Police narrativity and discretionary power

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International Journal of the Sociology of Law 31 (2003) 295–322

International Journal of the Sociology of Law www.elsevier.com/locate/ijsl

Police narrativity and discretionary power Elaine Campbell* School of Geography, Politics and Sociology, University of Newcastle, Claremont Bridge Building, Newcastle-upon-Tyne NE1 7RU, UK

1. Introduction In an earlier article, I set out an argument for reconceptualising discretionary power as strategic action using the insights of Giddens’ theory of structuration as a frame of reference (Campbell, 1999). Here I refine the argument through an empirical examination of decisional ‘accounts’, specifically, a series of narrative summaries of pre-trial case disposals. The claim in this paper is that police discretionary decisions (to charge, and in particular, to caution) cannot be understood in relation to a range of objective criteria set out, for example, in national standards, Home Office Circulars, police decision-making guidelines and ‘gravity scales’. Such an approach has proved futile in the past and has simply failed to provide an adequate account of widespread and persistent variability in police decision-making patterns. A more radical, lateral and interpretive perspective on discretionary decisional choices is proposed here. It is suggested that the ‘facts of the case’ and the ‘people’ and ‘actions’ which constitute them are made meaningful only by their place within a narrative economy which articulates a mythology of policing accomplishment and professionalism. From this vantage point, discretionary decision-making can be regarded as strategically valuable and necessary to patrol, mark out and maintain the discursive boundaries of desirable and acceptable policing, thereby sustaining and generating the integrity of its corporate reputation and identity. This does not require a leap of faith so much as a re-imagination of how we conceptualise the role and function of police decision-making practice, and how we theorise the discretionary power which such practice entails.

*Tel.: +44-191-222-5030; fax: +44-191-222-7497. E-mail address: [email protected] (E. Campbell). 0194-6595/$ - see front matter r 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.ijsl.2003.07.001

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2. Cautioning research and a history of reform The vagaries of pre-trial, discretionary decision-making, most especially the endemic inconsistency and uneven use of police cautioning across and within police force areas, have captured academic attention for more than 60 years (Bagehot, 1941; Grunhut, 1956; McClintock and Avison, 1968; Ditchfield, 1976; Laycock and Tarling, 1985; Evans and Wilkinson, 1990; Evans and Ellis, 1997). In this long trajectory of research, numerous and varied attempts to account for cautioning disparities have been made by reference to extraneous factors, such as crime patterns, the demographic features of different policing areas, local sentencing trends, rates of recidivism, legislative change, and levels of community involvement in policing affairs (Landau, 1981; Fisher and Mawby, 1982; Landau and Nathan, 1983; Mott, 1983; Tutt and Giller, 1983; Home Office, 1984; Giller and Tutt, 1987; Evans and Wilkinson, 1990; Westwood, 1990, 1991; Wilkinson and Evans, 1990). Similarly, others have attributed inconsistency specifically to policing factors such as differences in force policy; variation in commitment to pre-trial diversion; varying availability of different forms of cautioning; diversity in attitudes to multiple and repeat cautioning; differences in administrative arrangements for recording and monitoring cautioning practice; and the predominance of different procedural processes (the use of arrest and summons, for example) (Farrington and Bennett, 1981; Laycock and Tarling, 1985; Sanders, 1988; Evans and Ellis, 1997). However, little by way of reliable and valid evidence of causal relationships has been established, and in the absence of a robust and statistically demonstrable explanation (Bottomley and Pease, 1986), the vagaries of cautioning have been largely understood as the product of ‘unfettered police discretion’ (Sanders, 1988, p. 513). Discretion, then, has served as a kind of ‘bucket theory’ of cautioning discrepancies—a residual category into which all unexplained (and inexplicable) aspects of police cautioning practice can be conveniently deposited. The corollary to this has been the call for and development of a reform agenda which has sought out ever more sophisticated ways of regulating, standardising and controlling police cautioning discretion. Following sustained demands throughout the 1960s and 1970s for the principled governance of cautioning (McClintock and Avison, 1968; Steer, 1970; Ditchfield, 1976; Nelken, 1976), it was the Royal Commission on Criminal Procedure (The Philips Report, 1981) which served as the catalyst for a committed governmental response to cautioning matters. Philips explicitly cited the vagaries of cautioning to illustrate inconsistency in prosecution practice more generally, and the need to reduce variation was seen as crucial to the fairness, accountability and efficiency of the pre-trial process. Highlighted again by the All-Party Penal Affairs Group, and more thoroughly reviewed in a Consultative Document drawn up from the Report of the Working Group on Cautioning (Home Office, 1984; see also, Laycock and Tarling, 1985), the preferred approach has been by way of Circular exhortation. Three Home Office Circulars, disseminated over the period 1985 to 1994 (Home Office, 1985, 1990, 1994) (HOC 14/1985; 59/1990; 18/ 1994), have co-established national standards for cautioning, creating a ‘framework of general principles and practice within which forces should operate (HOC 59/1990:

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para 7). These ‘standards’ amount to the setting out of clear decisional criteria for cautioning; a clarification of the way in which cautions for different age groups should be administered;1 a recommendation that cautions should be carefully recorded and monitored on a force-wide basis; a reiteration of the need for Chief Officers to produce force policy statements which reflect a clear and consistent stance on cautioning; and advice to maximise the inter-agency basis of cautioning at both the policy-making and decision-making level. Despite these exhortations, problems with police cautioning have persisted, with the most recent evaluation of the practice complaining that: y despite calls to improve the degree of consistency, there are still significant differences between forces on almost all aspects of cautioning policy and the decision-making process. Also, few forces are able to meet ACPO/HMIC standards for monitoring and recording cautioning decisions—making consistency even more difficult to achieve (Evans and Ellis, 1997, p. 4). It is in the light of the explanatory and political bankruptcy of the received wisdom of police cautioning that the need to develop an alternative perspective on cautioning practice arises. Such an alternative takes as its starting point a problematisation of the key assumptions and underlying presuppositions of cautioning knowledge. By clearing the ground of the analytical debris of the past, a theory of cautioning discretion is made possible. While there is no scope here to make the lengthy theoretical detour that is necessary for such a task, an abridged account is offered which identifies the key analytical steps that have been taken—see also Campbell (1997, 1999, 2000).

3. Discretion, context and everyday policework A core assumption of legalistic understandings of discretionary power—initiated by Davis’ (1969) seminal work in this area—is that it constitutes a ‘sphere of autonomy (Galligan, 1990, p. 8), ‘the space’ (Hawkins, 1992, p. 11) or ‘an area left open’ (Dworkin, 1977, p. 31) by legal rules which (alone) set clear limits to the arbitrariness and intuitive bases of decisions made by legal actors. This is a fine model if we are also prepared to accept that individual, discretionary agency (free choice) is not also collective, structured, ordered and routinised by phenomena other than legal rules. Therefore, to move beyond the hitherto narrow formulation of discretion, we need not only consider the role and function of decision-making within the socio-political and organisational context in which it occurs, but also pose critical questions of that context. It is precisely the failure to contextualise cautioning practice within organisational policing that underpins the perennial failure of the reform agenda. The social, 1 The Crime and Disorder Act, 1998 placed cautioning on a statutory footing and introduced new cautioning procedures for young offenders aged 17 years and under. Inter alia, these revisions re-named the caution (for this age group) as a ‘final warning’.

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political, organisational and occupational context of cautioning may set definite limits on the achievement of uniformity in policy and practice. In other words, it is all very well creating elaborate legalistic frameworks (national standards, decisional criteria and gravity scales, for example), but everyday policing will always conspire to handle things differently. This is not an act of deliberate subversion as the ‘unfettered discretion’ thesis would seem to imply: rather, policing is a disciplined, hierarchical, gendered organisation which may be always-already structurally overdetermined. These structural features and their interrelationship with cautioning activity have simply not been explored. From Bagehot (1941) through to Evans and Ellis (1997), successive studies have failed to consider the wide configuration of policing relations within which the practice is embedded. Consequently, we have no understanding of the link between the social and discursive agency of police officers involved in cautioning work and the social processes and structures which both condition that work and are outcomes of it. Thus far, the contingencies and relations of everyday policing has taken the form of an invisible background against which police cautioning is enacted and performed, but whose conditioning and/or constraining influence has been left unexamined. Put another way, whatever its (intended) politico-ideological role as an alternative to court prosecution, police cautioning also functions as policework in much the same way as, say, operational patrol, stop and search, arrest, investigation and crowd control. As such, how cautioning practice is constituted as a policing activity; how it is positioned in a common relationship with other policing tasks; and what kinds of policing values and ideologies are expressed by and reproduced in cautioning relations, is decidedly unclear. To broaden the angle of vision and reconceptualise cautioning practice as policework demands an account which is not only capable of making the link between cautioning agency (discretion) and policing structures, but can also examine the ways in which cautioning is used to define, sustain and, perhaps, transform policing relations.

4. Police discretion as strategic action The preceding discussion has pointed to the need to first, explore the link between cautioning discretion and the structural world of policing, without surrendering to a legalistic approach; and second, move towards a theorisation of decision-making practice which recognises that cautioning action, like any other police action, embodies, synchronously, both police practice and policing structures. Elsewhere, I have deliberated how these questions are best answered in theoretical terms, and have explored the conceptual insights of Giddens’ structuration theory2 in concrete 2

In a sequence of major works beginning with New Rules of Sociological Method (1976), and including Central Problems in Social Theory (1979), A Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism, Volume I (1981), The Constitution of Society (1984) and A Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism, Volume II (1985), Giddens has re-examined the major traditions of classical and contemporary theory, identified their strengths and weaknesses, and drawn from them a range of lessons and ideas which inform his own proposals, the centre-piece of which is what Giddens terms a theory of structuration.

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depth, using the field of policework in its wider sense to illustrate the theoretical and analytical purchase of a structurationist approach (Campbell, 1997, 1999). In particular, I made the case for regarding ‘law’, ‘organisation’ and ‘democracy’ as chronically reproduced structural features of public policing institutions which construct and are constructed by regular and patterned forms of action and interaction. From this premise, I elaborated how the ‘properties of structure’ emerge from the myriad of activities which make up the policing task; how everyday policing is signified, legitimated, authorised and expressed as legal, organisational and democratic policework; and how the repetitive, regionalised, routinised and reflexive nature of police agency reproduces and sustains policing relations of a relatively durable quality, yet of obvious historical variability—see also Grimshaw and Jefferson (1987). Here, I want to review (albeit briefly) the key structurationist concept of knowledgeability to underline its central place within a ‘theory of discretion’. Previously, I set out a framework for understanding discretionary power as strategic action which has a transformative capacity and is the outcome of knowledgeable human agency. Analysed as strategic action, the agency—viz, what police decision-makers actually do—moves to centre-stage of research into discretionary practices. For Giddens, agency is based on two fundamental human qualities—capability and knowledgeability. That is, agents are capable in as far as they are able to act otherwise, thereby breaking routines. Human agency, then, has a transformative capacity. Put another way, we would need to identify the ‘formulas’, ‘facilities’, ‘material equipment’, ‘modalities’, ‘organisational capacities’ and ‘textual (and oral) resources’ which allow cautioning officers to get things done. Agents are also knowledgeable about the conditions of their daily activities, and instinctively ‘know’ what is appropriate to do in particular situations: such knowledge remains tacit and includes much of what we might call ‘common sense’, a practical consciousness which is motivated, on the one hand, by the need for ontological security— a ‘confidence or trust that the world, including the basic existential parameters of self and social identity’ is as it should be (Giddens, 1984, p. 375)—and is generated, on the other, through a continual process of reflexivity and self-monitoring. However, knowledgeability also has a discursive dimension which includes what police actors are able to articulate and write about their activities. Such knowledgeability exploits the (almost) limitless reparative potential of language and is marked by its capacity to mediate competing points of view and appeal to consensual ideas of, in this context, policing and the conditions of contemporary policework. Giddens’ ideas represent an important first step in the development of a theoretical appreciation of the policing relations of police decision-making, most especially within the context of policy change and reform. It is, then, in a spirit of testing the theoretical water through empirical work that I move on in the next section to outline a study of police cautioning practice which takes as its primary object of inquiry the strategic nature of the exercise of cautioning discretion in a climate of intensified police reform.

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5. A study of police decision-making In November, 1991, I was commissioned by a southern police force area to undertake an independent evaluation study of the force’s Prosecution and Diversion Policy. The Policy aimed to ‘promote the best use of resources in the prevention of crime by adopting a consistent approach to the way we deal with offenders’. At the heart of the Policy lay a commitment to promote transparent, objective and standardised disposal decision-making; this was to be achieved primarily by the introduction of a ‘gravity scale’—a set of decisional criteria which reflected gradations in the seriousness of the offence and the risk posed by offenders. For example, robbery, rape, murder and arson were given a ‘gravity score’ of 5; blackmail and incest were graded as 4; theft, deception, burglary, assault and criminal damage were graded as 3; indecent exposure and drunk and disorderly were graded as 2; and drunk and incapable, and common assault were graded as 1. Decision-makers were to take account of a number of aggravating and mitigating factors which would add to or subtract from the original ‘gravity score’—a ‘final score’ of 3 indicated a caution as the appropriate disposal. So, for instance, in a case of actual bodily harm (assault), these factors might include the nature of the injury caused, the level of provocation, the vulnerability of the victim, the use of a weapon, the number of blows delivered, racial or religious motivation, the level of premeditation, the impact on the public and the offender’s antecedent criminal history. To gauge the effectiveness of the Policy, a pluralist methodology was developed which utilised a triangulation of methods not only capable of illuminating the outcomes of decision-making, but also providing a grounded, ethnographic understanding of the socio-cultural relations of the decision-making process. Fieldwork was undertaken between November 1991 and March 1993 in a random sample of police area commands (N ¼ 6; n ¼ 3 [Midfield, Seaboro and Riverley]), and involved a quantitative case analysis ðn ¼ 503Þ; participant observation ðn ¼ 280 hÞ; self-report questionnaires (n=150), in-depth interviews with decision-makers, ranging from 60 to 150 min in duration (n=29); and a narrative analysis of police case summaries (n=206). As a series of quantitative measures, it is fair to say that the Policy failed to achieve its primary objective of realising consistency in decisional practice. Of all offenders cautioned or found guilty at court, Midfield cautioned 44%; Seaboro cautioned 28%; and Riverley cautioned 34%. The intra-force variability of the cautioning rate was further elaborated in reports to the Constabulary, but there was no accounting for the continued (and endemic) decisional variation across and, especially, within different ‘categories’ of offenders (in terms of age, ethnicity, sex, employment status, accommodation type and so on), ‘categories’ of offences (burglary, assault, theft, criminal damage, possession and/or use of drugs, and other indices such as legal representation, victim and witness characteristics, offence locations, methods of detection and modes of apprehension. These (predictable) findings made it even more necessary to explore the cultural, spatial, temporal, social and textual-discursive relations of discretionary decision-making, and the conditions

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which create, reproduce and/or subvert observed patterns of inconsistency. Key to this exploration was to position the policy initiative within the context of a highly politicised environment of police reform. Given the backdrop of an organic series of legislative changes over the 1980s (and continuing into the 1990s), the politicoideological shift to a fiscal model of criminal justice, the reinvention and restructuring of police working patterns, and the development and encouragement of a heterogeneous criminal justice community, which displaced (or, at least, unsettled) policing’s vanguard in the ‘war against crime’, it is difficult to partition off, both politically and analytically, the implementation of the Prosecution and Diversion Policy from the wider context of legal, organisational and democratic changes taking place. The very complexity of these shifts in the macro-structural world of policing sets into motion a series of contradictions and incompatibilities which become apparent and are resolved at the level of practice. It is only, therefore, within the context of practice—such as discretionary decision-making—that an analysis of strategic action can begin. Such a task demands that attention be paid to the full complement of policing resources available to decision-makers, and to determine how these resources provide options for and are implicated in strategic (discretionary) practice. In the wider study, these issues have been fully addressed. Here I will focus more narrowly on decision-makers’ mobilisation of textualdiscursive resources, noting how the reading of decisional paperwork functions strategically to restore ontological security to the policing task in a period of great flux and uncertainty.

6. Reading police narratives A focus on police documentation has not been entirely lost within cautioning research. However, the approach to date has taken the form of atheoretical content analyses wherein decisional paperwork has been read to ‘discover’ the legal and extra-legal considerations brought to bear on cautioning decisions. For example, complainants’ wishes, victim involvement in the offence, sufficiency of evidence, offence triviality and offender characteristics have, at various times, been hypothesised as determinants of cautioning variation (Steer, 1970; Fisher and Mawby, 1982; Landau, 1981; Landau and Nathan, 1983; Fraser and George, 1992). What these kinds of studies could not produce was any understanding of why or how some criteria are selected into or omitted from police reports; how report writers and decision-making readers ascribe meaning, value and motive to the actions of others; nor how they do so in relation to the contingencies and contradictions of everyday policework. The point is succinctly made by Baldwin (1995): Such an approach pays too little attention to the problematic nature of the information upon which the decision is based, to the judgements involved in defining issues as relevant and to the ways in which cases or policies proceed through the organisational handling system. ‘Facts of the

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case’ are thus treated as some taken-for-granted reality rather than as the results of complex processes in which reality is socially constructed and reconstructed (1995, p. 25). Quite apart from lacking the epistemological wherewithal to move behind the ‘facts’ of cautioning decisions, these studies have been content to use police paperwork as a resource for data rather than as data in its own right, thereby ruling out entirely a rich reservoir of qualitative (textual-discursive) material. There is, of course, a strong ethnographic tradition within police studies more generally which has contributed much to our understanding of textual-discursive forms of police practice. Though varied in the substantive issues addressed, police ethnographies share some common ground in their conceptualisations of police documentation and the processes of its completion. For example, authors concur that despite their complaints about paperwork, police officers appreciate its value as ‘defensive work’ and as a necessary and desirable means to ‘cover their backs’, ‘stay out of trouble’ and ‘present’ a picture of procedural compliance (Manning, 1988; Chatterton, 1989; Norris, 1989; McConville et al., 1991; Sheptycki, 1993; Ericson and Haggerty, 1997). Such arguments, however, invariably imply, and for the most part assert that police reports are ‘hygenic’, ‘sanitised’ ‘fabrications’ which are designed to authenticate and legitimate the police version of events (McConville et al., 1991—see also Shapland and Hobbs, 1989). These views are contextualised within critical expositions of the social and cultural relations of case construction, and are further supported by detailed analyses of the ways in which the police exploit multiple opportunities for the ‘falsification of evidence’, the use of ‘trickery and deceit’, ‘perjury’ and ‘creative accounting’ (Norris, 1989; McConville et al., 1991). At the same time, studies in this tradition have consistently demonstrated how file preparation and an ‘organisation-centred’ system of paperwork control serves to enhance the supervisory function by providing a primary mechanism for monitoring, auditing and editing the authorial work of operational officers—a practice referred to as ‘patrolling the facts’ and ‘policing the narratives’ (Chatterton, 1989; Ericson and Haggerty, 1997). Despite the important groundwork laid by these analyses, to adopt an uncritical view of their insights may inhibit rather than facilitate a greater understanding of police textual-discursivity in general, and its strategic value to the exercise of discretionary power in particular. Taking the points discussed above in turn: firstly, the proposition that police accounts construct a fabricated and hygienic reality is ontologically flawed in so far as it presupposes that there is (somewhere, somehow) a ‘pure narrative’ to be told. This view of narrative texts sidesteps the possibility that modes of narration and kinds of narratives can never be neutral (Genette, 1982, p. 141; Atkinson, 1990, p. 7) but instead bring into play specific and situated ‘realities’ which are meaningful to those who both communicate and read them. Secondly, the emphasis hitherto has been placed on case construction and the activity of report-writing. However,

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in police decision-making processes, it is primarily as readers (rather than writers) that decision-making officers engage with the paperwork set before them. Thirdly, by focusing narrowly on the instrumental value of police readership, existing analyses have bypassed the interpretive dimension of reading practice and have failed to explore the ways in which expressive relationships between authors (reporting/ arresting officers) and readers (decision-making officers) are anchored in and generated by the narratives of police texts. As Todorov (1981, p. xxx) argues ‘(e)very work is rewritten by its reader who imposes upon it a new grid of interpretation’; Freund (1987, p. 142 cited in Rosenau, 1992, p. 38) suggests that ‘the text proposes and instructs, and the reader disposes and constructs’; while Atkinson (1990, p. 2) asserts that ‘we read, and read into the text based on our own background knowledge’. This suggests that the activity of reading is far from passive but involves readers in a constant attempt at finding coherence, resonance and meaningfulness (rather than truth) between the narrative and other dimensions of their knowledgeability (practical consciousness) of, in this context, the everyday world of policing and its machinations. To analyse the narrative material collected in the present study, I need, then, to do several things. First, it is important to move away from the question of the truth or falsity of the narrative without succumbing to a transparent reading of the text. Second, rather than become preoccupied with how far police accounts relate to some putative reality, it is preferable to read police texts for the discursive realities expressed in and through them. Third, at the forefront of analysis, given the enduring question of decisional variation raised by the study, I need to appreciate how reading practice is a strategic policing activity which enables and mobilises a particular response to the uncertainties and complexities of everyday policework. Through this approach, an alternative perspective on the exercise of discretionary power is made possible, casting new light on the old analytical chestnut of inconsistency in cautioning affairs. On this overview, it is now expedient to analyse the narrative texts recovered in the research study. In total, 206 narrative summaries were examined constituting 41% of all cases reviewed (n=503), and 74% of case files recovered for qualitative research analysis (n=280). By narrative summary, I am referring to the ‘Summary of Facts’ (Form 25S), an open-ended narrative account which retells the main features of the case and details events from reportage to arrest, through to detention and interviewing. For cautioned cases, 68 Summaries of Facts were retrieved, representing 52% of all cautioned cases. In what follows, these narratives are examined for the ‘discursive realities’ which they express and embody. I will look in detail at 7 kinds of ‘cautionable realities’, although this is certainly not an exhaustive number and neither reflects all which were identified in this study, nor those which could be identified through further research. In the confines of this paper, it is not possible to review narrative summaries across the range of police disposals but, where appropriate and illuminating, comparisons with No Further Action (NFA) and charge narratives are made. Table 1 provides a breakdown of available narrative material in terms of offence type and disposal decision made.

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Table 1 Narrative texts by decision and offence type

c

Theft Burglary Robbery Criminal damage Public order Assault Drunkenness Otherd Total

NFAa

Caution

Chargeb

Total

3 — — — 1 3 — 1 8

40 1 — 16 1 3 3 4 68

40 9 — 11 24 22 16 8 130

83 10 — 27 26 28 19 13 206

a The relative paucity of ‘NFA narratives’ does not necessarily reflect their unavailability. Rather, at the time of data collection, their importance for comparative purposes was, regrettably, not appreciated. Thus, while the demographic details of NFA cases were recorded for quantitative analysis, little of the paperwork was scrutinised as narrativity. b The limited availability of ‘charge narratives’, especially for robbery, is largely due to the fact that such files, even 12 months after decisions were made, were still ‘live’ and remained in the possession of the CPS and/or courts. c ‘Theft’ includes shoplifting, abstraction of electricity, bilking (making off without payment), theft of vehicles and theft from vehicles. d ‘Other’ includes arson, handling, deception, forgery, police obstruction, possession of an offensive weapon, going equipped, threats to kill and vagrancy.

7. Cautioning narratives/cautionable realities 7.1. Red-handed and red-faced Across the sample of all cases—not solely those for which narratives were available—only 18% (n=89) began life through direct police observation of suspect behaviour. This mirrors previous research findings which have consistently found that suspects are ‘caught red-handed’ in only a minority of cases (Zander, 1979; McConville and Baldwin, 1981; McConville et al., 1991; Audit Commission, 1996). Moreover, as far as this research was concerned, these direct observations were predominantly of drunkenness, vagrancy, public order and assault offences (n=74), rather than property offences such as theft, burglary and criminal damage (n=15). Despite the rarity of these latter observations, they continue to epitomise effective police patrol and buttress (unrealistic) public expectations of a uniformed police presence (Loveday, 1998). From a police perspective, then, there is a strong case for publicising such ‘rare’ events to the full, and this is best achieved by charge and prosecution in court. Indeed, of the 15 directly observed property offences, all but one were charged. This pattern of decision-making cannot be ‘explained’ by conventional ideas on ‘cautionability’ (or ‘chargeability’); but the ‘exceptional’ decision to caution a case of police-observed (attempted) theft (A111100/A161100), is made meaningful within a discourse of policing competence and positive operational effort.

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Whilst on routine patrol of a Midfield industrial estate, officers observed two persons, ‘believed to be male’, removing a ‘white box’ from the back of a lorry parked in the yard of Sharpe’s Fruit and Vegetable Depot.3 On sight of the police, the two persons ran off pursued on foot by the two officers—but they ‘made good their escape’ by ‘disappearing through a hedgerow’. A dog handler was called to attend and a traffic unit was requested to patrol the main roads in and out of the area; but despite these efforts, all that was recovered was a box of mushrooms in the field adjacent to Sharpe’s. An ‘insecure’ vehicle with a ‘warm engine’ was parked outside Sharpe’s Depot, and on the grass verge behind it, officers found two boxes of apples and a sack of onions. They proceeded to check the interior of the vehicle and found a wallet with T’s name and address in it. Before leaving the scene, officers disabled the vehicle by removing the rotor arm and HT lead. Subsequent enquiries showed T to be the brother of the registered car owner, J. Both brothers were arrested and taken to Midfield police station where they offered different accounts of events the previous night. J claimed that he had been forced to lend the car to two men, H and S; his brother, T, stated that a man, P, had borrowed the car from his brother on that night. Both H and S were later interviewed and each made no comment throughout; while P was never traced for interview ‘despite numerous attempts to find him’. J made a second, voluntary statement in which he claimed that all five of them had been involved in the attempted theft. On the basis that ‘the only evidence that we have got against them is that of the co-accused’, the officers in the case reported it for process recommending that T and J be cautioned, and no further action taken against H, S and P; this resolution was agreed and ratified by the decision-making officer. In this case, the lack-lustre performance of the operational officers at the scene of the crime was compounded by an ineffective investigation. Indeed, their inability to provide descriptions of the persons running from the scene, their failure to check the ownership of the vehicle until the following day, and the lack of success of both the dog-handler and the traffic unit to apprehend the suspects, set into motion a 12-week investigation which proved as fruitless as the original search of the crime scene and surrounding areas. This kind of detail is lost in a statistical analysis or a content analysis of the legal and non-legal factors which are deemed to constitute ‘cautionability’. However, read as a narrative of policing achievement, there is little to commend this case to the external scrutiny of either the CPS or the court; in effect, the publicity value of a police-observed theft, was entirely overshadowed by first, the futility of a resource-intensive police search, and second, the inconclusiveness of a time-consuming investigation. 7.2. Non-preventive policing In contrast to property offences, police-observed incidents of drunkenness, vagrancy, public order and assault did not invariably result in charge, and 12% 3

To retain confidentiality and anonymity, all names, places and officer numbers used in this analysis are pseudonyms.

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(n=9) of such observations were concluded by way of caution and/or no further action. Of these cases, there was little commonality in terms of, say, offender status, degree of escalation, injuries sustained and/or level of public alarm. However, as narratives of policing competence, they cohere as stories of non-preventive policing. For instance, in case C122101, R was seen by police officers to be arguing with a male and two females when ‘a fight broke out’ between the two men. Though the officers managed to separate the two, ‘warned them of their conduct’ and ‘sent them in opposite directions’, 10 min later, the officers received a call to attend an incident in Salisbury Terrace where R was observed ‘kicking another male on the ground’. He was then arrested and conveyed to Riverley police station where he was later cautioned for assault. Similarly, in case C052042, P was observed by officers to be ‘staggering down High Street and shouting abuse in shop door ways’. The patrol car drove on without stopping; but on the return to High Street (some twenty minutes later), P was seen to be standing in a skip throwing bricks and other rubble in the general direction of the shop windows. Before officers could restrain him, he hurled a concrete block which smashed the main window of Denfords causing d950 worth of damage. P was then arrested and taken to Riverley police station where he was later cautioned for an offence of criminal damage. The nature, use and function of operational discretion has been widely documented (Goldstein, 1960; LaFave, 1962; Piliavin and Briar, 1964; Bottomley, 1973; Smith and Visher, 1981; Smith, 1983); and the bulk of this work has been concerned with the social differentiation apparent in the exercise of discretionary power. Yet, other studies have argued that ‘(police officers’) actual behaviour seems to be influenced more than anything else by an overwhelming concern to show themselves as competent crafstmen’ (Skolnick, 1966, p. 111). On this view, and from a policing point of view, the two cases discussed above can be read as poor exemplars of the ‘proper’ exercise of ‘street discretion’. In these examples, there is nothing inherently ‘improper’ about officers’ decisions to warn R, or to fail to stop on initially observing P in the High Street. It is only in retrospect that such discretion is rendered problematic in as far as its exercise failed to impose order on an assaultive situation; and secondly, constituted a mis-diagnosis of the threat which P posed to both himself, others and property in the vicinity. Far from demonstrating competence and ‘craftsmanship’, these narratives exemplify poor policing judgement (of both characters and situations) and a lack of authority to defuse conflict. In the event, far from preventing crime, police (in)action in these cases permitted its commission—an outcome which may be best confined to the privatised world of cautioning disposals. 7.3. Laissez-faire Failure to respond effectively in the first instance is not solely a feature of policeobserved events. For example, a ‘hands-off’ or ‘laissez-faire’ approach to domestic disturbances and/or neighbourhood disputes has been consistently noted in the police studies literature (McClintock, 1963; Skolnick, 1966; Coleman and Bottomley,

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1976; McCabe and Sutcliffe, 1978; Steer, 1980; Shapland and Vagg, 1988; Edwards, 1989). In particular, such incidents rarely result in arrest or formal police action, and are seldom ‘written up’ in crime or incident reports. From a policing perspective, their routine handling of ‘domestics’ is unproblematic so long as disputes do not fester, escalate over time and culminate in an incident which ‘forces’ a formal police response. From the available narrative material, four cases were identified as ‘festering domestics’, and of these, two cases were cautioned (assault and threats to kill) and two were charged (public order and assault). Considered in terms of conventional criteria, there was little to account for the different disposals which these cases attracted. However, ‘cautionability’ (and ‘chargeability’) did appear to hinge on the nature and degree of police involvement in precipitating incidents, and the extent to which this involvement had been documented and recorded. Consider, for example, the two cases involving ‘neighbourhood disputes’ (assault and public order): in case A095084, K was cautioned for assault occasioning actual bodily harm following her voluntary attendance at Midfield police station and her admission of the offence during interview: the narrative summary read: During the last few months both the aggrieved, H, and the defendant, K, have had several disputes over petty matters which over a period of time have escalated and resulted in both parties contacting the police regarding continual harassment. Most of these disputes have been verbal abuse given by both parties involved. However, the narrative went on to state that ‘there is nothing entered on the crime info file y no details of previous incidents apart from what is stated in K’s interview and H’s witness statement’. As a narrative of effective and responsible peacekeeping, then, this case indicated a sustained lack of response to a fractious neighbourhood dispute which culminated in K ‘laying in wait for H’s return from a night out y pushing her to the ground, punching her in the face, causing a bruised cheekbone, bloodied nose, grazed chin, a black-eye and a cut lip’. But neither this nor previous incidents had been taken sufficiently seriously to warrant immediate police attendance or authoritative intervention; moreover, complaints made to the police had not been noted or detailed even in informal recording media (such as pocket books, the ‘crime info’ file, the message log, or the ‘front desk’ book). Given that K asserted that H possessed ‘an unlicenced firearm’—which was later verified and reported—and ‘she had threatened to use it on numerous occasions’, there is little doubt that the ‘laissez-faire’ patrolwork which underpinned this case would, to a non-police reader, seem to indicate a wholly negligent and potentially dangerous policing approach. The police handling of the dispute between K and H at Lowford Close contrasts sharply with their response to T who had complained repeatedly to the police of harassment and intimidation by his neighbours. On each occasion, the attending officers had kept a record of events such that the case summary, at outset, stated that: In order to refresh everyone’s memory, this is the man who always complains and had his backside slashed—PC 308 has kept a running file on all incidents.

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Though this ‘file’ testified to a sustained police interest in a ‘neighbourhood dispute’, and it documented the practical measures which had been taken to resolve it—such as the loan of a tape recorder—it also provided ‘intelligence’ of both T and his neighbours. Thus, when police responded to a complaint that ‘T passed three horseriders (holiday-makers) in his blue Morris van and gesticulated to them with his middle finger’, this ‘intelligence’ proved crucial to resolving both this event and the longer-running saga of T’s harassment. So, in writing up the details of the ‘public order’ incident, the reporting officer drew heavily on (and quoted from) the ‘running file’ to position T’s character and conduct in both time and space. The narrative, for example, noted that: Crime info: 10 May 1992: ‘T is big built and could appear intimidating to lesser mortals’y Crime info: 23 May 1992: ‘I met T on only this occasion and found him rather obnoxious’ y Crime info: 14 June 1992: ‘when asked to return the tape recorder, he became very belligerent and obstructive acting like a spoilt child about to have a toy taken away’. Not only did these inclusions bolster the view that T’s behaviour to the horse-riders was consistent with his general demeanour and character, but it also enabled the decision-maker to add to the narrative and re-describe the ‘public order’ incident as: y part of a continuing problem in this locality revolving around disputes over rights of way between T and his neighbours. Frequently in the past it has been one word against another. On this occasion there are three independent witnesses. In an effort to enforce some peace and restore order to this area, a charge should be preferred. T was subsequently charged for an offence of public order (S5), prosecuted and convicted for the offence at court, fined d40 and ordered to pay d40 costs. This case clearly raises issues of legal propriety, evidential admissibility, the effectiveness of CPS review and social (in)justice—T was a 57 year old first-time offender, a retired psychology lecturer with a ‘heart problem’. However, as a narrative of policing effort and accomplishment, the case (through charge) not only publicised police responsiveness to the touring public and emphasised their ‘zero-tolerance’ of antitourist sentiment, but it also demonstrated their involvement and concern with local affairs and their vigilance in collating ‘intelligence’ about potential ‘flashpoints’— and these discursive messages were prioritised over conventional ideas about ‘cautionability’. 7.4. Six of one, half a dozen of the other One of the main legacies of police ethnographic work is the identification of an (the) organisational style of report-writing. It is argued that police texts have a formulaic quality, premised on a repeated and structured sequence of narrative action and a common linguistic form which exploits the use of institutional categories and police-relevant stereotypes (McConville et al., 1991; Sheptycki, 1993). However, there are numerous ways in which the narrative formula may be disrupted.

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For instance, across the sample, a handful of cases failed to complete the narrative sequencing and, crucially, omitted all details of the scene of crime (case C114093 [public order]), the nature of the arrest (case B080080 [affray and possession of an offensive weapon]) and the post-detention organisational procedures which were followed (case C194198 [grievous bodily harm]). All of these cases were, understandably perhaps, NFA-ed which suggests that ‘cautionable’ and/or ‘chargeable’ narratives are, at least, ‘whole stories’. However, ‘missing’ sequences of narrative action do not exhaust the ways in which the narrative formula may be left wanting. For instance, four cases failed to adhere to the ‘house-style’ of narrative characterisation, a discursive strategy that is pivotal to marking out the boundaries of signification and constructing distinctions between the lawless and the lawabiding, the guilty and the innocent, the ‘rough’ and the ‘respectable’, and the offender and the victim. All such cases were cautioned. Consider, for instance, case A091063 in which R, a 24 year old woman, voluntarily attended Midfield police station in connection with what might loosely be termed a ‘disorderly dispute’ over public rights of way over private land. In fact, a specific offence categorization is not (initially) suggested, and the narrative refers to a number of different offending behaviours including assault, criminal damage, aggravated theft and public order—all of which occurred on a definitive footpath running across R’s land (specifically, her garden) on Dale Moor. The ‘victim’ in this incident, T, was a 74 year old man, a rambler who was the District Rights of Way Officer. He had walked along the definitive footpath on a number of previous occasions, sometimes with large groups of other ramblers—all to R’s annoyance. Moreover, T had written to the Chief Constable on at least one occasion to complain of R’s vociferous objections to the Ramblers Association’s use of the footpath. What is interesting about this case is how T’s status as a ‘victim’, and R’s as an ‘offender’ was never quite settled. The narrative, for example, draws attention to R’s allegations that not only was she sexually assaulted by T, but she was also provoked by him, and he attempted to attack her with his walking stick. It was further alleged that he threw litter on her property and ‘damaged her clematis plant’. The police author also refers to T’s ‘deliberate obstruction’ and use of ‘threatening, insulting words and behaviour’, most especially his allusion that ‘R was a silly bitch’. On the other hand, R was said to have been ‘shouting and screaming abuse’ and was ‘rather reckless’ in as far as she is alleged to have ‘damaged T’s Sony-Walkman’ and ‘pulled his ordnance survey map from his rucksack, throwing it onto the ground before screwing it up’. More generally, she was said to have ‘let her temper get the better of her on more than one occasion’. But the reader is mistaken to regard this as the basis for the solid construction of a ‘criminal character’. The narrative (surprisingly) goes on to refer to the fact that R is ‘five feet tall and thin built, weighing about six and a half stones’. This would seem to problematise T’s claim that she ‘threw a bucket of water over the wall and then hit him with it’; that she ‘kicked (him) in the stomach’; and that she had ‘physically attacked’ two members of a group of twenty-one male ramblers on a previous occasion. As the reader discovers, her actions were those of ‘self-defence’ and were primarily aimed at protecting her husband—who ‘suffered from a debilitating spinal disease’—‘when

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she saw him being pushed around’; and that they were necessary to fend off T who ‘pushed her behind the caravan, grabbed one of her breasts and pressed himself against her’. In this case, then, dichotomous distinctions between the various protagonists are not clear cut; rather, dichotomies are constructed within the characters of R and T. The narrative, then, is shot through with contradictions which are not easily resolved. Even though a narrative resolution of ‘charge’ (for an offence contravening the Public Order Act 1986, S5) was recommended by the reporting officer, it (ultimately) remained implausible given the ambivalence of the narrative characterisation. Thus, it is no surprise that this case, along with other cases where characterisation was problematic (A138144 [assault]; C075060 [assault]; C151131 [criminal damage]), was resolved by way of caution. On the presupposition that the disposal of cases hinges on their capacity to communicate policing competency and retain the integrity and reputation of the organisation, what is it about these particular narratives which consign them to a cautioned oblivion? To appreciate their collective ‘weakness’ as accounts of policing expertise, we need to acknowledge the adversarial model of justice within which police narrativity is performed. Sanders (1987, p. 230) is instructive here; he states: The English criminal process is adversarial in structure..... It is the duty of the police to gather as much evidence against—not about—the suspect as possibley. This recognizes that the police will not seek to provide balanced evidence. (Original emphasis) As McConville et al. (1991, p. 203) go on to suggest, contradictory statements, conflicting opinions, doubts and uncertainties about individuals are not accorded ‘legitimate status’ in an adversarial system since they problematise the construction of a unitary view of reality. Whether such a uni-directional approach to case construction is altogether fair and/or desirable is not a matter of debate here—see, for example, Devlin (1979), McBarnet (1981) and McConville and Baldwin (1981)— but it does demand narrative clarity about the characters (and events) of the case. There is no room in an adversarial process for ‘round’ characters, such as R and T, who are multi-dimensional, less susceptible to categorisation, and unlikely to be interpreted as realizations of ‘stock types’ (Atkinson, 1990, p. 130). To include such ‘round’ characters suggests, then, a naivety and a lack of awareness of the wider requirements of prosecutorial work. From a defence point of view, such a discursive practice would be a gift; moreover, if such a case were charged it would almost certainly be discontinued by the CPS, and if prosecuted in court would most likely be resolved by acquittal. Thus, to avoid such ‘wasted effort’, embarrassment and public display of ‘amateurism’ in case preparation, such cases may be best cautioned. 7.5. Police redundancy Each of the cautioning narratives so far reviewed expose the shortcomings of police professionalism, and they suggest a number of ways in which competent and effective policing practice may be compromised. However, other cautioning

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narratives were less about the frailties of the policing task and more about the redundancy of it. This was especially marked in cases of theft and deception. Indeed, of the available narrative data, all cautioned ‘deception narratives’ (n=2), and almost 50% of cautioned ‘theft narratives’ ðn ¼ 19Þ; can be characterised in this way. Consider, for example, cases C149129 (theft from a gas meter) and C015014 (abstraction of electricity): both offences were ‘discovered’ by the relevant utility companies who had ‘received information’ that their equipment was being, respectively, ‘tampered with’ and ‘illegally bypassed’. In the former case, on arrival at M’s home, the narrative continues: The English Gas meter reader.. saw that the gas meter had been forced and that there was no money in the coin container. He duly completed a full report which was passed on to the police at Riverley. It indicated a loss to English Gas of d241.96 in gas sales, plus d2.50 in damage to the padlock. English Gas are not seeking compensation and have agreed with M a monthly repayment plan for the missing money. M attended Riverley as a voluntary attender on 14/09/92. He readily admitted the offence in interview (Tape ref: RV/92/3490). In the latter case, the narrative details a similar pattern of events wherein the Shire Electricity Board (SEB), having spoken with W about the ‘installation of an illegal bypass on his meter’, completed and submitted to Riverley Police a full report of their investigation and subsequent handling of the offence. In this instance, SEB officers agreed not to disconnect W if he was prepared to pay the sum owed (approximately d356.00) by monthly instalments. Police involvement in the detection, investigation and resolution of these offences was minimal, and their role was limited to that of being a ‘recording authority’ of others’ policing practice and decision-making. Thus, far from promoting and enhancing policing’s reputation for ‘crime control’ and ‘law enforcement’, these examples indicate the redundancy of public policework vis a" vis ‘private’ policing approaches. Many authors have noted how commercial and governmental regulatory bodies use prosecution as a last resort, and prefer a model of enforcement premised on compliance and conformity (Carson, 1970; Leigh, 1980; Lidstone, 1980; Richardson, 1982; Hawkins, 1984; Uglow, 1984; Sanders, 1985; Johnston, 1994). With this in mind, a more charitable view of the police decision to caution these cases might, therefore, reject the ‘reputation’ argument and consider that such decisions reflect police deference to the non-prosecution principle. However, a third case of theft from an electricity meter, B117119, which was charged, suggests that reputation rather than deference to other perspectives is the key to the disposal decision. In this instance, in responding to a complaint of a noisy late-night party, officers ‘were invited into’ L’s flat where ‘one electricity meter was found to have been broken open and the contents removed’. This ‘discovery’, then, forms the prelude to a narrative which (re-)positions policing at the centre of investigative and decision-making action, and which consigns the SEB to the peripheral realm of passive victimisation. As the narrative suggests, ‘SEB representatives have now been informed of this mattery I have requested details of the value of the monies stolen and damage to the coin meter. PC 277 will complete

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compensation form’. Given the erstwhile prominence of private sector modes of regulation and enforcement (for this kind of offence), a charge in this instance is the primary vehicle for reasserting the value of operational responsiveness and public policing’s key role in the detection of crime. A similar interpretation of decisional choices can be made in respect of thefts by shoplifting and thefts from employers, bearing in mind that the initial detection of such offences, and much of the ensuing investigation, is the result of private security officers’ and/or employers’ efforts. So, for example, cases C143117, A113102, C099081, C096078, C105085 and C012011 (shoplifting), share an almost identical profile in relation to the detection, apprehension and reporting of suspected shoplifters: the narrative of case A113102, for instance, reads: The facts of this matter are that at about 3.40pm, D was observed by a security officer in Freshco, Clayton acting suspiciously. The security officer saw D take items from the display and put them into his jacket pocket. He then left the store without offering to pay. D was approached by the store security officer once outside the store, and he returned to the store with her. When in the manager’s office D was asked to remove from his person those items he had not paid for, and place them on the desk. He took from his jacket pocket 1  1.5v pack of Duracell batteries (value d2.85); 1  9v Longlife battery (value d2.39). D admitted the offence and returned the stolen property. Police were then called. The formulaic quality of security officers’ handling of shoplifting offences—and deception involving credit cards—suggests the presence of, at least, a co-operative relationship with policing such that the legalities and evidential sufficiency of the process are practiced and observed—see, for example, Shearing and Stenning (1987) and Johnston (2000, pp. 123–153). Even so, the established pattern of response to shoplifting does render public policing’s involvement as secondary to that of the commercial security sector, and, as a long series of ‘charge narratives’, rather than ‘cautioning narratives’, the redundancy of operational policework vis a" vis the retail trade would become increasingly apparent to significant others (such as local Chambers of Commerce). Similarly, the role played by operational officers in cases of employee thefts appeared to be even more superfluous. Consider, for instance, case C160140 where private security operatives mounted a sophisticated and systematic surveillance operation to detect the modus operandi of a series of employee thefts at the Wheatsheaf Bakery Shop. The narrative account of the success and inherent professionalism of the initiative and efforts of A-Team Security not only displaces, undermines and, ultimately, questions the important role of surveillancebased, investigative policework, but also blurs the boundaries of the public/private division of labour. On this analysis, we would expect, then, that charged cases of shoplifting and employee thefts in some way reaffirm the instrumental value of public policing. Consider, then, case C030028: in this charged narrative, T was detained by store detectives at English Home Stores on suspicion of theft of four items of clothing. On police arrival, and immediately after arrest, ‘officers, acting on a hunch, obtained the defendant’s consent to search the vehicle he had parked in the Richmond Street Car

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Park’. In the boot, a further 39 items were recovered including clothing, children’s toys and toiletries. Later, during interview at Riverley police station, T further consented to a police search of his home address where a further 7 items were found. T’s status as a first-time offender, his co-operation throughout the arrest and detention process, his remorse, and other ‘social justice’ considerations such as his recent redundancy and the failure of a ‘reverse vasectomy operation’, did not bear on the disposal decision. It would be easy to regard the value of the stolen goods—in total, d381.95—as a sufficient condition for preferring charge; but since higher values were recorded for many cautioned cases across the sample, this factor does not ‘explain’ the charge disposal in this instance. Rather, as a narrative of police investigative work, this case shows the value of an ‘instinctive’ approach to crime detection, police authority to secure suspects’ co-operation and, importantly, their ability to move behind and beyond the policing service provided by the private sector. Charge and prosecution, then, provide a valuable (perhaps the only) vehicle for publicising these skills and reinforcing the vitality of public policing vis a" vis retail crime prevention and detection. 7.6. Personal services Loveday (1996, 1998) has pointed out that arrests resulting from ‘specialist’ forms of investigation—such as forensic examination, DNA sampling, the deployment of CID officers, surveillance, information technology and following ‘leads’—are few and far between. Despite its popular imagery, the success rate of this kind of investigative effort may be as low as 1.5 arrests per officer per week (West Midlands Police CID Activity Analysis 1992 cited in Loveday, 1996, p. 91). For their rarity value alone, then, arrests produced through effective and professional investigative work may be prone to be publicly trumpeted via charge and prosecution, rather than silenced by and rendered invisible within the closed and ‘uncelebrated’ world of cautioning disposals. Only three cases in the narrative sample were engendered through ‘specialist investigation’. Two of these cases were charged but, on most readings, would be regarded as entirely ‘cautionable’ under the criteria; one case was cautioned even though it was, arguably, highly ‘chargeable’. Consider, first, the two charged cases: in case A023036, following a report of the theft of a Giro-cheque for d23.41, R—cautioned for assault as a juvenile five years previously—was arrested ‘as a result of outstanding policework and systematic, professional investigation’, was subsequently charged with theft and attempted deception and successfully prosecuted in court. Similarly, responding to a report of criminal damage to a ground-floor flat window, police arrested three men having ‘launched an intelligence-led investigation y circulated a description of a red Ford Cortina y (and) co-ordinated with CID officers’ (cases C090074/C109074/ C091074). In this example, neither the low value of the damage caused (d10), ‘clean’ records, nor full admissions, apologies and an offer to pay compensation, were sufficient to persuade the decision-maker to caution. It does not require a huge flight of fancy to suggest that these cases, as embodiments of the mythical police

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investigative process, would be seen as prime candidates for dissemination to the widest possible audience. Notwithstanding its questionable value to ‘crime-busting’, most studies concur that ‘specialist’ investigation is reserved for only the most ‘serious’ crime—although how ‘seriousness’ is defined is left radically unclear (Greenwood et al., 1977; Audit Commission, 1993; Loveday, 1996). More poignantly, any form of investigation is a bonus in a contemporary climate of selective and rationed police response to ‘routine’ offences (Leppard, 1994). Moreover, when investigative work is undertaken, it primarily amounts to the collection of only the most direct evidence, such as victim identification of suspect(s) and eye-witness accounts (Greenwood et al., 1977). Thus, the launching of a ‘full inquiry’ into the unwitnessed theft of two alloy wheels is unusual to say the least. Yet, this is precisely what occurred in the cautioned case, A123130, and involved enquiries at local car-parts outlets; a scan of classified advertisements; the drawing up of a list of registered keepers of identical vehicles; personal visits made to some of these owners; house to house enquiries; the use of informants; and a fingerprint test of the (eventually) recovered wheels. The crucial factor in the disposal of this case was not the status of the suspect (a fifth-time offender), the relatively high value of the property stolen (approximately d250), or the nature of the offence (it had been carried out on a ‘steal to order’ basis and for personal monetary gain)—all of which render this case ‘chargeable’ in terms of the policy criteria. Rather, the key to the decision to caution in this instance lay with the status of the victim—a Midfield Detective Chief Inspector. Read as a narrative of policing competence and accomplishment, this case is somewhat exemplary; but read as an account of equitable and impartial practice, it represents a comparatively disproportionate and unfair use of police investigative resources and effort. In effect, it could be argued that on this occasion, the scarce resources and occupational wherewithal of a public organisation had been exploited to provide a very personal service for one of its (more eminent) members. Given that just under half of British Crime Survey respondents feel that the police show insufficient interest (41%) and make insufficient effort (47%) in relation to thefts from vehicles (Yeo and Budd, 2000, Table 3), the preferential handling of case A123130 seems all the more privileged and unconscionable. It is certainly not the kind of police practice which could withstand criticism if aired in the public arena of the court. 7.7. A public spectacle Of all the narratives explored here, those which exemplify the small number of cases which decision-makers ‘down-tariffed’ from charge to caution (n=3), and ‘uptariffed’ from caution to charge (n=2) are analytically significant. In Six of one, half a dozen of the other (above), I considered an example of the former. It is the latter which are being considered in greater detail here, and since narrative summaries were recovered for the only 2 cases which moved in this direction, their further exploration would seem to be warranted. The two cases in question differed in a number of important respects: case B045047 centred on an incident in which W (a first time offender, aged 19) assaulted (‘headbutted’) a thirteen year old Swedish

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exchange student resulting in ‘fairly minor bruising on his nose and around his eyes’. The narrative went on to contextualise and detail the assault, noting that: A party of 30 or so Swedish students were engaged in a sandcastle building competition, and a small group of English youths were hanging around on the periphery, making comments and, I would assume, showing off for the benefit of the girls. W approached the 13 year old who was on the edge of the group, and with no provocation, headbutted him, and then he and his group walked on up the beach. The police were called y W was identified by witnesses and arrested by Detective Sergeant Smith. Following his arrest and detention, W fully admitted the offence in interview, accepted full responsibility for his actions and expressed remorse, and on this basis— including the acknowledgement that ‘he is of previous good character’—the narrative author recommended that the case be resolved by way of caution, and submitted the file for decisional review, adding that ‘for information, the victim has now left the country’. By contrast, case B031030 centred on a shoplifting incident in which M was observed by security officers to ‘place a leather jacket in a holdall bag and leave the Smart Man Clothing Store without paying for same’. The narrative continued: M was pursued by two members of the store’s security staff and after a short chase, M ran into a dead end behind the Big Burger in Admirals Way. On arrival of police, M had started to scale a drainpipe y. M was arrested and conveyed to Seaboro Police Station. At the station, M admitted to stealing the leather jacket and claimed to have panicked when he realised that he had been observed doing so. A PNC check had been undertaken through which it was revealed that M had 34 previous convictions for shoplifting; but on the basis that ‘the property was recovered y. M’s last conviction was in 1982 y (and) he was in a confused and dazed state’, the arresting officer recommended caution and submitted the file for review. The comparability of these two cases as cautions is not of concern here, although I would argue that they provide (yet) another example of the bankruptcy of conventional cautioning criteria, especially those premised on offender characteristics. Rather, it is their common movement from caution to charge which raises the more interesting question, the response to which adds a further dimension to our developing understanding of the strategic discursivity of disposal narratives. Re-read in this light, cases B045047 and B031030, whatever their other differences, come together in the narrative description of the ‘crime scene’. In the extracts above, I have deliberately omitted the details of this pivotal sequence; but it is the nature of events which occurred between police arrival and arrests being made which marks the similarity between these two cases, and which distinguishes them as caution-tocharge narratives. Moreover, as media of strategic discourse, we need to ask whose and which interests are being mobilised in and expressed through these narratives, and why a widening of the readership—to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and the court, as charged/prosecuted cases—was preferable in this instance.

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Consider, then, events ‘at the scene’ in case B045047: the assault occurred on Grand Parade Sands, Seaboro, at 4pm on a Saturday afternoon in the height of summer. While the beach could normally expect to be well-populated at this particular point in the day (week and year), the sandcastle building competition had attracted a sizeable crowd of spectators to this particular area of the beach as well as to that part of the promenade which overlooked it. At the same time, the local media (including the television) were covering the competition, and as the narrative noted, ‘video evidence of the assault is available’. Thus, there was no lack of witnesses to either the assault or the events which followed. Two police cars and four officers were the first at the scene, and while the narrative does not explicitly suggest this, the custody record indicated that the police response was triggered by an emergency 999 call. It is likely, then, that their arrival was of the ‘flashing blue light/police siren’ sort, introducing an element of drama into an otherwise hum-drum occasion. Even without this ‘special effect’, the drama intensified when police officers ‘pursued the youths across the sand’ which, in turn, prompted the ‘onlookers on the promenade (to call) out that W was the person who had assaulted S’. Interest was further heightened when an ambulance arrived shortly after the arrest had been made, and once the paramedic crew had given first aid to the injured youngster, he was ‘rushed through Saturday afternoon traffic and conveyed by ambulance to Seaboro Hospital Accident and Emergency Department’. However, if events ‘at the scene’ of B045047 verged on the dramatic, then those of B031030 were positively spectacular. As detailed above, M had been pursued by security officers from the Smart Man Clothing Store to a dead-end and, on police arrival at the scene, he had started to scale a drain-pipe. Climbing to a flat roof ‘some 30 feet up’, M then ‘disappeared’ though eventually ‘was seen to sit up, holding his head from beneath the drainpipe, acting as if he had fallen from it’. However, ‘M stood up and staggered forward, holding his head and came close to the edge’ just as the fire and ambulance services arrived to the applause of what was now a ‘very large crowd’ gathered at the entrance to the dead-end. Fire officers, paramedics and police officers then ascended to the roof to assess M’s injuries. The narrative continued: After some 20 min on the roof, it was decided that M should be placed on a secure stretcher and rather than lower him down via ropes, it was decided to get the fire services’ turn table ladder to assist in the smooth lowering of the casualty to the ground due to the nature of his suspected injuries. The service lane leading to this area was cleared of vehicles and ‘wheelie bins’, and the fire services turn table ladder was manoeuvred into position. M was strapped into the stretcher and lowered to the ground by the ladder in a precise operation in a very confined space. This operation was completed and officers accompanied M in the ambulance to Seaboro Accident and Emergency Department..... After various checks and X-rays had been taken, M was declared medically fit and was arrested and conveyed to Seaboro Custody Centre. As narratives of everyday policing accomplishment, these cases exemplify responsiveness, professionalism, team work, efficiency and authoritative control, making

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them unlikely candidates for burial by caution. Moreover, narrative events ‘at the scene’ had not only been witnessed by ‘crowds’ of holiday-makers and shoppers, but they had been widely reported in the local media (both newspaper and television). Thus, it could be argued that interest in how the cases were resolved was always-already in the public domain. On this view, although ‘good reasons’ had been put forward to support cautions in each case (as discussed above), these were challenged by decision-makers and superseded by equally ‘good reasons’ for preferring charge. For example, in case B045047, the reviewing inspector commented as a concluding narrative remark that the incident was ‘an unpleasant but all too common occurrence (and) unless we take firm police action in each case, the trend will continue’; while a Chief Inspector added that ‘foreign student assault is on the increase, and is a continuing problem in the summer months’. Similarly, in case B031030, the decision-making inspector asserted that M’s lack of injuries was indicative of a man who ‘was playing along to all the attention’, and that ‘his journey to hospital was a complete sham’. He further argued that, ‘M is a nasty piece of work who has no respect for law and order’, and pointed out that: M has cost the tax payer a fortune by deeming it necessary to call out two fire appliances, one turn table ladder, one ambulance, one paramedic, one mobile patrol officer, six police officers, three security officers, and medical staff at Seaboro Casualty. A small shoplifting incident that blew up into an operation that tied up the emergency services beyond breaking strain on an already busy Saturday afternoon. Through these discursive routes, then, both cases were reconstituted as ‘chargeable’ in the public interest rather than ‘cautionable’ in terms of the policy criteria. That is, while the assault incident was (re-)positioned in time and space as part of a localised and growing seasonal trend which required a firm police response, the shoplifting debacle was re-described as an affront to an (imaginary) commonwealth of taxpayers in as far as it involved an unwarranted and extravagant use of the emergency services. What this suggests is that justifications for any disposal decision may always be found. However, such explicit justifications, premised on the ‘facts of the case’, may amount to little more than textual red herrings and provide no key to understanding the strategic function and expressive value of disposal choices. Indeed, other cautioning narratives, which have not been discussed here, share little common ground when read in terms of objective criteria based on offender and offence characteristics—but they do cohere as stories of various kinds of policing disrepute, functioning to maintain the integrity of the organisation and shield it from unnecessary external scrutiny. On this view, to read narrative summaries in search of a series of objective cautioning and/or charge criteria largely misses the point that police narrativity has a discursive and a strategic dimension which is marked not only by its capacity to mediate competing points of view and diverse cultural orientations, but also to promote and preserve an organisational reputation of competence and efficiency.

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8. Conclusion While the foregoing cautioned cases come together as narratives of various forms of policing inadequacy, it would be a nonsense to suppose that all cautioned cases involve an element of poor and/or ineffective practice—and, conversely, that no charged cases do so. It has to be said that across the narrative sample, there were numerous examples of ‘textbook decisions’, where disposals were perfectly in line with the Policy criteria and normative expectations of ‘cautionability’ and ‘chargeability’. However, the argument asserted in this paper is that decisional choices are not reducible to such factors and cannot be ‘explained’ in terms of their presence or absence—such an approach has proved futile in the past, and has simply failed to account for variability in disposal patterns. Rather, the ‘facts of the case’ and the ‘people’ and ‘actions’ which constitute them are made meaningful only by their place within a narrative economy which articulates a mythology of police accomplishment and professionalism. In other words, as strategic police practice, decision-making functions to patrol, mark out and maintain the discursive boundaries of desirable and acceptable policing, thereby sustaining and generating the integrity of its corporate reputation and identity. Shearing and Ericson’s analysis of oral forms of police narrativity is instructive here; they argue: Each story refers implicitly to a larger whole that is expressed through the story but is never fully revealed by it y As a result, each story functions as a metonym that invites the listener (reader) to construct out of the specifics of the story, the worldview that makes sense of the story. Police stories operate together to construct a worldview that is grasped in and through the concrete accounts which give it expression without ever making this theoretical enterprise a topic in its own right (1991, pp. 498–499). The notion of a ‘worldview’ or a ‘root paradigm’ (Wagner-Pacifici, 1986, pp. 164–168 cited in Shearing and Ericson, 1991, p. 498) is very different from positing the presence of a homogenous and monolithic cultural belief system which has long since been eschewed—see, for example, Fielding (1988, 1994), Chan (1996) and Author (1999). Rather, following Loader’s (1997) thesis on the symbolic power of policing, this ‘worldview’ is constituted by a set of durable dispositions which may incline the majority of readers (both police and non-police) towards a certain effective ‘idea of policing’ through which: An idealized force for good is imagined as struggling with, and seeking to contain, an unknown, unpredictable and demonized evil. The link between policing and social order seems an obvious one (Loader, 1997, p. 4). These dispositions, in Bourdieu’s (1991) terms, operate at the ‘doxic level’; while Gouldner (1976) speaks of ‘paleo-symbolic’ understandings which are ‘emotionally compelling’ (Gouldner, 1976, p. 224 cited in Loader, 1997, p. 4). Williams (1964) talks of ‘structures of feeling’; while Barthes (1970) refers to such dispositions as

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‘myths’ which, at the connotative level, construct an illusory world as ‘natural’. For Giddens (1984), these doxic, connotative, paleo-symbolic understandings work at the level of the ‘unconscious’, and function to promote ‘ontological security’ and promote a ‘sense of trust’. Of course, such dispositions and beliefs co-exist with stringent criticism of the police organization and its performance. Thus, argues Loader (1997), it is crucial that we pay careful attention to discursive (and nondiscursive) constructions of ‘policing myths’, since they facilitate, communicate and preserve policing’s central place in the ‘order of things’.

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