically voluntary nature of the Special Constabulary. This thesis developed the existing literature which has focused almost exclusively upon the regular paid police officers engagement with the policing frontline by the extensive examination of Special Constabulary recruitment, retention, training, duties and deployments, leadership, relationship with paid officers and changes associated with the budgetary cuts. The role of citizens within policing is nothing new; however recent economic necessity and paid workforce reductions mean the use of unpaid volunteers in providing policing services has substantially increased and has been widely promoted by police leadership and government. Drawing upon numerous semi-structured interviews with serving members of the Special Constabulary across four police forces within England and Wales; members of three Police and Crime Commissions, representatives of the National Crime Agency, the South West Police Federation, the Home Office, Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabularies and high ranking paid police officers, this thesis highlights how the role of the Special Constabulary has changed substantially in the last eight years. The interplay between police leadership and Government messages of the Special Constabulary being a supplementary rather than replacement force, the everyday operational accounts of Special Constables are in stark contrast. Increasingly used as frontline response officers without adequate training or supervision, this raises critical debate about the position of police as policing experts, when unpaid, volunteers with limited training are fulfilling the same role. To use a voluntary force in a reservist capacity amounts to a misuse of these volunteers with inherent risks and vulnerabilities being exposed. This thesis concludes by critically exploring the future of this voluntary police workforce in the context of profound and ongoing organisational reforms.

The right to peacefully protest is an intrinsic part of a democratic society and embedded in UK history and tradition. The police are responsible for managing public order and facilitating peaceful protest, and this has not been without criticism. On occasions the police have found themselves in opposition to protest groups and there have been incidents of disorder as a result. In response, the development of police liaison officers in the UK has presented the police with a tactic that provides a gateway for dialogue between the police and those involved in protest, both prior to and during an event. There has been scant research into the use of dialogue between the police and protesters and the deployment of liaison officers. This research supports and contributes to this sparse body of research by providing further evidence of the value of dialogue between protesters and the police and advocates the role of Police Liaison Teams (PLT) as the conduit between protesters and police decision-making commanders. The right to peaceful protest however is not absolute and must be balanced with the rights of those upon whom the protest may impact, such as businesses and local communities. The role of the police is as arbitrators in managing this legislative balancing act, however there is a dearth of research into the role that the police undertake in balancing competing qualified human rights in protest events. This research seeks to address this lacuna by arguing that implementing a dialogical approach allows the police to balance such competing rights. Using semi-structured interviews with forty-eight police commanders, liaison officers, members of protest groups, businesses and other interested parties, this thesis provides evidence over two contrasting case studies; the policing of the badger cull in Devon and Cornwall and the policing of an English Defence League (EDL) march in Liverpool. This research argues that the police are emplaced not in opposition to those wishing to protest but as "piggy in the middle," arbitrating between all interested parties and balancing the competing human rights of all those affected by the protest event. In addition to utilising the Elaborated Social Identity Model and the Flashpoints Model, both approaches which are further explored, the thesis also considers procedural justice theory as a base for examining dialogical policing. Further, this research argues that all three approaches are epistemologically compatible and combined provide a sound theoretical foundation from which a dialogical approach with both protest groups and other interested parties may be analysed. Furthermore, this thesis argues that there is value for all interested parties in engaging in dialogue and proposes that the application of a dialogical approach assists the police to balance the rights of all those engaged in the event and reduce conflict, by providing an open, proportionate and procedurally fair response.

The aim of this research was to examine the return process for people who are reported missing. A ‘Safe & Well Check’ is usually carried out by a police officer to prove the missing person has returned and are not in immediate harm. A Return Home Interview (RHI) must then take place with a child within 72 hours, but no statutory responsibility exists for adults. This more in-depth interview seeks to find out where people went and why, in order to identify potential risks to their safety and whether they experienced harm while they were missing. The frequency of this interview, who does it, the content, and subsequent sharing, varies within Constabularies, and from force to force. This study explored the limited existing literature relating to missing people in the last 20 years. A mixed methods survey of nearly 2,000 Constables from England and Wales ran in 2016, using quantitative and open qualitative questions. The thesis aims to address three objectives to 1. Explore the attitudes of police officers to return home interviews (RHI) of adults. 2. Explore the attitudes of police officers to RHI of children. 3. Examine whether the RHI should be the responsibility of third sector partners. Key themes that emerged were frustration at repetition of missing cases (3 or more), police negativity around usefulness of RHI’s, a challenge to involve third sector partners, and development areas in training. There was also variance in practice and difference in attitudes relating to officers’ gender, educational levels, RHI training levels and RHI experience. All of the groups had strong or noteworthy associations. There was statistical significance in reported RHI engagement levels and whom officers would least prioritise for interview. The study makes recommendations about best practice for the return process, advocating a more consistent, multi-agency approach to improve interventions.

Drawing on and contributing to the theoretical frameworks of police culture, leadership, and gender, this thesis critically examines the perceptions and experiences of male and female senior police officers (superintendent rank and above) in England and Wales. It considers whether gender and/or gender bias impacts on career progression, and how this may be preventing the service from achieving police reform. Utilising a mixed methods approach, the extant literature from a broad range of international studies and primary and secondary data are considered. Quantitative and qualitative analyses of 231 surveys and thirty one-to-one interviews are conducted, facilitating comparisons by both rank and gender, allowing similarities and differences within the data to be drawn. Key findings, which are likely to be of relevance to police forces worldwide, include the similarity of senior officer career paths, particularly for those achieving the highest ranks, and the career advantage provided through subjective sponsorship. Leadership styles emerge as homogenous, with agentic traits and traditional approaches persisting. A ‘time served’ and ‘long-hours’ culture, together with challenges with regards to juggling work and family life, prevail. Most senior women in the study were married to police officers and were significantly more likely than the males in the study to have no children or small families. Despite evidence of the positive impact increased diversity could have for police reform, the number of female police officers remains disproportionately low, with evidence that the numbers are in danger of receding further. Female new recruit proportions are unchanged in a decade, and promotion rates appear to have flat-lined, with female promotions to sergeant and chief constable ranks particularly low. Women are also leaving policing prematurely. Despite this, there are no centralised concerns being expressed regarding gender disproportionality, suggesting a tacit acceptance of the stereotype of policing as a male-dominated profession. This research concludes that while there is evidence of some genuine desire for transformation, the traditional elements of police culture, masculine characteristics of organisational leadership, and prevailing constructs of gender combine to produce a ‘Groundhog Day’ effect, which continues to over-shadow attempts to change. Recommendations to assist police forces in achieving those benefits associated with organisations that value diversity are proposed, with a focus on gender parity in recruitment, a national graduate-entry scheme with summer internships; temporary promotion opportunities and steps to help women achieve the first supervisory rank highlighted as particularly likely to facilitate change.

For many years police culture has been a subject of interest for researchers across the world, with the underlying assumption that police culture is the same, irrespective of the country. Research primarily focused on often negative characteristics of what was referred to as ‘occupational police culture’. The aim of this thesis is to critically examine the impact of occupational, organisational and national cultures on police values (primarily acquired early in life on national or societal level) and practices (learned through socialisation processes within the occupation and organisation). This study reports findings from a mixed-methods research, which administered an online questionnaire targeting an international sample of police officers as a quantitative method, and which also included semi-structured interviews conducted with European police officers as a qualitative instrument. The questionnaire responses from 206 primarily European police officers and the results from 20 semi-structured interviews show similarities and differences between police officers from various countries. The findings indicate a close link of their values and practices to their national culture. What has been described as ‘police culture’ so far, is a conglomerate of national culture, the culture created by and within the various organisations police officers work for and in, and of the actual occupational culture of the police profession, which is in fact the first major finding of this research. Cultural values and practices are acquired during different stages of the socialisation process, on national, occupational and organisational level. The second major finding of this research is the lack of a sharp divide between occupational and organisational socialisation in the police, caused by the early exposure of police recruits to the policing environment. The ‘Three Aspects of Police Culture Model’ was developed from the analysis of the findings. There are three cultural aspects, on a national, occupational and organisational level, which determine the values and practices of police officers and influence the development of police culture. The model allows for the identification of the source of negative cultural characteristics, helps to better understand police culture and provides new opportunities for change. This is an important, fresh and unique contribution to the existing body of published research exploring police culture.