Integrated Offender Management and the Policing of Prolific Offenders 9780429287664

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‘Following its introduction, over two decades ago, Integrated Offender Management has become a ubiquitous multi-​ agency approach to the management of convicted offenders in communities across England and Wales.This monograph, by Frederick Cram, provides a major empirical contribution to analysis of the role of the police in this model of criminal justice. Rich and detailed evidence –​ situated within contemporary debates about police culture, police decision-​ making and legitimacy –​is combined with engaging discussion of offenders’ experiences of Integrated Offender Management. This is essential reading for those with a concern about the feasibility and value of this style of multi-​ agency policing.’ Carolyn Hoyle, Professor of Criminology, University of Oxford ‘A vital and compelling account of contemporary criminal justice practice, Cram provides significant –​and at times deeply troubling –​insight into the realities of multi-​agency policing. The book is an outstanding example of the advantages of ethnography in bringing to life frontline police work.’ Michael Rowe, Professor of Criminology, Northumbria University ‘This is an excellent book that provides a fascinating ethnographic analysis of the police role in the multi-​agency management of offenders by a local Integrated Offender Management Unit in England. It explores in detail the interaction between the professed rehabilitative aims of this model of criminal justice and traditional police cultures, attitudes and practices. Frederick Cram’s book will be of great interest to academics, policy makers and practitioners across a range of criminological fields including policing, offender management and desistance.’ Trevor Jones, Professor of Criminology, Cardiff University

Integrated Offender Management and the Policing of Prolific Offenders

This book analyses the impact of Integrated Offender Management (IOM) on contemporary policing and separates the rhetoric from the reality. Drawing on a qualitative study within an English police force over two years, this book examines the experiences of prolific offenders, subject to IOM, and sheds light on the culture and practice of the police and staff from other criminal justice agencies, working within the scheme. While IOM has been judged to have had initial successes in reducing the criminal activities of prolific offenders, this book tests the validity of such claims and considers the apparent disjuncture between policy statements made about the workings of IOM and how IOM policing operations are realised on the ground. It makes a unique contribution to research on police culture and practice, and multi-​agency working in the criminal justice system. An accessible and compelling read, this book will appeal to policymakers, as well as students and scholars of criminology, sociology policing and politics. Frederick Cram is Lecturer in Law and Director of the Centre for Crime, Law and Justice at Cardiff University, UK.

Routledge Studies in Crime, Security and Justice

Contemporary social scientific scholarship is being transformed by the challenges associated with the changing nature of, and responses to, questions of crime, security and justice across the globe. Traditional disciplinary boundaries in the social sciences are being disturbed and at times broken down by the emerging scholarly analysis of both the increasing merging of issues of ‘crime’ and ‘security’ and the unsettling of traditional notions of justice, rights and due process in an international political and cultural climate seemingly saturated by, and obsessed with, fear, insecurity and risk.This series showcases contemporary research studies, edited collections and works of original intellectual synthesis that contribute to this new body of scholarship both within the field of study of criminology and beyond to its connections with debates in the social sciences more broadly. Edited by Adam Edwards, Cardiff University Gordon Hughes, Cardiff University Reece Walters, Queensland University of Technology Fieldnotes on a Study of Young People’s Perceptions of Crime and Justice Scaffolding as Structure Avi Brisman Integrated Offender Management and the Policing of Prolific Offenders Frederick Cram For more information about this series, please visit: www.routle​dge.com/​ Routle​dge-​Stud​ies-​in-​Crime-​Secur​ity-​and-​Just​ice/​book-​ser​ies/​RSCSJ

Integrated Offender Management and the Policing of Prolific Offenders Frederick Cram

First published 2023 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2023 Frederick Cram The right of Frederick Cram to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-​in-​Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-​0-​367-​25414-​8 (hbk) ISBN: 978-​1-​032-​49813-​3 (pbk) ISBN: 978-​0-​429-​28766-​4 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/​9780429287664 Typeset in Bembo by Newgen Publishing UK

For Colin, Ruth and Elisha

Contents

Acknowledgements  List of abbreviations  1 Integrated Offender Management 

x xi 1

2 Fairness and legitimacy within integrated offender management  30 3 Police decision-​making in a criminal justice setting 

46

4 Mission orientation: partnership working within Sunnyvale IOM  64 5 ‘Still’ police officers: the culture of policing within Sunnyvale IOM 

103

6 Offender perceptions of Sunnyvale policing 

141

7 Old habits die hard 

177

8 Reflexive ethnography: watching Sunnyvale police 

194

Index 

218

Acknowledgements

Many of the ideas in this book were provoked by RichardYoung, Keith Hawkins, Robert Reiner and Tom Tyler, whose work I encountered as a postgraduate research student at the University of Bristol in the mid-​2000s.This research and scholarship generated an interest in, and later a deeper understanding of, the dynamic nature of criminal justice decision-​making—​in particular the exercise of police discretion on the street. In turn this raised further important questions about how citizens experience and understand these interactions, and the influence of these experiences/​understandings on relations between the police and the public. In the years that followed, I explored many of these ideas through empirical research on policing within the novel context of Integrated Offender Management. This book, which is based on my doctoral thesis, brings together what it was that I found. During my time in the field, I benefited immensely from the support given to me by supervisors. I would like to thank Richard Young and Oliver Quick for their valuable supervision. Richard, in particular, was a wonderful source of inspiration and moral support in the early days of the project. Thank you for helping to keep me going during those times when I felt overwhelmed by the research process. A number of people have also helped me with comments on chapters and discussion about content. I am very grateful for the help and advice provided by Mike Maguire and Trevor Jones. Finally, my greatest debt of gratitude must go to my family for their endless support and encouragement throughout my academic career so far. Mum and Dad, this book is for you.

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Abbreviations

ARMS​ ASBO​ CDA​ CID​ CSP​ DET​ DIP​ HMIC​ HMIP​ HMIP​ HMICFRS​ IOM​ LCJB​ MOJ​ MAPPA​ NHS​ NOMS​ OGRS​ OGRS3​ OASys​ PACE​ POCA​ PPO​ RAG​ USA​ YOT​

Active Risk Management System Anti-​Social Behaviour Order Crime and Disorder Act 1998 Criminal Investigation Division Community Safety Partnerships District Enforcement Team Drug Intervention Programmes Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Probation Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary Fire & Rescue Services Integrated Offender Management Local Criminal Justice Board Ministry of Justice Multi-​Agency Public Protection Arrangements National Health Service National Offender Management Service Offender Group Reconviction Scale Offender Group Reconviction Scale’Version 3 Offender Assessment System Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 Prolific and other Priority Offender Red Amber Green United States of America Youth Offending Team

Chapter 1

Integrated Offender Management

Introduction This book unfolds a study of Integrated Offender Management (IOM) in England and Wales. IOM describes a multi-​agency approach to the management of convicted offenders in the community that involves joint working by staff from police, probation and other agencies, with the principal aim of reducing the criminal activities of prolific offenders. This activity receives little public attention or scrutiny and is under-​researched by academics. While the actions of all the agencies involved are important, and will be examined in the book, the central focus will be on the police. My core aim, therefore, will be to present a clear-​sighted view of what kind of policing was taking place under the umbrella of IOM and the implications for criminal justice and rehabilitation of prolific offenders. Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork, I examine critically the practices and processes that occurred during the day-​ to-​day management of recidivist offenders within this unique criminal justice setting. In particular, I explore the perspectives of offenders and the police, but also probation staff, prison officers and criminal justice intervention workers who formed part of the IOM unit. A further aim of the book is to inform and refine theoretical debates about multi-​agency policing and broader ideas about offender desistance. In this view, I situated the research within theories about police decision-​making and legitimacy. These ideas are explored mainly in Chapters 2 and 3. The present chapter, however, undertakes several introductory tasks. First, I examine the broader politics of risk, security and crime control, with a focus on criminal justice policies that pursue the risk-​management and control of certain citizens classified as ‘dangerous’. These developments have important implications for policing, which are taken up throughout the book, but become evident as the chapter moves on to explore the development of partnerships between the police and a host of community agencies across England and Wales. Secondly, I introduce the concept of IOM, the practices that underpin its operation and the broader political context underpinning the approach. DOI: 10.4324/9780429287664-1

2  Integrated Offender Management

Thirdly, the chapter moves on to a short history of published research and reflection on IOM in England and Wales. Evaluative studies suggest a cultural shift has taken place among some police officers working within the IOM framework, with positive implications for operational practice. But local police areas have considerable autonomy when it comes to implementing IOM. Thus, it is necessary to outline the unique setting of the study—​Sunnyvale IOM. Attention is given to the novel role of police officers working within the framework of this particular IOM scheme. Fourthly, the notion of police occupational subculture is introduced, along with received understandings of its attendant socialisation processes. The implication is that if ‘police culture’ derives from the nature of the job police officers perform, one would expect police officers, working within IOM, to exhibit different cultural traits from their mainstream colleagues—​an assumption that finds support from existing research. The principal themes, derived from research and reflection on IOM, support this assumption and provide a platform on which to examine whether these accounts of police dispositions and practice advance a conclusive snapshot of a broader pattern of IOM practice across England and Wales. If they do not, and the hegemony of police culture continues to thrive within Sunnyvale IOM, what are the consequences for offender perceptions of the legitimacy of IOM policing and the rehabilitation of prolific offenders? The chapter closes with a brief outline of the content of the book and the methodology I employed during my study of IOM policing.

Crime, risk and security Most people are accustomed to politicians speaking about the criminal justice system in vague sound bite statements within the media. Former Home Secretary Michael Howard proclaimed, during an address to the Conservative Party Conference in 1993, that ‘Prison works [ensuring] that we are protected from murderers, muggers, and rapists, and [making] many who are tempted to commit crime think twice’. Former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s 1997 Labour manifesto promised that a Labour government would be ‘tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime’. Kenneth Clarke, a former Conservative Lord Chancellor and Justice Secretary, desired ‘a firm, fair justice system which keeps the law-​abiding safe and gives lawbreakers their just deserts’ (Ministry of Justice [MOJ], 2011). More recently, former Justice Secretary Robert Buckland pledged to ‘put public protection at the heart of criminal justice, cutting crime and reducing reoffending’ (MOJ, 2021). Whilst there appears to be little empirical evidence to suggest that such policies lead to a general reduction in crime, this type of risk and punishment-​orientated discourse remains pervasive throughout government thinking and policymaking. It claims to speak with the authority of an angry majority, fearful of unruly populations and dangerous career criminals. As Garland (2001: 13) observes,

Integrated Offender Management  3

The policymaking process has become profoundly politicized [sic] and populist. Policy measures are constructed in ways that appear to value political advantage and public opinion over the views of experts and the evidence of research. Represented in this way, the ardent disposition towards risk-​focused topics (e.g. ‘at-​r isk youth’ or ‘high-​r isk sex offenders’ [Werth, 2019]) is designed to invoke common sense ideas of getting ‘back to basics’ and restoring order and balance within the arena of crime and justice (Garland, 2001; Loader and Sparks, 2007). Security and the risk-​management of people involved in criminal activity has also been the focus of much debate within criminology literatures. An extensive body of scholarship, observing and commenting on the rising importance of risk-​based prediction in the governance of crime (e.g. Castel, 1991; Cohen, 1985; Feeley and Simon, 1992, 1994a; Simon, 1988, 1993; O’Malley, 1992; Ericson and Haggerty, 1997; Hope and Sparks, 2000; Garland, 2001; Goold, 2007; Zedner, 2003), has highlighted the changing character of crime, criminal procedure and sanctions. In particular, these works have drawn attention to the rise of actuarial and algorithmic methods (most commonly used in the insurance industry) dedicated to predicting the risk of criminal [re]offending, and/​or future offending across a variety of criminal justice jurisdictions and settings, including policing (Harcourt, 2007; Brayne et al., 2015), criminal courts (Hannah-​Moffat, 2013), prisons (Hannah-​Moffat, 2005) and community corrections agencies (Kemshall, 2011; Bullock, 2010). Ashworth and Zedner (2008: 48) also draw particular attention to the panoply of preventative, civil, administrative hybrid orders introduced in England and Wales under the then Labour government which, they argue, represented the changing relationship between the state and citizen, as well as changes in the nature of the state itself. These developments are part of a trend broadly described as the ‘new penology’ (Feeley and Simon, 1994a) of risk or ‘actuarial justice’ (Kemshall and Wood, 2009; Braithwaite, 2000), a form of criminal justice that places an emphasis on the identification and classification of dangerous segments of the population, who must be risk-​managed at a minimum cost (Brownlee, 1998: 323; Garland, 2001; Pratt, 1997; Whitty, 2011). First wave authors (e.g. O’Malley, 1992; Simon, 1993; Ericson and Haggerty, 1997) pointed to the rise of a ‘risk society’ where criminal justice has become an exercise of developing communication systems to identify and manage risks. More recent contributions (e.g. Starr [2015: 205] and Werth [2019: 2]) suggest that rather than a trend, we are in the ‘risk assessment era’. The police are at the centre of this form of governance and, it has been suggested, organise their operational practice in such a way as to ‘anticipate and forestall harms’ (Zedner, 2009: 36; Ericson and Haggerty, 1997) presented by suspect populations or situations before they happen. Surveillance and general knowledge gathering have played a key part in this approach (Ericson and

4  Integrated Offender Management

Haggarty, 1997).The aim is to transform the existence of risk as an ‘unknowable externality’ into something ‘calculable’ (Baker and Sutherland, 2009: 2) so that strategies can be developed to control it. Nonetheless, predicting unpredictable human behaviour, that is to say determining who poses a danger and to what extent, is fraught with methodological difficulty. As Zedner (2009: 35) explains: Despite the growing sophistication of actuarial tools, surveillance and intelligence gathering, and despite the growing political confidence invested in these diverse technologies, future human activity can rarely be foretold with certainty. Taken to its conclusion, this position suggests that protective or pre-​emptive action, even calculated action taken against risk, is naturally emasculated in the face of unknowable dangers. Yet, whilst this type of thinking seems to expose imperfections within the notion of risk-​management criminal justice, the discourse of risk-​management remains firmly entrenched, driving forward modern criminal justice initiatives like multi-​agency offender management.

A brief history of multi-​a gency offender management in England and Wales Interactions between the media, politicians and the general public may result in new approaches to crime and justice (Cohen, 1972). Reforms to criminal justice responses to different strands of offending have placed an emphasis on the management of risk through collaborative working between criminal justice agencies that were de facto involved in the management of offenders. The broad aim is to avoid agency duplication and inconsistencies in approaches to localised crime problems (Home Office, 1997). Early catalysts for multi-​ agency working include the Morgan Report (1991), which recommended a ‘multi-​agency approach to community safety’, and the influential Carter Review (2003) that called for ‘different parts of the criminal justice system to work closer together’. The latter eventually led to the creation of a National Offender Management Service (NOMS), drawing the prison and probation services under one umbrella organisation and is now called Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service. Further significant developments, such as the Transforming Rehabilitation policy (MOJ, 2013), resulted in changes in the delivery of probation services, but multi-​agency working has remained a core working practice for actuarial criminal justice. Indeed, a tranche of legislation (e.g. the Sex Offenders Act 1997; Criminal Justice and Court Services Act 2000; and Criminal Justice Act 2003) underpins the methodology, with the ‘high watermark’, as Gough (2019: 23) describes it, arriving in the form of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 (CDA). The Act enshrined partnership working, placing a duty on the police, local councils and the probation service to develop joint strategies aimed

Integrated Offender Management  5

at crime reduction (ss.5–​7)—​a principle operationalised in the form of Crime and Disorder Partnerships, now called Community Safety Partnerships (CSP). In the years that followed, a raft of public protection-​orientated schemes also developed in the field of offender management.Youth Offending Teams (YOT), Multi-​Agency Public Protection Arrangements (MAPPA), Drug Intervention Programmes (DIP), Prolific and other Priority Offender (PPO) schemes and now IOM units are all examples of multi-​agency collaborations tasked with controlling and changing different types of offenders.

Research on multi-​a gency offender management in England and Wales Despite the political impetus to drive forward partnership models of offender management, there is little in-​depth qualitative research specifically in this area. There is, however, a large amount of independent research and other publications covering the multi-​agency approach to crime prevention (e.g. Morgan, 1991; Blagg et al., 1988;; Crawford, 1993; Crawford and Jones, 1995; Forrester et al., 1988, 1990; Burnett and Appleton, 2004; Liddle and Gelthorpe, 1994; Nash, 1999, 2008; Nash and Walker, 2009; Hopkins and Wickson, 2013). The official position is that multi-​agency working should be underlined by an ideology of unity, which dictates a strategy of joined up thinking and service delivery with an increasing emphasis on partnership between the agencies (Burnett and Appleton, 2004: 35; Crawford, 1993). Pooling their collective resources, partnerships like IOM should work to ensure recidivist offenders get the right intervention by the right agency at the right time, depending on the needs of the individual. Research has revealed practical consequences of closer formalised relationships between the partnership agencies. Mawby and Worrall (2011: 80), for example, point to the ‘blurring of agency roles’, whilst Nash (2008: 302) has written about the entry of ‘polibation’ officers (a portmanteau of police and probation officer) to the criminal justice arena, as a possible outcome of blending and merging police—​probation operational practice. Mawby et al. (2007: 127) extend Nash’s notion to include the potential for ‘prisi-​polibation’ officers (prison–​police–​ probation officers) delivering a seamless end-​to-​end ‘prisi-​polibation’ service. Closer proximity of various agencies, for example, where the multi-​agency team maintains an operational base within the same building or shared open-​ plan office space, seems to further the merging or transformation of both traditional cultural attitudes and operational understandings (Mawby et al., 2007; Nash, 1999, 2004, 2008; Burnett and Appleton, 2004;Williams and Ariel, 2013). At the core of this literature is a concern that multi-​agency working may lead to the loss of distinct agency roles and cultures that provide valuable checks and balances in criminal justice working (Mawby and Worrall, 2011). Probation officers, for instance, were ‘going the way of the police’ (Kemshall and Maguire, 2001; Nash, 2008; Mawby and Worrall, 2013; Annison et al., 2015), becoming

6  Integrated Offender Management

increasingly focused on control and surveillance, perhaps to the detriment of their traditionally welfare-​oriented aims/​objectives. The fusion of practitioner roles has not always been comfortable, and partnerships have been beset with problems related to information sharing, conflicting objectives, contrasting ways of working, differing attitudes towards offenders and, not least, cultural tensions (Mawby and Worrall, 2011a: 79; O’Neill and McCarthy, 2014). Practitioners have struggled to put aside any suspicions they have regarding the agendas of the other agencies (Garton, 1980: 89), whereas for offenders, closer relationships between non-​police actors (e.g. probation and drug workers) and the police have, in certain cases, undermined trust that previously existed between the former and offenders, particularly if offenders have prior negative experiences of policing. Highlighting the operational difficulties of implementing multi-​agency collaborations, the broad picture of multi-​agency working provided by the research explored above stands in contrast to the uniform system for the efficient management of offenders proposed by the CDA 1998.

The ‘Common Sense’ notion of Integrated Offender Management Described as a ‘common sense approach that intuitively feels right’ (Criminal Justice Joint Inspection, 2014: 4), IOM advances the ‘duty to cooperate’ strategy introduced by the CDA 1998, by providing a framework for criminal justice agencies to work in partnership to reduce recidivism at a national, regional and local level. But the method and practice of IOM was also informed by three of what Senior et al. (2011: 2) describe as ‘drivers for change’. Firstly, IOM was built on a broad range of ‘pre-​ existing elements’ of offender management programmes and research. Pre-​existing public protection schemes, such as the PPO, DIP, YOT and MAPPA, all influenced the creation of IOM. PPO schemes were intended to work to (i) prevent and deter, (ii) catch and convict and (iii) rehabilitate and resettle prolific offenders (Dawson and Cuppleditch, 2007; Dawson and Mead, 2005). DIP programmes offered multi-​agency ‘wraparound’ support for drug misusing offenders, early engagement upon arrest and a ‘tough choices approach’ (Skodbo et al., 2007), whereas MAPPA provided assessment and management through the use of external controls, including licence conditions, restrictions on behaviours and contacts and police home visits (Kemshall and Wood, 2007; Kemshall et al., 2005) of the most serious sexual and violent offenders. At a localised delivery level these operational partnerships had all been associated with sustained periods of crime reduction (Ministry of Justice and Home Office, 2009: 5). Secondly, a number of ‘national drivers’ helped shape the development of IOM. These include the National Reducing Re-​Offending plans, the PPO evaluation and PPO refresh document (Home Office, 2009), the NOMS Offender Management Model

Integrated Offender Management  7

(NOMS, 2006), the loss of ‘custody plus’ arrangements (Criminal Justice Act 2003, part 12) and an assortment of policy reviews from Carter (2003), Bradley (2009), Flanagan (2008) and Casey (2008). Finally, various ‘local drivers’ also played an important part in the advent of the IOM model. These included the enhancement of pre-​existing multi-​agency partnerships, shared buildings and co-​location of partners in some areas, local concerns regarding serious acquisitive crime, crime reduction targets, developing previously established information sharing and data protocols and improving police engagement with existing strategies. Much of the experience and understanding gained from the implementation and evaluations of the impact of the various programmes and strategies, documented above, provided a growing evidence base for the effectiveness of agencies working in partnership to both control and change offenders. This evidence was of direct relevance to the vision outlined in the Breaking the Cycle Green Paper (MOJ, 2010: 24), which proposed a ‘new integrated approach to managing offenders’ based upon current and, apparently, successful partnerships and pre-​existing offender schemes. Yet, whilst multi-​agency criminal justice working historically generated a coordinated approach of end-​to-​end offender management, IOM instead offered the promise of a fully integrated approach. This meant the integration of services and responses by all ‘responsible authorities’ (e.g. prison and probation services and the police) and ‘duty-​to-​cooperate’ agencies (e.g. National Health Service, housing, education and drug/​alcohol organisations) to manage the risk of, and deliver services to, offenders1 in the community (Williams, 2019). IOM: the basic framework and guiding principles IOM is an overarching framework for bringing together agencies in local areas to prioritise interventions with offenders who cause crime in their communities (Home Office, 2010a: 1). According to the Home Office (2010b), local IOM arrangements would be most effective if they involved not just statutory criminal justice agencies but also other public sector agencies (responsible for health, housing, employment, etc.) and a wide range of organisations from the voluntary sector, which also had a part to play in addressing risk factors associated with crime and offending. In addition, the Home Office (2010a: 1) also recognised the significant contribution that both the PPO and DIP would make to local IOM arrangements and argued that these successful approaches should be embedded within local IOM arrangements. Broadly, IOM should: • •

Reduce crime, reduce re-​offending and improve public confidence in the criminal justice system. Address potential overlaps between existing approaches and programmes to manage offenders and address gaps.

8  Integrated Offender Management

• •

Align the work of local criminal justice agencies, expanding and improving on partnerships that already existed at the local, area and regional level with wider social agendas. Simplify and strengthen governance to provide greater clarity around respective roles and responsibilities—​ including leadership, operational decision-​making and allocation of resources (Home Office, 2010b: 2).

IOM should not be viewed as a national ‘model’ and—​at least until recently (see below)—​operational practice on the ground has been guided by key principles rather than detailed mandatory specifications. Two UK government policy statements (Home Office, 2010a and Ministry of Justice, 2015) set out these principles as: •

• •

•

•

•

All partners tackling offenders together: IOM schemes should draw together a range of partners, co-​locate teams wherever possible, ensure delivery is underpinned by evidence and intelligence and that a broad range of rehabilitative interventions are employed in supporting offenders’ pathways out of crime: Delivery of a local response to local problems: the local IOM model should reflect local circumstances and priorities, responding to the crime and reoffending risks faced by the local community. Offenders facing up to their responsibility or facing the consequences: Schemes should take a ‘carrot and stick’ approach, which brings with it the offer of rehabilitative support for those who engage, alongside the promise of swift justice for people who continue to offend. Making better use of existing programmes and governance: IOM should provide a clear framework to ensure established local resources are targeted at the most persistent and/​or problematic offenders, identified at a local level. All offenders at high risk of causing serious harm and/​ or re-​ offending are ‘in scope’: Schemes should focus on offenders identified as being of most concern locally (whether subject to statutory supervision by Probation, a Community Rehabilitation Company or managed on a voluntary basis). Promote long-​ term desistance from crime: IOM ensures that offenders of concern, whether subject to statutory supervision or not, are afforded the opportunity to engage with sequenced rehabilitative interventions as a pathway out of crime.

The framework allows each police and/​or probation area to develop and implement a range of initiatives under the ‘umbrella’ concept of IOM. Although overall policy and principles are set at national level (with an increasing amount of intervention by Home Office and The Ministry of Justice since the national ‘Refresh’ in 2021€see next section), there remains considerable scope for leadership, strategic oversight and priority-​setting of IOM at regional and local

Integrated Offender Management  9

level through multi-​agency representative bodies such as Local Criminal Justice Boards (LCJB) and CSP and, in Wales, a national IOM Board (referred to as IOM Cymru). Targeting and selecting potential IOM participants Early IOM policy statements (Home Office and Ministry of Justice, 2010, 2015) placed particular emphasis on the specific targeting and selection of locally identified known offenders who pose: (i) a high risk of re-​offending (identified through methods such as Offender Group Reconviction Scale [OGRS2]) and/​ or (ii) represent a high risk of serious harm (recognised through the Offender Assessment System [OASys3],Violence Predictor scores or assessments like the Active Risk Management System [ARMS4]). Police intelligence also played an important role in identifying potential IOM participants. Again, IOM was perceived as primarily a localised approach, intended to respond to local criminal justice priorities, and there was recognition within the policy statements that there will be variance between areas in the criteria for selecting and targeting. Early evaluations of IOM schemes (e.g. Senior et al., 2011) found often (though not exclusively) schemes focused on offenders suspected of, or indeed known for, persistent engagement in serious acquisitive crime (e.g. burglary and robbery). However, in many areas IOM developed to include or concentrate on a range of other forms of high risk of re-​offending (e.g. sexual and violent crime, serious organised crime, urban gangs, child sexual exploitation, domestic violence, female offenders and firearms [Home Office and Ministry of Justice, 2020]). Those selected onto IOM schemes are typically people subject to statutory supervision (e.g. community sentences such as Drug Rehabilitation Requirements) and individuals released from custody, conditional on adherence to post-​release licence conditions. These groups are supervised by probation staff.Yet one of the key elements of the IOM approach, which sets it apart from other Probation work, is that it enables engagement with people not subject to statutory supervision. This includes people at the end of community orders or post-​release licences, or those simply believed (by the police) to be offending, but who had not received a sentence that allowed them to be supervised formally. In these cases, participants have often been supervised by police officers and/​or drug workers (Criminal Justice Joint Inspection, 2014). Before moving on to examine research done on IOM, it is important to draw attention to a set of changes introduced in 2021 (well after the fieldwork for this study was carried out), that have significantly affected the selection and targeting of IOM participants: the so-​called national Refresh. National Refresh In 2020, a joint inspection by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons (HMIP), Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) and Her Majesty’s Inspectorate

10  Integrated Offender Management

of Constabulary Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) found that IOM had ‘lost its way’. In particular, the report bemoaned a lack of national strategic leadership and made recommendations in relation to improving clarity and consistency of the targeting and selection of IOM offenders whilst still considering local needs and resources. In the months that followed, the government refreshed its approach for IOM, publishing its Neighbourhood Crime: Integrated Offender Management Strategy (Home Office and Ministry of Justice, 2020). This is an evidence-​based approach, intended to provide greater clarity and accountability for those responsible for the delivery of IOM than have existed previously, while still enabling IOM schemes to address local needs. The strategy aims to bring together the strengths and expertise of partners across the criminal justice landscape, including policing, probation, public services, voluntary, community and social enterprises. In addition, it shifts the main focus of IOM away from harm, back towards serious acquisitive crime—​or neighbourhood crime (e.g. robbery, burglary, theft from person and vehicle theft) as it is branded in the Refresh document. More significantly, however, the strategy incorporates a revised model for the selection and targeting of IOM offenders, consisting of three distinct groups: Fixed priority offenders, Flex offenders and Free offenders. Each category is considered below. Fixed are (i) known neighbourhood crime offenders, assessed (using the OGRS measure) to have a high, very high or prolific risk of reoffending and (ii) offenders suspected of committing more serious neighbourhood crime (e.g. robbery and burglary).This group includes a mix of offenders serving community orders as well as those subject to post-​release prison licence conditions.5 They are the first priority for inclusion in the IOM model. Flex captures a broader group of individuals than the Fixed priority group. Referrals of offenders into this group rely on professional judgement and police intelligence, and responses are based on local priorities. Such priorities may, for instance, respond to local crime trends or the need to improve outcomes for particular groups. Examples given in the literature include people leaving prison and young adult offenders making the transition from youth to adult services (Home Office and Ministry of Justice, 2020). However, offenders who have similar needs, reoffending risks or offending histories to the Fixed priority group may also be referred into the Flex category. This could be the case when for example a known neighbourhood crime offender has a low or medium risk OGRS score but is judged by police and probation to remain at a greater risk of reoffending than the measure suggests. Referrals to this group may also include lower-​level acquisitive offenders such as shoplifters, who are judged to have the potential to progress onto committing more serious neighbourhood crime, and persistent offenders who have a similar needs and risk profile to the fixed cohort. Finally, the Free category captures offenders with different needs, risks and offending patterns to those falling within the Fixed and Flex categories. Free ensures that IOM schemes tailored to offending that falls outside the immediate

Integrated Offender Management  11

notion of neighbour crime (e.g. serious violence, serious organised crime and domestic abuse) can continue to operate in response to local priorities.

Research on IOM The discussion above makes clear that over last decade or so there has been substantial investment into, and development of, the IOM framework. Indeed, since the first pilots of IOM across six ‘pioneer’ police areas in 2008/​2009, the approach has spread throughout England and Wales and there was a total of 125 schemes operating under the IOM ‘umbrella’ as of 2020 (Criminal Justice Joint Inspection, 2020: 6). The rhetoric that accompanies the IOM philosophy portrays a harmonious and efficient response to offending, but to date there remains only a limited body of research and evaluation to either confirm or refute this assumption. Much of the research done on IOM has been framed around a defined policy agenda6 and primarily funded by the police (e.g. Morrison, 2008; Annison et al., 2015), Ministry of Justice and Home Office (e.g. Wong and Hartworth, 2009; Dawson and Stanko, 2011; Housden, 2011; Senior et al., 2011; Hallam Centre for Community Justice 2013; Williams and Ariel, 2013; Criminal Justice Joint Inspection, 2014, 2020). A significant amount of this work has consisted of evaluations of the process involved in setting up and running IOM schemes. IOM service delivery Wong et al. (2011), for example, examined voluntary and community sector involvement across four IOM sites in England and Wales, identifying problems, such as a lack of information sharing protocols, as well as benefits like stronger relationships, better value and the ability of these organisations to address offenders’ diverse needs. Wong also examined the needs of specific groups such as females and vulnerable offenders. Similarly, a Local Government Improvement and Development study into the workings of a Lewisham IOM scheme (Lewisham Total Place, 2008) mapped the journeys of offenders in a bid to gain fresh insights into interaction between offenders, services and agencies. It found problems with information sharing between the partnership agencies and the ‘overlaps, duplications and gaps in service provision’. Hallam Centre for Community Justice (2013)7 conducted a quantitative examination into the costs of IOM service delivery at a local level, whilst other research, like the work of Senior et al. (2011), has taken a more qualitative approach, investigating the views and actions of IOM staff and offenders. Carrying out a process evaluation of five pilot IOM pioneer areas outside of London on behalf of the Home Office, charting the development of the IOM schemes between 2008 and 2009, the findings of Senior et al. were fourfold: (i) a streamlined operation, heavily influenced by pre-​existing offender management schemes such as PPO Schemes and Drug Intervention Programmes;

12  Integrated Offender Management

(ii) a willingness amongst partner agencies to work with conflicting inter-​ agency and intra-​agency agendas had facilitated knowledge transfer and cultural change; (iii) that tensions had arisen between IOM police officers and their force colleagues due to the newly extended roles of the police in intelligence gathering, pathway support, disruption and enforcement, but at the same time an apparent shift away from enforcement activities; and finally (iv) a blurring of the police role into offender management—​reported as a problematic development for police officers. Blurring of professional roles Building on this last point, as within the broader arena of multi-​agency criminal justice working, IOM has brought about the erosion of traditionally clear distinctions between the professional roles of partners. Statistical analysis of a Bristol IOM site by Williams and Ariel (2013), for example, found police officers working in ways akin to probation officers. In another study, Annison et al. (2015) examined Thames Valley IOM’s policy and practice. Interviews with Thames Valley IOM police officers, carried out as part of the research, revealed that ‘a cultural and practical shift’ had taken place among these officers ‘towards probation’ (see also, Sleath and Brown, 2017). This shift is precisely what was argued by Nash and colleagues (discussed above), although Nash’s concern was probation workers moving towards police officers. Within the framework of IOM, research suggests the opposite is taking place: police officers moving away from traditional cultural practices, instead adopting values and ways of working more akin to that of probation. Effectiveness of IOM Other research has focused on the effectiveness of IOM partnerships in reducing reoffending among participants. Housden (2011), for example, mapped the three-​month journeys of offenders specifically supervised by the Bristol ‘IMPACT’ (IOM) unit, interviewing 30 IOM offenders (15 at the start of their IOM journey and 15 after three months supervision by IOM). Focusing on the effects of the various ‘pathways’ away from offending (help with drugs and alcohol, accommodation, family and relationships, finance and benefits, general health, mental health/​learning disabilities, coping with the order, work, training and education) adopted by the Bristol scheme, the study revealed that, whilst there were many cases of offender relapse, most reacted positively to the support pathways. Dawson and Stanko (2011) reviewed a London IOM project (Diamond Initiative) targeted at a specific group of prolific offenders released from short-​ term custodial sentences. They found no evidence of reduced reoffending rates amongst the cohort (2011: 66). Williams and Ariel (2013), using a ‘generalised linear regression model with a Poisson distribution’,

Integrated Offender Management  13

tested a group of prolific offenders assigned to the Bristol IOM scheme. The intention was to determine the effects of IOM on recidivism (2013: 5). Whilst recognising the methodological limitations of their study, Williams and Ariel demonstrated a 67% reduction in the seriousness of offending in comparison with a 15.8% increase in the seriousness of offending for those who received no IOM intervention.Williams and Ariel were able to claim that offenders who did not receive IOM pathway interventions, especially drug and mental health treatments (also, Dyer and Biddle, 2016), had a ‘higher likelihood of re-​arrest’ (2013: 8) than those who did. More recently, Sleath and Brown (2017) examined the impact of the introduction of an IOM approach in one large police force region and the perceptions of it by offenders and staff. Using a mixed methods design, their explorations were twofold. Taking a ‘within-​participant approach’, the authors sought to establish whether IOM supervision reduced the level of arrests and risk of reoffending among offenders. The quantitative data they generated showed reduced numbers of arrests and lower risk levels following the introduction of IOM and thus, a scheme effective in reducing reoffending. Further, semi-​ structured interviews with staff uncovered a belief among offender managers that IOM was effective in reducing offending. Particularly where intensive supervision/​monitoring of offenders was employed by the scheme. The perspectives of IOM participants The perspectives and experiences of IOM participants have also been examined empirically, with most participants expressing a largely positive view of IOM. For example, the Diamond Initiative was ‘highly regarded’ by offenders and seen by them as having a ‘positive influence’ on their lives. IOM offenders interviewed during the 2014 Criminal Justice Joint Inspection of IOM, pointed to the various benefits of partaking in the scheme, including accessing help with housing, drugs, training, employment. These findings were echoed by offenders interviewed as part of Senior et al.’s (2011) process evaluation. As one participant in their study noted, ‘They have given me more motivation because they are offering me things that they did not offer me before. Helping me get employment, supporting me a lot more’. This links back to the desistance literature, which stresses the importance of suitable employment as an important part of the desistance process (Farrall et al., 2011). A minority of offenders from both studies did, however, find engaging positively with police offender managers difficult, particularly when working with officers that had arrested them in the past. But many that were able to do so reported that a high level of interaction with the police generated a strong motivational influence and a positive impact on their chance of desistance from crime. Moreover, their view of the police had changed as a result of participating in IOM (Senior et al., 2011: 34; Criminal Justice Joint Inspection, 2014: 45). Further work by

14  Integrated Offender Management

Sleath and Brown (2019: 522) on IOM also captured a ‘shifting perception’ of police officers in the eyes of the offenders to whom they spoke.The movement stemmed from increased trust within relationships. As one participant observed, ‘I actually trust them [the police] a little bit now because like I say she [police offender manager] has actually gone out of her way, above and beyond for me more than once’. National delivery of IOM: a snapshot Finally, two Criminal Justice Joint Inspections of IOM carried out since its inception have advanced a national picture of IOM activity across 6 IOM sites in England and Wales. The first, conducted in 2014, identified three common threads running through the delivery of IOM schemes: (i) good practice concerning rehabilitative and restrictive/​enforcement approaches and intelligence sharing; (ii) integrity of staff working within the IOM approach and (iii) a positive response by those subject to IOM to the way they had been targeted and treated. The second inspection, which consisted of visits to seven IOM areas in England and Wales, completed in 2019, however, noted with ‘disappointment’ the scant development of IOM since 2015. Whilst there were some signs of good practice, indicating that IOM can remain effective in providing close monitoring and supervision and swift enforcement, when needed, the report identified three key challenges: (i) the broadening of the scope of many IOM schemes to cover high risk of harm as well as prolific offender cases has reduced the clarity of focus; (ii) problems with staff training and workload manageability; (iii) patchy delivery of services to offenders, resulting in fewer than half of offenders accessing drug or alcohol services. The implication from the IOM research is that early teething problems of overlap and duplication have been overcome and that closer working relationships between the police and other criminal justice agencies within the IOM setting resulted in some positive cultural and operational consequences. On the whole IOM offenders seem to have reacted positively to the schemes. However, the statistical evidence so far available does not demonstrate significant improvements in reoffending rates, although some schemes did achieve reductions in the frequency and seriousness of offending. There are a number of possible explanations for this, some of which I explore in later chapters, but at this stage the assumption must be that IOM schemes have not so far lived up to the rhetoric of a radical new approach to offender management. Whilst the evaluative research discussed above helps us understand better the design, delivery and implementation of IOM, as well as localised patterns of policing, there remains no definitive body of independent academic research examining its day-​to-​day practice in depth (Criminal Justice Joint Inspection 2014: 50; Criminal Justice Joint Thematic Inspection, 2020). The present contribution aims to begin to fill the gap with findings from an ethnographic study of one English IOM police area.

Integrated Offender Management  15

Sunnyvale IOM unit Sunnyvale IOM was set up in 2008 to draw together the police, prison and probation services, a criminal justice intervention team and several third-​sector agencies in an effort to reduce the offending of people the police believed to be responsible for a disproportionate amount of acquisitive crime in the local area. When the research fieldwork was conducted between 2012 and 2013 the caseload was around 700. Reflecting broader multi-​ agency criminal justice practice, the scheme advanced an ideology of unity, joined up thinking and service delivery within the partnership (Burnett and Appleton, 2004: 35). As a senior police manager explained: We needed to drive out inefficiencies, duplications, have live information sharing to save time, work under the same roof … improve communication and use resources more efficiently. [Taking] some resources out of reactive and responsive elements of the police organisation and [putting] them into activities to prevent crime and reduce reoffending rates. Through a combination of knowledge, expertise and resources, Sunnyvale partners sought to ensure that, once a person was identified as a target (usually on the basis of police intelligence), efforts were made to stop their offending through a mix of rehabilitative and restrictive/​enforcement-​based interventions. Sunnyvale claimed to operate as a harmonious and efficient response to prolific offending. Yet, through monitoring and surveillance, it also represented a significant extension of penal supervision and control (Sparks, 2000:131). Let us take, as an example of Sunnyvale joined up working and partner engagement, an individual returning to the community following a period of custody. The prison service took responsibility for preparing the person for release. Prior to their release, it also kept Sunnyvale partners abreast with current intelligence about their behaviour in custody, financial position on release and proposed release settlement area. On release, probation workers had (and still retain) a statutory duty to supervise offenders through their post-​release period on licence, ensured that they comply with the conditions, and at the same time offered and coordinated support to help them overcome personal and social problems (NOMS, 2006). Drugs services, in the form of Criminal Justice Intervention Team workers, were also enlisted if the person had a history of substance misuse problems.8 The police, for their part, had a threefold function: (i) to identify and monitor whether the individual currently posed a risk of reoffending; (ii) to work closely with other partners and support them in finding a pathway out of offending; and (iii) to explore and operationalise enforcement options when intelligence suggested they were committing further offences.

16  Integrated Offender Management

The role of the police in Sunnyvale IOM is explored in more detail below, but suffice to say, the acquisition and the sharing of knowledge was at the core of Sunnyvale policing practice. This situated the scheme firmly within the broader discourse of risk regulation and penal politics (Sparks, 2000: 130), as it concerned the identification, categorisation, and management of dangerous, deviant or threatening individuals (Feeley and Simon, 1994a: 452; Pratt, 2000; Garland, 2001). Categories of offenders subject to Sunnyvale IOM Similar to other early9 iterations of IOM, the primary focus of Sunnyvale was from the beginning on people known to commit (or suspected of committing) serious acquisitive crime (e.g. burglary and robbery). At the time of the research, the scheme used the original (pre-​National Refresh) markers of risk for the targeting and selection of suitable participants: people (identified through OGRS and OASys) who represented the highest risk of reoffending and/​or those likely to cause serious harm. Again, these individuals could be categorised further into two main groups. The first, referred to as statutory offenders, were those on community sentences or subject to post-​ prison release licence conditions. This group, which at the time of the empirical enquiry numbered approximately 440 people, had to be supervised by probation; moreover, those among them who were subject to prison release licence conditions could find various aspects of their lives subject to wide-​ranging controls. On release from custody, for example, they might have been told where they could reside and/​ or with whom they could or could not associate. Appropriate controls for offenders subject to licence conditions were determined between the parole board (where applicable) and probation offender managers. However, the Sunnyvale IOM approach placed considerable emphasis on information sharing and integrated service provision. Therefore, some decisions made by Sunnyvale probation officers about restrictions and enforcement were informed by intelligence gathered by Sunnyvale police. The second group, described as non-​statutory offenders, were not subject to formal statutory supervision by probation. These individuals, approximately 260 people at the time of the research, therefore consented to be supervised by Sunnyvale IOM ‘voluntarily’, typically by police officers or drugs workers. Whilst the majority of Sunnyvale participants I encountered throughout the study were non-​statutory offenders—​a reflection of my focus on the operational role of the police within the scheme—​I did come across a smaller number of statutory offenders. Both groups, however, consisted of individuals, thought to be committing offences that made them a local policing priority.10 The suspected burglars, robbers and prolific thieves that Sunnyvale actively targeted can be situated within the risky group of outsiders identified by Feeley and Simon and others like Becker (1974). But actuarial justice is also a predictive and statistical understanding of justice, a reflection of market disciplines

Integrated Offender Management  17

and a preference to achieve value and drive forward efficiency (O’Malley, 2004). These developments are derived from a lack of faith in the traditional apparatuses of the criminal justice system: the courts and police and the traditional ‘detect and sentence’ response to criminal behaviour. We now have a growing emphasis on the use of technologies to produce knowledge of risky populations that is useful for their administration (Ericson and Haggerty, 1997: 41). The police and other Sunnyvale workers were key joint players in the risk-​management of the dangerous. This development, as we shall see, had some important implications for policing. Operationalising Sunnyvale policing At the time of the research, police officers directly associated with Sunnyvale IOM unit11 were divided into two groups: (uniformed) officers—​ from a dedicated IOM police enforcement unit known as the ‘District Enforcement Team (DET)’—​and (plain clothed) police offender managers.12 Coercive police action remained the domain of DET officers and, where Sunnyvale participants failed to engage with Sunnyvale (when required to do so by law) or re-​offend, these officers were tasked with returning them to court. This responded to the ‘stick’ aspect of the MOJ guidance and is a traditional policing role (Waddington, 1998). ‘Our role is to disrupt the criminal activities of [Sunnyvale] offenders. We do this any way we can with the powers we have’, a Sunnyvale police supervisor explained. Police offender managers, on the other hand, were responsible for building an accurate picture of the activities of Sunnyvale offenders. As a senior police manager explained, these officers ‘should gather and make sense of intelligence and work in partnership with other agencies to understand what enforcement [and] tactical options are available to [Sunnyvale]’. Acquiring and sharing intelligence was thus at the core of police offender manager activity. Information gathered on Sunnyvale offenders, whether statutory or non-​statutory, was continuously processed and updated by the police offender managers. This steady stream of intelligence was circulated amongst the various agencies. In many ways, ‘integrated offender management’ could have been re-​cast as ‘integrated information sharing’; for it was this pooling of knowledge which facilitated greatly the development of recidivism prevention strategies by the scheme.The practice of ‘integrated information sharing’ was a risk-​management exercise, where information gathered was assessed and the risks, if any, of these individuals re-​offending were calculated. Police knowledge was central to this risk-​allocation process.This intelligence underpinned a dynamic Red Amber Green (RAG) system, coding offender risk levels. Red pointed to the greatest risk of re-​offending, whereas ‘amber’ was adopted where there was little or no intelligence on levels of offending activity, but professional judgement suggested that the person was involved or could be at risk of being involved in crime. Green offenders were not thought

18  Integrated Offender Management

by the police to be committing crime. The RAG system formed the basis of an ongoing selection and deselection process, with offender participation in Sunnyvale continuously reassessed, but it also helped guide the approach taken by police offender managers to the management of IOM participants. It was the job of police offender managers to consider (and keep under review) police tactical options for Sunnyvale offenders, whether statutory or non-​statutory. Appropriate levels of enforcement (delivered by uniformed DFT officers) and/​ or rehabilitative interventions (delivered by offender managers—​ see below) were determined by the colour-​code assigned to each offender. For Red offenders, typically habitual drug users committing priority crime,13 enforcement strategies were invasive, with possible interventions including daily reviews of enforcement options, arrest plans, regular home visits, CCTV surveillance, covert and overt directed surveillance, financial investigation and Anti-​Social Behaviour Orders (ASBO). Amber offenders were subjected to a slightly more relaxed regime of weekly enforcement option reviews, arrest plans, intelligence visits, internet appeals and monthly case supervision. Green offenders (former red and/​or amber offenders) were still monitored even though intelligence suggests they were no longer committing priority crime. The RAG status of this group was reviewed monthly, along with any supervision and/​or enforcement requirements (Police Operations Guide, 2010). But, as the Ministry of Justice (2010: 25) points out, tactical options are not always coercive: Many of the skills needed for good policing are also well-​suited to striking the right balance between controlling [offenders] to protect communities and requiring them to take the action needed to change their criminal lifestyle and move into a law abiding and disciplined way of life. In this view, there was also an impetus for police officers to play an active role in rehabilitating Sunnyvale participants. This involved requiring officers to adopt the role of ‘offender manager’ and provide non-​statutory participants with what the Sunnyvale literature described as ‘pathway support’—​help addressing issues related to accommodation, employment training and education, mental and physical health, drugs, alcohol, finance, benefits and debt, family relationships, attitudes, thinking and behaviour. This enhanced form of police service provision was available to Sunnyvale participants and was intended to reduce their risk of reoffending and to offer a ‘carrot’ as encouragement to participate in and comply with the scheme. Desistance literatures also lend support to the focus on these pathways towards ‘going straight’ (Hopkins and Wickson, 2013). Significant research suggests a correlation between stopping offending and finding employment (Sampson and Laub, 1993), embarking on a stable relationship (Farrington and West, 1995), changes in accommodation or geographical location (Jamieson et al., 1999) and addressing drug and alcohol problems (Colman and Vander Laenen, 2012).

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Questions, theory and method IOM requires police officers (working as offender managers) to take a substantively different approach to policing: helping offenders access support for often complex psychological, economic and social needs. Carrying out these new tasks and functions requires police officers—​as offender managers—​to suspend, the informal occupational ‘values, norms, perspectives and craft rules’ associated in the literature with core police culture (Reiner, 2000: 87). The concept of cop culture and the strength of its links to the talk and behaviour of police officers are examined in detail in Chapter 3. However, research has found its core constituents to include an exaggerated sense of mission, a desire for action and excitement, the celebration of violence, an Us/​Them divide of the social world, a sense of internal solidarity but also social isolation, prejudice, racism, sexism, homophobia, authoritarian conservatism, suspicion and cynicism (Dixon, 1997; Loftus, 2009: 96–​99; Reiner, 2010: 119–​132). These distinctive sets of cognitive tendencies are conveyed and reinforced throughout the lower echelons of the police institution through a process of socialisation and further refined through the operation of powerful working ‘assumptions’ (Hoyle, 1998), ‘rules’ (McConville et al., 1991) and ‘frames’ (Hawkins, 2002). Classificatory devices like ‘previous’ (being known to the police), suspiciousness (being incongruent with local surroundings, uncooperative or in keeping with the wrong or prohibited company) and workload (volume and quality of tasks) structure the operation of police discretion, acting as a prism through which informal police culture is transformed into police action and behaviour. To date, little is known about the extent to which the IOM way of working has disrupted traditional catch and convict police cultural practices, particularly among police offender managers responsible for providing offenders with support. Notwithstanding the substantively different approach to policing offered by Sunnyvale (officially), a number of informal rules, shaped by the dominant characteristics of police culture, may have been driving police–​ offender interactions. Thus, there seems good reason to explore whether police talk bears any relation to police action in the areas of police work conducted by DET officers and offender management carried out by police offender managers. This enquiry is taken up in Chapter 5. However, there is a possibility that police culture may prevent police offender managers fully embracing a role founded in large part on engagement with offenders in the context of rehabilitation and support. If so, one plausible implication may be that supporting Sunnyvale offenders may have been of secondary concern, with officers instead placing most emphasis on intensive surveillance and other intrusive enforcement-​orientated policing tactics (e.g. frequent street stops). How Sunnyvale offenders experienced and reacted to such treatment raises important questions for the successful delivery of the core aims of IOM policing: reducing crime and victims through engendering desistance among prolific offenders.

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Research on procedural justice and police legitimacy suggests that compliance with the law is best secured not by hostile and coercive police practice, but by fostering a belief in the legitimacy of the police and of the criminal law. The legitimacy of the police is often determined through the perceived fairness of the manner in which police authority is exercised—​a process called procedural justice (Tyler, 1990). The ideas are explored in greater detail in Chapter 2. Briefly, however, if interactions with the police are thought to be fair and respectful, then people are more likely to (a) view the police as legitimate, and (b) feel a sense of moral obligation to obey both the police (including their directives) and the law (Tyler, 1990, 2006; Sunshine and Tyler, 2003). In contrast, if Sunnyvale police officers engaged in policing efforts that were perceived by IOM offenders to be unfair and disrespectful this may have undermined any beliefs Sunnyvale offenders had in the legitimacy of their actions. In turn, this may have reduced levels of offender engagement with the scheme and damaged the capacity of police offender managers, not only to generate good intelligence (because it was likely to disrupt the efforts of these officers to develop good relations with Sunnyvale offenders), but also to influence offender behaviours (Sunshine and Tyler, 2003; Bradford, 2014; Bottoms and Tankebe, 2012; Jackson et al., 2013; Gau et al., 2012). These arguments bring Sunnyvale police decision-​making as well as the interpersonal aspects of the general exercise of their authority into sharp focus throughout the book. There are, of course, legal rules and guidance that Sunnyvale police should have applied and followed during interactions with offenders, but an abundant body of work on police culture (for an overview see, Cockcroft, 2013, 2020) has established that this mosaic of individual-​ level variables can and does influence how officers behave whilst working the streets. For now, however, this assumption is anchored in evidence from a number of studies which have found offenders as a whole have negative opinions of police cultural practice and the (perceived) unfair manner in which police officers they encounter dispense authority (e.g. Choongh, 1997: 195; Lister et al., 2008: 43–​44; Sarang et al., 2010; Aitken et al., 2002; Mckeganey and McGallagly, 2013). Yet some of this work (e.g. Lister et al., 2008; McKeganey and McGallagly, 2013; Sarang et al., 2010; Aitken, 2002) also suggests that whilst a number of people who have frequent contact with the police (e.g. criminal justice involved populations) certainly dislike the coercive and/​or disrespectful treatment, they perceive elements of the contact with the police as part and parcel of criminal lifestyle. This notion is further explored in Chapter 6, within the context of my own findings. But to anticipate, it is possible that police treatment that is physically and verbally abusive and/​or arbitrary is something Sunnyvale offenders saw as an occupational hazard and thus both fair and acceptable. The analysis presented in the pages that follow is based on continuous fieldwork carried out in five research sites across Southern England (but within one police force area) between September 2012 and October 2013. I wanted

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to explore the points of view offenders and IOM workers (police, probation staff, prison officers and drugs workers) had on Sunnyvale and to theorise about the cultural underpinnings of police decision-​making during interactions with Sunnyvale’s offenders. This meant observing Sunnyvale patrol officers and offender managers, for a total of 400 hours, as they met with offenders at probation offices, police stations, the courts, on the streets and in their homes. Finally, I held formal interviews with Sunnyvale police officers (n =​15), probation staff (n =​8), criminal justice intervention workers (n =​3) and prison officers (n =​2). Interviewees included nine offender managers, two patrol officers, one uniformed police inspector, one police offender manager, supervisor of the rank of sergeant, six probation officers, two probation managers, two criminal justice intervention workers, one criminal justice intervention team manager and one prison officer. Other available senior representatives from the major stakeholders in the scheme were also interviewed. These interviewees included one Assistant Chief Constable, one Probation Chief Executive Officer and one Senior Prison Officer. Twenty offenders (ten in custody and ten undergoing community supervision) were also interviewed. Police, probation and prison records were used to gather the names of current IOM offenders; names of individuals were then selected at random from the list. Offenders were introduced to me either by probation staff, prison officers or the police themselves; some were selected through snowball sampling (Davis, 2000). The conversations I had with Sunnyvale staff and offenders brought my observations, as well as the views and experiences of the key actors involved in Sunnyvale IOM, into sharp focus. Along with my fieldnotes, interviews recorded throughout the study and reported throughout the book provide a foundation on which to investigate empirically IOM and the policing of prolific offenders.14

The aims and structure of the book In light of the discussion above, this book will provide an empirical examination of the operational practice of Sunnyvale IOM, from the perspectives of those involved: police officers, prison officers, probation staff, drugs workers, along with the offenders they managed. Using both data from observations and interviews, the chapters that follow will investigate IOM, both as a specific practice, in respect of the management of people who have a history of prolific acquisitive offending, and as a representative of risk-​penology (Feeley and Simon, 1994a). The account offered is thus both empirical and theoretically informed. But it is also theoretically relevant in that through qualitative data it advances our understandings of police legitimacy, public cooperation and compliance in the context of multi-​agency offender management programmes which involve police officers engaged in a mix of rehabilitative and crime control activity. The findings have important implications for both for police cultural practice within this setting and for current ideas about perceptions of

22  Integrated Offender Management

police legitimacy and subsequent compliance with the law among committed offenders. The study reported here is therefore situated within three main theoretical debates about the culture of police decision-​making: legitimacy, desistance and the nexus between them. These are explored in Chapters 2 and 3. The aim of the study was not to test these theories. Rather the ideas provide a way of examining and defining Sunnyvale policing practices and their implications for those subject to the scheme and working within its framework. The empirical findings from the study are discussed and integrated with existing literatures in Chapters 4 to 6. Chapter 4 explores the relationships between the various partnership agencies, as well as the broader implications for the promotion of desistance amongst recidivists. Chapter 5 examines the world outlook of police offender managers and how this influences both their decision-​making practices and interactions with IOM offenders. Chapter 6 considers offender experiences of Sunnyvale’s methods and practices and situates these experiences within debates about police culture, police decision-​making and legitimacy. As a whole the book aims to contribute to debates about the feasibility and value of this style of inter-​agency working.This is the subject of Chapter 7, as are the implications for improving the IOM approach to the management of prolific offenders. Finally, the book concludes in Chapter 8 with a reflexive examination of my time in the police ethnographic field.

Notes 1 Violent Offenders, Priority Youth Offending Team cases, High Risk Serious Harm Offenders, High Risk Domestic Violence Offenders and 18–​24s’ Gangs and Serious Youth Violence (Home Office, 2015). 2 OGRS is an actuarial tool designed to predict the likelihood of a group of offenders with similar antecedents reoffending within a certain period (Home Office and Ministry of Justice, 2015). 3 OASys is the standard Offender Assessment System devised by the National Offender Management Service (NOMS) to assess the risks and needs of all offenders. 4 ARMS provides a national standard for the risk assessment and management planning of sexual offenders in the community (College of Policing, 2014) and was introduced by the police in England and Wales in 2014. 5 Neighbourhood crime offenders who are also Multi Agency Public Protection Arrangement (MAPPA) nominals have been excluded from the Fixed group. 6 Localised policing of prolific acquisitive offenders (see MOJ, 2010 and Criminal Justice Joint Inspection, 2014, 2020). 7 See also Hill and Roberts (2012) Conwy/​ Denbighshire Integrated Offender Management Unit–​8 Ways Performance Monitoring Report, available here: www. cjp.org.uk/​iom-​elearn​ing/​my-​iom-​e-​learn​ing-​por​tal/​knowle​dge-​rep​osit​ory/​ resea​rch-​findi​ngs/​iom-​rep​ort-​2011-​12/​ (accessed 13/​ 5/​ 2014); also Soppitt and Rowe (2012) An Evaluation of the Safe Newcastle Non-​Statutory Target Project (June 2012), available here: www.cjp.org.uk/​iom-​elearn​ing/​my-​iom-​e-​learn​ing-​ por ​tal/​knowle​dge-​rep​osit​ory/​resea​rch-​findi​ngs/​nst-​rep​ort-​final-​newcas​tle-​iom/​

Integrated Offender Management  23

(accessed 13/​ 5/​ 14); also Revolving Doors Agency (2012) Integrated Offender Management: Effective Alternatives to Short Sentences, available here: www.cjp. org.uk/​iom-​elearn​ing/​my-​iom-​e-​learn​ing-​por ​tal/​knowle​dge-​rep​osit​ory/​resea​ rch-​findi​ngs/​iom-​effect​ive-​alter​nati​ves-​to-​short-​senten​ces-​june-​2012/​ (accessed 13/​5/​2014). 8 Criminal Justice Intervention Teams were originally set up by the Drugs Intervention Programme (DIP).The main aim of DIP was to establish drug workers at every stage of the criminal justice system so as to promote the engagement and retention of Class A drug users within treatment services. This began with arrest referral schemes, with DIP teams eventually taking responsibility for delivering psychosocial drugs work and treatment referrals at the point of arrest; as a condition of bail; and following release from prisons. As noted in Chapter 1, the Sunnyvale IOM partnership included drug workers, drawn from Criminal Intervention Teams, to deliver specific services and interventions where Sunnyvale participants identified as substance misusers. 9 The empirical enquiry, on which the research reported in this book is based, took place between 2012 and 2013. 10 Priority offences, determined at a local level by the Community Safety Partnership, included burglary, robbery, drug offences, drug related offences, motor vehicle crime, theft and fraud. 11 The force area in which the current study was carried out had a broad range of operational policing units, for example, the Criminal Investigation Division (CID), specialist burglary and robbery squads and units concerned with more benign issues such as road traffic. Yet, whilst officers working within these units inevitably encountered Sunnyvale offenders during their day-​to-​day activities, they were not the focus of the observational research reported below. 12 Some of these officers referred to themselves as ‘field intelligence officers’, despite the official designation of ‘Police offender manager’. For the sake of clarity and consistency throughout the book (as well as accurately reflecting the role of these officers in Sunnyvale IOM unit at the time) these officers are be referred to as ‘police offender managers’. 13 ‘Priority crime’ refers to acquisitive crime (robbery, burglary, theft and vehicular crime), which is considered by the police to be of priority within the force area. 14 A more detailed personal/​biographical account of the fieldwork and the various challenges I encountered is provided in Chapter 8.

References Aitken, C., Moore, D., Higgs, P., Kelsall, J., and Kergera, M. (2002). ‘The impact of a police crackdown on a street drug scene: Evidence from the street’, International Journal of Drug Policy, 13(3): 193–​202. Annison, H., Bradford, B., and Grant, E. (2015). ‘Theorizing the role of ‘the brand’ in criminal justice: The case of integrated offender management’, Criminology & Criminal Justice, 15(4): 387–​406. Ashworth, A., and Zedner, L. (2008). ‘Defending the Criminal Law: Reflections on the changing character of crime, procedure, and sanctions’, Journal of Criminal Law and Philosophy, 2: 21–​51.

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Baker, K., and Sutherland, A. (2009). Multi-​Agency Public Protection Arrangements and Youth Justice. Bristol: Policy Press. Becker, H. (1974). Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance. Chicago: Aldine. Blagg, H., Pearson, G., Smith, D., Sampson, A. and Stubbs, P. (1988). ‘Interagency co-​operation: Rhetoric and reality’, in T. Hope and M. Shaw (eds.), Communities and Crime Reduction. London: HMSO, 478–​493. Bottoms, A., and Tinkebe, J. (2012). ‘Beyond procedural justice: A dialogic approach to legitimacy in criminal justice’, Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, 102(1): 119–​170. Bradford, B. (2014). ‘Policing and social identity: Procedural justice, inclusion and cooperation between police and public’, Policing and Society, 24(1): 22–​43. Braithwaite, J. (2000) ‘The new regulatory state and the transformation of criminology’, British Journal of Criminology, 40(2): 222–​238. Brayne, S., Rosenblat, A., and Boyd, D. (2015). Predictive Policing. Workshop presented at annual conference of Data and Civil Rights: A New Era of Policing and Justice, Washington, DC, October 27, 2015, available here; https://​data​soci​ety.net/​out​put/​ data-​civil-​r ig​hts-​pre​dict​ive-​polic​ing/​ (accessed 01/​24/​2023). Brownlee, I. (1998) ‘New labour–​new penology? Punitive rhetoric and the limits of managerialism in criminal justice policy’, Journal of Law and Society, 25(3), 313–​335. Bullock, K. (2010). ‘The construction and interpretation of risk management technologies in contemporary probation practice’, British Journal of Criminology, 51(1): 120–​135. Burnett, R., and Appleton, C. (2004). ‘Joined up services to tackle youth crime’, British Journal of Criminology, 44(1): 34–​54. Carter, P. (2003). Managing Offenders, Reducing Crime: A New Approach. London: Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit. Casey, L. (2008). Engaging Communities in Fighting Crime. London: Cabinet Office. Castel, R. (1991) ‘From dangerousness to risk’, in G. Burchell, C. Gordon, and P. Miller (eds.), The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 281–​298. Choongh, S. (1997). Policing as Social Discipline. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cockcroft, T. (2013). Police Culture:Themes and Concepts. Abingdon: Routledge. Cockcroft,T. (2020). Police Occupational Culture; Research and Practice. Bristol: Policy Press. Cohen, S. (1972). Folk Devils and Moral Panics. London: MacGibbon and Kee. Cohen, S. (1985). Visions of Social Control: Crime Punishment and Classification. Cambridge: Polity Press. College of Policing (2014). Active Risk Management System Pre-​read. London: College of Policing Limited. Colman, C., and Vander Laenen, F. (2012). ‘ “Recovery came first”: Desistance versus recovery in the criminal careers of drug-​using offenders’, The Scientific World Journal, Volume 2012, Article ID 657671, 9 pages. doi:10.1100/​2012/​657671 Crawford,A. (1993). Crime Prevention and the Multi-​Agency Approach:A Study of the Attitudes and Experience of Police and Probation Officers. Hatfield: University of Hertfordshire. Crawford, A., and Jones, M. (1995). ‘Inter-​agency co-​operation and community-​based crime prevention: Some reflections on the work of Pearson and colleagues’, British Journal of Criminology, 35(1): 17–​33. Criminal Justice Joint Inspection. (2014). A Joint Inspection of the Integrated Offender Management Approach. London: Ministry of Justice. Criminal Justice Joint Inspection. (2020). A Joint Inspection of the Integrated Offender Management Approach. London: Ministry of Justice.

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Davis, Robert C. (2000). Perceptions of the Police among Members of Six Ethnic Communities in Central Queens, NY. Washington, DC: Department of Justice. Dawson P., and Cuppleditch, L. (2007). An Impact Assessment of the Prolific and other Priority Offender Programme. London: Home Office. Dawson, P., and Mead, G. (2005). Early Findings from the Prolific and Other Priority Offenders Evaluation. Home Office, Development and Practice Report 46. London: Home Office. Dawson, P., and Stanko, B. (2011). An Evaluation of the Diamond Initiative: Year Two Findings. London: Metropolitan Police Service. London Criminal Justice partnership. Dixon,D.(1997).Law in Policing:Legal Regulation and Police Practices.Oxford:Clarendon Press. Dyer, W., and Biddle, P. (2016). ‘ “Enhanced support for high intensity users of the criminal justice system”: An evaluation of mental health nurse input into integrated offender management services in the northeast of England’, Social Policy and Society, 15(1): 43–​55. doi:10.1017/​S1474746415000044 Ericson, R.V., and Haggerty, K.D. (1997). Policing the Risk Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Farrall, S., Sharpe, G., Hunter, B., and Calverley, A. (2011). ‘Theorizing structural and individual-​level processes in desistance and persistence: Outlining an integrated perspective’, Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology, 44(2): 218–​234. Farrington, D.P., and West, D.J. (1995). ‘Effects of marriage, separation and children on offending by adult males’, in Blau, Z.S. and Hagan, J. (eds.), Current Perspectives on Aging and the Life Cycle:Vol. 4. Delinquency and Disrepute in the Life Course. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, 249–​281. Feeley, M., and Simon, J. (1994a), ‘New penology: Notes on the emerging strategy of corrections and its implications’, Criminology, 30(4): 449–​474. Feeley, M., and Simon, J. (1994b) ‘Actuarial justice: The emerging new criminal law’ in D. Nelken (ed.), The Futures of Criminology. London: Sage, 173–​201. Flanagan, R. (2008). The Review of Policing. London: Home Office. Forrester, D., Chatterton, M., and Pease, K. (1988). The Kirkholt Burglary Prevention Project, Rochdale. Crime Prevention Unit Paper 13. London: Home Office. Forrester, D., Frenz, S., O’Connell, M., and Pease, K. (1990). The Kirkholt Burglary Prevention Project, Phase II. Crime Prevention Unit Paper 23. London: Home Office. Garland, D. (2001). The Culture of Control: Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Garton, A. (1980).‘Mutual perceptions between police and probation officers: A research note’, British Journal of Social Work, 10: 87–​89. Gau, J., Stice, E., Rohde, P., and Seeley, J.R. (2012). ‘Negative life events and substance use moderate cognitive behavioral adolescent depression prevention intervention’, Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, 41(3): 37–​41. Goold, B. (2007) ‘Privacy, identity and security’, in B. Goold and L. Lazarus (eds.), Security and Human Rights. Portland, OR: Hart Publishing, 45–​72. Gough, D. (2019). ‘Multi-​agency working and the governance of crime control’, in A. Pycroft and D. Gough (eds.), Multi-​Agency Working in Criminal Justice. Bristol: Policy Press, 5–​24. Hallam Centre for Community Justice. (2013). Sussex IOM evaluation, ‘break even analysis’. Available here: www.cjp.org.uk/​iom-​elearn​ing/​my-​iom-​e-​learn​ing-​por​tal/​ knowle​dge-​rep​osit​ory/​resea​rch-​findi​ngs/​sus​sex-​iom-​eva​luat​ion-​break-​even-​analy​ sis/​(accessed 14/​3/​2018).

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Hannah-​ Moffat, K. (2005). ‘Criminogenic needs and the transformative risk subject: Hybridizations of risk/​need in penality’, Punishment & Society, 7(1): 29–​51. Hannah-​Moffat, K. (2013). ‘Algorithmic risk governance: Big data analytics, race and information activism in criminal justice debates’, Theoretical Criminology, 23(4): 453–​470. Harcourt, B.E. (2007). Against Prediction: Profiling, Policing, and Punishing in an Actuarial Age. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hawkins, K. (2002). Law as Last Resort: Prosecution Decision-​making in a Regulatory Setting. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hill, P.L., and Roberts, B.W. (2012). Conwy/​ Denbighshire Integrated Offender Management Unit–​8 Ways Performance Monitoring Report, available here: www. cjp.org.uk/​iom-​elearn​ing/​my-​iom-​e-​learn​ing-​por​tal/​knowle​dge-​rep​osit​ory/​resea​ rch-​findi​ngs/​iom-​rep​ort-​2011–​12/​ (accessed 13/​5/​2014). Home Office. (1997). No More Excuses: A New Approach to TacklingYouth Crime in England and Wales. London: Home Office. Home Office. (2009). Prolific and Other Priority Offender Programme FiveYears on: Maximising the Impact. London: Home Office/​Ministry of Justice. Home Office. (2010a). Integrated Offender Management Government Policy Statement. London: Home Office/​Ministry of Justice. Home Office. (2010b). Prolific and other Priority Offenders: Results from the 2008 Cohort for England and Wales. London: Home Office. Home Office. (2015). Integrated Offender Management Government Policy Statement. London: Home Office/​Ministry of Justice. Home Office and Ministry of Justice. (2020). Neighbourhood Crime Integrated Offender Management Strategy: A Unified Approach to Offender Supervision in the Community. London: Home Office/​Ministry of Justice. Hope,T., and Sparks, R. (2000). Crime, Risk and Insecurity: Law and Order in Everyday Life and Political Discourse. London: Routledge. Hopkins, M., and Wickson, J. (2013).‘Targeting prolific and other priority offenders and promoting pathways to desistance: Some reflections on the PPO programme using a theory of change framework’, Criminology and Criminal Justice, 13(5): 594–​614. Housden, P. (2011). Offender Journey Mapping with Clients of the Bristol Impact Service, available here: www.cjp.org.uk/​iom-​elearn​ing/​my-​iom-​e-​learn​ing-​por​tal/​ knowle​dge-​rep​osit​ory/​resea​rch-​findi​ngs/​offen​der-​jour​ney-​mapp​ing-​with-​clie​nts-​ of-​the-​bris​tol-​imp​act-​serv​ice/​ (accessed 21/​6/​2020). Hoyle, C. (1998). Negotiating Domestic Violence. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jackson, J., Huq, A.Z., Bradford, B., and Tyler, T. (2013). ‘Monopolizing force? Police legitimacy and public attitudes toward the acceptability of violence’, Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 19(4): 479–​497. Jamieson, J., McIvor, G., and Murray, C. (1999). Understanding Offending among Young People. Edinburgh: Scottish Executive. Kemshall, H. (2011). ‘Reducing risk: Integration or aversion? Risk assessment and the use of IPP in England and Wales’, The Scottish Journal of Criminal Justice Studies, 17: 18–​29. Kemshall, H., and Maguire M. (2001). ‘Public protection, partnership and risk penality:The multi-​agency risk management of sexual and violent offenders’ punishment and society’, The International Journal of Penology, 5(2): 237–​264.

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Kemshall, H., and Wood, J. (2007). ‘Beyond public protection: An examination of community protection and public health approaches to high-​r isk offenders’, Criminology & Criminal Justice, 7(3): 203–​222. Kemshall, H., and Wood, J. (2009). ‘Risk and public protection: Responding to involuntary and taboo risk’, in D. Denney (ed.), Living in Dangerous Times: Fear, Insecurity, Risk and Social Policy. Oxford: Wiley-​Blackwell, 25–​42. Kemshall, H., Mackenzie, G.,Wood, J., Bailey, R., and Yates, J. (2005). Strengthening Multi-​ Agency Public Protection Arrangements (MAPPAs). Home Office Development and Practice Report 45. London: Home Office. Lewisham Total Place: Customer Insight in Total Place–​Case Study ‘Reducing Re-​ Offending’, October, 2008. Available here: www.local.gov.uk/​sites/​defa​ult/​files/​ docume​nts/​lon​don-​boro​ugh-​lewis​ham-​o-​a4d.pdf (accessed 7/​7/​2022). Liddle, A.M., and Gelsthorpe, L.R. (1994). Inter-​Agency Crime Prevention: Further Issues Police. Research Group supplementary paper to CPU Series No 52 and 53. London: Home Office. Lister, S., Seddon, T., Wincup, E., Barrett, S., and Traynor, P. (2008). Street policing of Problem Drug Users.York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Loader, I., and Sparks, R. (2007) ‘Contemporary landscapes of crime, order and control: Governance, risk and globalization’, in M. Maguire, R. Morgan, and R. Reiner (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Criminology (4th ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 78–​101. Loftus, B. (2009). Police Culture in a Changing World. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mawby, R.C., and Worrall, A. (2011). Probation Workers and their Occupational Cultures, Leicester: University of Leicester. Mawby, R., and Worrall, A. (2013). Doing Probation Work: Identity in a Criminal Justice. London: Routledge. Mawby, R.C., Crawley, P., and Wright, A., (2007). ‘Beyond “polibation” and towards “prisi-​polibation”? Joint agency offender management in the context of the Street Crime Initiative’ International Journal of Police Science and Management, 9 (2): 122–​134. McConville, M., Sanders, A., and Leng, R. (1991). The Case for the Prosecution; Police Suspects and the Construction of Criminality. London: Routledge. McKeganey, N., and McGallagly, J. (2013). ‘Nicked: drug users’ views of drug enforcement’, Journal of Substance Use, 18: 4, 320–​ 334. doi:10.3109/​14659891. 2012.709914 Ministry of Justice, Breaking the Cycle: Effective Punishment, Rehabilitation and Sentencing of Offenders, 2010, Ministry of Justice, available here: http://​web​arch​ive. natio​nala​rchi​ves.gov.uk/​201​2011​9200​607/​http:/​www.just​ice.gov.uk/​consul​tati​ons/​ docs/​break​ing-​the-​cycle.pdf (accessed 30/​12/​2021). Ministry of Justice, Breaking the Cycle: Government Response, June 2011, available here: www.gov.uk/​gov​ernm​ent/​consul​tati​ons/​break​ing-​the-​cycle-​effect​ive-​pun​ ishm​ent-​reh​abil​itat​ion-​and-​sen​tenc​ing-​of-​offend​ers-​-​2 (accessed, 01.07.2022). Ministry of Justice, Outcome Delivery Plan: 2021–​22, July 2021, available here: www. gov.uk/​gov​ernm​ent/​publi​cati​ons/​minis​try-​of-​just​ice-​outc​ome-​deliv​ery-​plan/​minis​ try-​of-​just​ice-​outc​ome-​deliv​ery-​plan-​2021–​22 (accessed 1/​7/​2022). Ministry of Justice, Transforming Rehabilitation–​a revolution in the way we manage offenders, May 2013, available here: https://​cons​ult.just​ice.gov.uk/​digi​tal-​com​muni​ cati​ons/​trans​form​ing-​reh​abil​itat​ion/​ (accessed 5/​7/​2022).

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Morgan, J. (1991) Safer Communities: The Local Delivery of Crime Prevention Through the Partnership Approach. Home Office, Standing Conference of Crime Prevention. Morrison, S. (2008). Beyond Alignment of DIP and PPO: Integrated Offender Management in Thames Valley. Abingdon: Thames Valley Police. Nash, M. (1999) ‘Enter the polibation officer’, International Journal of Police Science and Management, 1(4): 360–​368. Nash, M. (2004). ‘Polibation Revisited: A Reply to Mawby and Worrall’, International Journal of Police Science and Management, 6(2): 74–​76. Nash, M. (2008). ‘Exit the “polibation” officer? De-​coupling police and probation’, International Journal of Police Science & Management, 10(3): 302–​312. NOMS. (2006). The NOMS Offender Management Model. London: NOMS. O’Malley, P. (1992). ‘Risk, power and crime prevention’, Economy and Society, 21(3): 252–​275. O’Malley, P. (2004). Risk, Uncertainty and Government. London: Cavendish. O’Neill, M., and McCarthy, D. (2014). ‘(Re)negating police culture through partnership working: Trust, compromise and the “new” pragmatism’, Criminology and Criminal Justice, 14(2): 143–​159. Police Operations Guide. (2010). Unpublished. Pratt, J. (1997). Governing the Dangerous. Annandale: Federation Press. Pratt, J. (2000). ‘The return of the wheelbarrow men or the arrival of the postmodern penality?’, British Journal of Criminology, 40(1): 127–​145. Reiner, R. (2000). The Politics of the Police (3rd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Reiner, R. (2010). The Politics of the Police (4th ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Revolving Doors Agency (2012). Integrated Offender Management: Effective Alternatives to Short Sentences, available here: www.cjp.org.uk/​iom-​elearn​ing/​my-​ iom-​e-​learn​ing-​por​tal/​knowle​dge-​rep​osit​ory/​resea​rch-​findi​ngs/​iom-​effect​ive-​alter​ nati​ves-​to-​short-​senten​ces-​june-​2012/​ (accessed 13/​5/​2014). Sampson, R., and Laub, J. (1993). ‘Turning points in the life course:Why change matters to the study of crime’, Criminology, 31: 301–​325. Sarang,A., Rhodes,T., Sheon N., and Page, K. (2010).‘Policing drug users in Russia: Risk, fear, and structural violence’, Journal of Substance Misuse, 45(6): 813–​864. Senior, P.,Wong, K., Culshaw, A., Ellingworth, D., O’ Keeffe, C., and Meadows, L. (2011) Process Evaluation of Five Integrated Offender Management Pioneer Areas. London: Ministry of Justice. Simon, J. (1988). ‘The ideological effect of actuarial practices’. Law and Society Review, 22: 771–​800. Simon, J. (1993). Poor Discipline: Parole and the Social Control of the Under-​Class, 1890–​ 1990. Chicago: University of Chicago. Skodbo, S., Brown, G., Deacon, S., Cooper, A., Hall, A., Millar,T., Smith, J., and Whitham K. (2007). The Drug Interventions Programme: Addressing Drug Use and Offending Through ‘Tough Choices’. Home Office Research Report 2. London: Home Office. Sleath, E., and Brown, S. (2017). ‘Staff and offender perspectives of integrated offender management and the impact of its introduction on arrests and risk of reoffending in One police force region’, Policing and Society, 29(5): 511–​ 529. doi:10.1080/​ 10439463.2017.1410148 Sleath, E., and Brown, S. (2019). ‘Staff and offender perspectives of integrated offender management and the impact of its introduction on arrests and risk of reoffending in one police force region’, Policing and Society, 29(5): 511–​529.

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Soppitt, S., and Rowe, M. (2012). An Evaluation of the Safe Newcastle Non-​Statutory Target Project (June 2012), available here: www.cjp.org.uk/​iom-​elearn​ing/​my-​iom-​ e-​learn​ing-​por ​tal/​knowle​dge-​rep​osit​ory/​resea​rch-​findi​ngs/​nst-​rep​ort-​final-​newcas​ tle-​iom/​ (accessed 13/​5/​2018). Sparks, R. (2000). ‘Perspectives on risk and penal politics’, in T. Hope and R. Sparks (eds.). Crime, Risk and Security. London: Routledge, 129–​146. Starr, S.B. (2015). ‘The risk assessment era: An overdue debate’, Federal Sentencing Reporter, 27: 205–​206. Sunshine, J., and Tyler,T. (2003).‘The role of procedural justice and legitimacy in shaping public support for policing’, Law and Society Review, 37(3), 513–​548. Sutherland A. (2009). ‘The “scaled approach” in youth justice: Fools rush in….’ Youth Justice, 9(1): 44–​60. Tyler, T. (1990). Why People Obey the Law. New Haven, CT:Yale University Press. Tyler, T. (2006). ‘Psychological perspectives on legitimacy and legitimation’, Annual Review of Psychology, 57: 375–​400. Waddington, P.A.J. (1998). Policing Citizens. London: UCL Press. Werth, R. (2019). ‘Risk and punishment: The recent history and uncertain future of actuarial, algorithmic, and “evidence-​based” penal techniques’, Sociology Compass, 13(2): 1–​19. Whitty, N. (2011). ‘Human rights as risk: UK prisons and the management of risk and rights’, Punishment & Society, 13(2): 123–​148. Williams, A. (2019). ‘Integrated Offender Management: A brave new world or business as usual?’ in A. Pycroft and D. Gough (eds.), Multi-​Agency Working in Criminal Justice. Bristol: Policy Press, 59–​74. Williams, A., and Ariel, B. (2013). ‘The Bristol integrated offender management scheme: a pseudo-​experimental test of desistance theory’, Policing, 7(2): 123–​134. Wong, K., and Hartworth, C. (2009). ‘Integrated offender management and third sector engagement: Case studies of four pioneer sites’, available here: http://​shura.shu. ac.uk/​7050/​ (accessed 13/​3/​2018). Wong, K., Fox, C., Ellingworth, D., Davidson, J. (2011). Sussex Integrated Offender Management Evaluation: Scoping and Options Report. Sheffield: Hallam Centre for Community Justice, Sheffield Hallam University. Zedner, L. (2003). ‘Too much security?’, International Journal of the Sociology of Law, 31(3):155–​184. Zedner, L. (2009). ‘Fixing the future? The pre-​emptive turn in criminal justice’, in S. Bronnit, B. McSherry, and A. Norrie (eds.), Regulating Deviance: The Redirection of Criminalisation and the Futures of Criminal Law. Oxford: Hart Publishing, 35–​58.

Chapter 2

Fairness and legitimacy within integrated offender management

Introduction The primary role of the police within society is to maintain social order by ensuring that citizens comply with the law. This requires that the police are widely obeyed, able to elicit cooperation during police–​citizen encounters and promote broad public compliance with the law. Various strategies may be initiated by policymakers and subsequently employed by police to achieve these aims. However, historically, criminal justice approaches have been built on the assumption that law-​abiding behaviour can be secured by the presence of formal policing and sanctions for rule-​breakers. Instruments of coercive social control and credible risks of sanctions aim to send a strong message to an ostensibly rational public: committing crime simply is not worth the risk. If would-​ be offenders are afraid of being caught and punished, then the job of policing is to signal a plausible deterrent (Jackson et al., 2013; Bradford, 2014). Although one way this may be achieved is through the use of order-​maintenance style policing (e.g. frequent use of street stops, surveillance and so forth), research indicates that such practices can have negative consequences on the cooperative behaviour of citizens (Mandon et al., 2017; Murphy and Cherney, 2012; Weitzer, 2010), as well as a limited deterrent effect on committed offenders (Bottoms, 2001). It is perhaps unsurprising then that UK policing policy has in recent decades shifted away from sole reliance on tough enforcement-​based practices. This has provided space for innovative, localised criminal justice programmes like IOM to emerge. As we saw in Chapter 1, Sunnyvale IOM incorporates two interrelated ‘carrot’ and ‘stick’ policing strategies.The first recasts the nature and quality of police interactions with offenders as inclusive of rehabilitative support, whilst the second remains consistent with theories of deterrence by employing a traditional enforcement option, where offenders are continuing to engage in criminality. This is a novel policing setting in which police/​citizen/​suspect interactions are framed very differently to those of traditional police patrol work. Here officers are proactively targeting known offenders and dealing with them in a variety of ways that include, but also go beyond, traditional arrest and DOI: 10.4324/9780429287664-2

Fairness and legitimacy within integrated offender management  31

convict practices. Chapter 5 explores whether the changes this form of policing entails are reflected in changes in underlying police cultures, whilst Chapter 6 examines how IOM policing methods are received by IOM offenders. In this chapter I want to begin the process of developing such understandings by exploring the importance of legitimacy to IOM police–​offender relations. This is done via a discussion of the ways in which IOM police might hope to influence the behaviours of IOM offenders in a bid to turn them away from an established criminal lifestyle. I begin with a comparison of instrumental/​ deterrence understandings of both the police influence on criminal behaviour and the potential sources of police legitimacy, with procedural justice theory. I then go on set out a working concept of police legitimacy that draws on Bottoms and Tankebe’s (2012) dialogic proposition of police legitimacy (see also, Tankebe, 2013), and describe some of the ways that police legitimacy may be won or lost in the context of IOM. Before turning to the main body of the chapter, I return briefly to the IOM framework underpinning Sunnyvale police–​offender power relations.

Risk-​a llocation and police role in the management of Sunnyvale offenders Legitimacy is concerned with authority and power relations and thus responds to the perceptions that Sunnyvale offenders had of the power exercised over them by police officers and other Sunnyvale workers. As noted in Chapter 1, the IOM scheme managed the risk of, and delivered services to, a mix of individuals in the community. At the time of the research, the majority (approximately 440 individuals, referred to as statutory offenders) were recipients of community sentences (e.g. Drug Rehabilitation Requirements) or people on post-​prison release licence conditions, whereas a smaller number (approximately 260 individuals, referred to as non-​statutory offenders) were engaging with Sunnyvale IOM voluntarily. We also saw that both statutory and non-​statutory offenders were subject to various forms of Sunnyvale police interventions: enforcement as well as help and support. When it came to enforcement, there was little to be distinguished between the approach taken by Sunnyvale police to non-​ statutory and statutory offenders.The police role here was simply one of enforcement and the type and degree of this police activity, operationalised by District Enforcement Team (DET) police, responded to static and acute dynamic risk factors allocated to a given Sunnyvale offender at a given time. This was police officers carrying out a largely traditional police role. The main focus of the book, however, is on the culture and practice of police offender managers and offender reactions to this brand of policing approach. As well as gathering intelligence on Sunnyvale offenders, police offender managers were in the vanguard of support provision for non-​statutory offenders, facilitating and encouraging their engagement with local services (e.g. employment, debt-​management agencies, drug agencies and so on) in an effort to

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turn them away from a criminal lifestyle. Thus, despite the variety of coercive and incentivised methods of control available to Sunnyvale police and other Sunnyvale workers, it was the case that the bringing about of long-​term desistence among recidivists depended on the substantive cooperation, compliance and engagement of the offenders. But how was this to be achieved? Advocates of enforcement-​based policy and practice would surely argue that, while incentives may be helpful, the behaviour of recidivists can be influenced particularly by the presence of disincentives. The assumption is that by communicating to offenders that a continuance of offending behaviour will be met with certain, swift and severe consequences, they will be more likely to desist (Rowe et al., 2018: 2; Robinson and Ugwudike, 2012). However, desistance research evidence points in a very different direction, suggesting instead that compliance based purely on instrumental reasoning does little in the way of procuring long-​term desistance (Bottoms, 2001). What matters more is that those who wish to engender compliance with laws, rules and directives generate a normatively founded perception among their audience (i.e. those on the receiving end of the rules and directives) that their claims to authority are legitimate (Bottoms and Tankebe, 2012). This can be most readily achieved through fair and respectful treatment.

How IOM police legitimacy might be won The concept of legitimacy is well established in criminological analysis, particularly in relation to policing. Several studies suggest that criminal justice programmes that enhance the legitimacy of the law and the police can play a central role in crime control.1 This is because when people perceive the police institution to be appropriate, proper and just, in short, recognising that the organisation has a valid claim to power, they feel a corresponding voluntary obligation to obey police officers (Pósch et al. 2020). In this view, legitimacy is central to a consensual, trust-​based police–​citizen relationship, generating an obligation on the part of the public to comply with the law and cooperate with police officers (Tyler, 2013). This has clear benefits for both policing and broader society. Citizens voluntarily provide information on crime and disorder and, more generally, assist and support the police in their efforts to control crime. In the specific context of Sunnyvale IOM, this would mean offenders acknowledging Sunnyvale police authority and voluntarily working with police offender managers, obeying rules and adopting appropriate behaviours prescribed by these officers (e.g. abstaining from drug use, residing at a particular address or engaging in rehabilitative work). McNeill (2006: 52) also explains the importance of legitimacy to the process of encouraging offender desistance from crime: In the community legitimacy is likely to be a crucial factor both in preventing breach [of court-​imposed orders] by persuading offenders to

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comply with the order and, perhaps, in preventing recidivism by persuading offenders to comply with the law. Whether police legitimacy is perceived the same way by prolific offenders or indeed operates similarly within multi-​agency criminal justice settings, such as IOM, is of specific interest and an important question largely explored in Chapter 6. For now, it is necessary to lay the foundations of this inquiry by attending to a broader question: what is it that shapes public perceptions of police legitimacy? In the sections that follow I explore both normative and instrumental pathways to perceived police legitimacy. Procedural justice The work of Tom Tyler (1990, 2006) and his colleagues (Paternoster et al., 1997; Sunshine and Tyler, 2003) provides the foremost answer to this question. Tyler’s (1990) original, normative framework of justice—​referred to as procedural justice theory—​is a processed-​based model of regulation, developed in the United States of America, but subsequently applied across the world in various jurisdictions and contexts (discussed below). Its central proposition is that police legitimacy and compliance with the law are obtained not through the threat of force or risk of sanction, but through the presence of procedural justice during police–​citizen encounters. Procedural justice is defined as ‘the fairness of the processes through which the police make decisions and exercise authority’ (Sunshine and Tyler, 2003: 514). ‘Fairness’ (often referred to as ‘procedural fairness’) in this context has several key dimensions that can be reduced to two central interrelated elements: quality of decision-​making and quality of interactions (Sunshine and Tyler, 2003). The former captures notions of impartiality and objectivity. Important considerations within this element are the trustworthiness of police motives, the neutrality of the police, participation in the decision-​making process and the transparency and objectivity in the process underpinning the eventual decision. Quality of treatment is more relational and concerns assessments by the public that, during encounters with the police, officers are honest and treat them with dignity, respect and humanity (Tankebe, 2009: 1267; Sunshine and Tyler, 2003).The theory—​routinely tested and supported by empirical evidence—​has been shown to explain public cooperation with the police, compliance with police officer directives and reductions in offending behaviour (e.g. Paternoster et al., 1997;Tyler and Wakslak, 2004;Tyler and Huo, 2002;Trinkner et al., 2018). This is in large part due to its impact on legitimacy judgements. For Tyler (2006: 375): Legitimacy is a psychological property of an authority, institution or social arrangement that leads those connected to it to believe that it is appropriate, proper and just. Because of legitimacy, people feel that they ought to

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defer to decisions and rules, following them voluntarily out of obligation rather than out of fear of punishment or anticipation of reward. But instrumental evaluations, such as whether the police provide a credible risk of sanction for rulebreakers (deterrence), effectively manage crime and disorder (effectiveness) and fairly distribute resources and outcomes across individuals and communities (distributive fairness or justice) have also been found to be important predictors of police legitimacy, although generally less influential than perceptions of procedural justice (cf. Tankebe, 2009; Karakus, 2017; Lee and Cho, 2021). Sunshine and Tyler (2003: 534), for example, tested data from a survey of, and telephone interviews with, 1,600 registered voters in New York City. They found that procedural justice had a ‘sweeping influence’ on legitimacy judgements and that legitimacy had a linear relationship with compliance. Police effectiveness and distributive fairness also had a significant effect on legitimacy judgements, but less of an impact on cooperation (2003: 529). Similar findings were observed in a further study using a sample of adult Californians (Tyler and Huo, 2002) and later again, by Tyler (2006) in more survey data from Chicago (also, Reisig et al., 2007; Tyler and Fagan, 2008). As a further example, Paternoster et al. (1997) re-​analysed the results of the Milwaukee Domestic Violence Experiment and found that domestic violence suspects, who viewed their treatment by police to be fair, were more likely to accept the officer’s decision and less likely to commit a subsequent spousal assault, regardless of the outcome (i.e. being arrested or warned by officers). These studies suggest that what the police do matters less to people than how they do it, in respect of legitimacy judgements, but also that distributive fairness and police effectiveness can be predictors of police legitimacy. Effectiveness and distributive fairness are embraced within the Tylerian concept of quality of decision-​making, which emphasises normative expectations of policing within democratic societies. These expectations would include police effectiveness in tackling localised crime and disorder and the equitable distribution of police resources and outcomes (of policing initiatives) throughout the community (Bradford, 2017; Tankebe, 2013). IOM offenders are almost exclusively managed in the community, with non-​licenced offenders engaging with the scheme whilst enjoying conditions of relative liberty. These participants may be subject to certain prohibitive requirements (e.g. not associating with particular individuals, and/​or visiting certain geographical areas), but, crucially, whether they engage with the rehabilitative aspects of the scheme depends on the compliance of offenders themselves (McNeill and Robinson, 2013: 120).The implication of the research by Tyler and his colleagues is that consistency of procedural fairness during IOM police–​offender interactions will help IOM police bolster legitimacy in the eyes of IOM offenders; in turn, the same people will be more likely to cooperate with police directives (regarding appropriate behaviours) and later desist from criminality.

Fairness and legitimacy within integrated offender management  35

Is it possible to determine conclusively the basis of felt obligations to obey? Some police researchers have drawn attention to certain difficulties with the procedural justice model despite its empirical strength. I will only summarise here. A number of criticisms relate to the generalisability of the procedural justice model to citizens of different ages (Murphy, 2015) and ethnic groups (Mazerolle et al., 2013). However, particularly for those living within non-​western, non-​democratic societies (Lee and Cho, 2021; Sun et al., 2018), instrumental pathways to legitimacy appear to be stronger. More notably, however, Tankebe (2013: 124) has drawn attention to the ‘danger of assuming that feelings of obligation to obey legal authorities are always normatively justified’. Obligation, Tankebe contends, is a much broader concept than perceived legitimacy. Citizens might, for example, report feeling an obligation to obey the police because they recognise that the police have a normatively valid claim to power/​ authority, but equally they might say they are afraid of the consequences of non-​obedience. Take the example above of a non-​democratic/​authoritarian society. In this context, where policing has less to do with serving the community and upholding shared societal values, and more to do with reinforcing the interests and position of the government, the police tend to employ threats of sanctions to obtain citizen compliance. Here high coercion, coupled with low police accountability, means procedural fairness is neither practiced, nor valued, and that voluntary acknowledgement of legitimacy unlikely—​if not impossible (Sun et al., 2018). It is more likely in this setting that people feel oppressively obligated to obey police directives and comply with the law out of fear, instrumental and/​or prudential calculations. Tankebe (2009: 1271) provides the example of Ghana—​a post-​colonial society, where policing is ‘characterised by abuse, violence, intimidation, and widespread corruption’, and law-​abiding behaviour (i.e. cooperation/​compliance with the police and law) is unlikely to be explained by Ghanaians viewing the police as legitimate. Rather, in such societies, ‘public expressions of obligations to obey police directives are pointers to some form of dull compulsion’ (2013: 1280). By ‘dull compulsion’ Tankebe means: A characteristic of power relations in which subordinates adopt the fatalistic attitude that the structural conditions that confront them somehow are unalterable and in some sense are fundamentally illegitimate. (also, Sparks and Bottoms, 2007; Carrabine, 2005: 904) In some settings it may thus prove difficult to determine the precise basis of the perceived obligation to obey the police because of the need to unpick normative (consensual) from non-​normative (prudential and/​or instrumental) forms of felt obligations to obey (Tankebe, 2009; Pósch et al., 2020). But this is made

36  Fairness and legitimacy within integrated offender management

easier,Tankebe contends, by considering the obligation to obey as a ‘dependent variable’, sometimes the result of legitimacy, sometimes not. By viewing obligation to obey as downstream of legitimacy, rather than as a constituent part, we can avoid conflation of the two concepts. This may be particularly important when attempting to operationalise the concepts in research settings where citizens are perhaps more likely to experience their relationship to the police, as an unequal power relationship, rather than one rooted in consent and rights (Bottoms and Tankebe, 2012). The problem of ‘dull compulsion’ Indeed, the distinction between perceived legitimacy and obligation may have practical significance within the context of IOM policing. It may be problematic, for example, if IOM participants feel an obligation to obey the directives of IOM police because of ‘dull compulsion’, but IOM police confuse this sense of obligation for perceived legitimacy of IOM policing practices that may actually be eroding legitimacy and thus reducing the likelihood of offender compliance. But where legitimacy is present, rather than dull compulsion, offenders should actively engage, cooperate and comply with the directives of IOM police offender managers. This is not just an assumption of the Tylerian literature; the link between legitimacy and meaningful compliance is also well recognised in the desistance literature (Bottoms, 2001; McNeill and Robinson, 2013). The dull compulsion argument raises important empirical questions about how we might understand IOM offender reactions to IOM policing. Is IOM offender rule-​following rooted in instrumental/​prudential concerns or can such behaviour be explained by factors related to perceived legitimacy of IOM police action? This is significant, given that understanding the difference between the two might make the difference between understanding and not understanding the reasons for IOM offender compliance and non-​compliance with the scheme. However, if obligation is an inadequate measure of legitimacy, how then might IOM offender perceptions of legitimacy be conceptualised and operationalised?

The Bottoms–​Tankebe approach to police legitimacy In the midst of questions pertaining to the Tylerian conception of legitimacy, Bottoms and Tankebe (2012) have advanced a revised proposition of legitimacy. Based on the work of Weber (1978) and Raz (2009), the authors argue that legitimacy should be viewed as always ‘dialogic and relational in character’, rather than a single transaction between the police as powerholders and the public as their audience (Bottoms and Tankebe, 2012: 129). Bottoms and Tankebe (2020: 95) thus elaborate on the point:

Fairness and legitimacy within integrated offender management  37

Those in power (or seeking power) in a given context make a claim to be the legitimate ruler(s); then members of the audience respond to this claim; the powerholder might adjust the nature of the claim in light of the audience’s response; and this process repeats itself … [I]‌t is more like a perpetual discussion, in which the content of powerholders’ later claims will be affected by the nature of the audience response. The notion of dialogic, therefore, conveys how legitimacy continuously shifts between powerholder and citizen claims: police officers making claims to (i.e. attempting to establish and cultivate) legitimacy and the public responding to this claim—​supporting or rejecting it.The police may adjust their claim in light of the audience response, and the process continues (Bottoms and Tankebe, 2012: 129). However, as Bottoms and Tankebe (2017: 73) point out, it also requires that one is ‘alert to the legitimations offered by powerholders, the attributions of legitimacy (or otherwise) made by audiences, and the interactive relationship between them’. In other words, it is important to understand the form and content of the dialogue, which may be different in different societies and contexts. In later work, the authors draw on Bernard Williams’ conceptualisation of the ‘basic legitimation demand’, which they suggest: Enhances [the] original conception of the dialogue by pointing out that audiences may make reasonable demands on powerholders as to the kinds of legitimations that they (the powerholders) might justifiably offer within the dialogue. Bottoms and Tankebe (2020: 87) recast ‘basic legitimate demands’ as ‘basic legitimation expectations’ in an acknowledgement that they indicate expectations that citizens have of rightful powerholders. They also make the point that powerholders may be required, in their legitimation responses, to address several different audiences (e.g. rich and poor citizens and/​or those from different ethnic groups), and those audiences may make a significant differentiation in their assessments of the legitimacy claims of different powerholders (e.g. within the police service, the local neighbourhood police and the specialist drugs squad). Procedural justice, distributive justice, effectiveness and lawfulness are put forward by Bottoms and Tankebe (2012) as the likely main contents of justifiable responses (of the police as powerholders) to the basic legitimation expectations (of the public as audiences) of police legitimacy in a liberal democracy such as the United States. A summary of the procedural justice framework is already provided above, but the others shall be briefly explored here. Lawfulness is concerned with the question of whether police adhere to the rule of law—​exercising only those powers (e.g. stop and search) provided in law and doing so within the relevant legal boundaries (e.g. reasonable suspicion). Distributive justice, as noted above,

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conveys the perceived fairness of the police in allocating resources and making key decisions (e.g. street stops) with regard to relevant social groupings (e.g. class, gender, race, and so on). Finally, effectiveness concerns public expectations that the police are reasonably effective in carrying out their assigned duties (e.g. reducing crime) (Bottoms and Tankebe, 2012, 2017, 2020). Whilst each dimension of the proposed fourfold legitimacy structure has been shown empirically to contribute to perceptions of legitimacy, in some situations no claim is made by Bottoms and Tankebe (2020: 92), that they will always underpin citizens’ perceptions of criminal justice legitimacy in every cultural context, or that no other factors will ever contribute to criminal justice legitimacy. Rather, as the authors explain, Legitimacy dialogues are always contingent on specific features of the time and place in which they occur … and this means that the specifics of legitimation and legitimacy can be very variable. We have, however suggested the enduring importance of procedural justice, distributive justice, effectiveness, and lawfulness as guides to the delivery of legitimate policing … Firm evidence can be cited that a failure to deliver on any one of these four matters has on some occasions led to a legitimacy deficit for a public police service. (also, Bottoms and Tankebe, 2017: 88) The dialogic conception of legitimacy provides for a dynamic and flexible approach to understanding the antecedents of police legitimacy, allowing the content of legitimacy dialogues to vary across different settings. IOM fits into this kind of analysis because IOM policing—​particularly the support aspects of it—​ involves dynamic interaction among officers and offenders because relationships between IOM police and offenders are typically enduring. Over time, it is possible the dynamics of police–​offender relationships change for both parties, in part based on the police officer’s changing sense of authority and power and in part based on the offenders’ reception of IOM police claims to power and authority (also, Tyler and Jackson, 2013). The Bottoms–​Tankebe approach to legitimacy provides a suitable framework for understanding the progression of these interactions. Implicit in the dialogic framework is the notion that some form of information is conveyed throughout the legitimacy dialogue, although neither Bottoms and Tankebe (2012), or later Tankebe (2013), are explicit on the substance of the claims and responses. One of the main aims of this book is to understand IOM offender perceptions of the legitimacy of Sunnyvale police action. This means our focus is firmly on the audience aspect of the dialogic process: the ‘basic legitimation expectations’ that IOM offenders have of Sunnyvale police as powerholders, enforcing legal rules, but also dictating appropriate behaviours.

Fairness and legitimacy within integrated offender management  39

How does IOM fit into the Bottoms–​Tankebe approach? In light of this discussion, what can be said, in respect of offender perceptions of Sunnyvale police legitimacy, about the content of offender, basic legitimation expectations? Returning first to Bottoms and Tankebe’s fourfold structure: procedural justice, effectiveness, distributive justice and lawfulness. These constructs have been shown empirically to have enduring importance in the development and maintenance of police legitimacy (e.g. Epp et al., 2014; Jackson et al., 2012; Tankebe, 2009, 2013; Schulhofer et al., 2011), but so far only in the context of traditional, routine police–​citizen encounters (e.g. where people come into contact with officers carrying out public order maintenance, crime detection/​ investigation and service-​orientated roles). Sunnyvale IOM policing operated in a different context. To begin with, police–​offender relations are framed by previous offending, which is likely to shape expectations on both sides (e.g. problems of trust, suspicion and cynicism). Also, the range of interactions between the police and offenders are broader (e.g. home visits by offender managers and discussions going beyond the immediate situation or investigation of criminal offences). This raises the possibility that Sunnyvale offender perceptions of the legitimacy of Sunnyvale police action shifted beyond judgements on the legitimacy of specific police encounters to include judgements on questions of legitimacy in respect of ongoing relations with Sunnyvale police—​both offender managers and officers from the DET. Two further possibilities flow from this analysis. Firstly, the basic legitimation expectations of IOM offenders may have been framed by more than straightforward constructions of whether IOM police acted unfairly (procedurally or distributively), or performed their duties ineffectively or behaved unlawfully. Secondly, the main requirements that Sunnyvale operational policing had to satisfy, if it was to provide a justifiable response to the basic legitimation expectations of Sunnyvale offenders, were likely to be relational in emphasis (e.g. centred on trust, respect and dignity). Empirical support from the corrections setting Research on the relevance of legitimacy in the context of prisons lends empirical support to this assumption. Supervision is characterised by routine and sustained interactions between offenders and authorities. Judgements on the fairness and legitimacy of prison staff actions have been found to correlate highly with a positive perception of offender–​ staff relationships (Bottoms, 2001).Various studies provide strong evidence for this finding, but the work by Bottoms and Rose (1998) provides a particularly salient example. The authors conducted a secondary analysis of the results from a study of fairness in three male prisons, originally carried out by Ahmad (1996). Their interest was in the importance of staff–​prisoner relationships. What they found was that perceived

40  Fairness and legitimacy within integrated offender management

staff fairness was the ‘main determinant of perceived overall regime fairness’, and that perceptions of fairness in prison were ‘substantially more dependent’ on perceptions of staff fairness and staff–​prisoner relationships than they were on ‘the objective quality of various specific regime features’ (that is material provision) or prisoners’ evaluations of the fairness of these regime features. In other words, as Bottoms and Rose (1998: 227) explain, ‘in a very real sense … staff embody, in prisoners’ eyes, the regime of a prison, and its fairness’. Fairness of staff mattered and was centred in large part on ‘good relations’—​that is, where relationships were possessed of aspects of trust, respect, straight-​talk, support, honesty, informal relations and the deployment of what Liebling (2011: 491) refers to as the ‘quiet flow of power’ (also, Sparks et al., 1996; Bottoms and Rose, 1998; Liebling, 2004; Crew, 2011). Where good staff–​inmate relationships were present, the formal authority of prison officers was likely to be rendered legitimate in the minds of those they supervised. IOM policing, similar to corrections, involves a wide range of experiences and more diverse interactions that are longer in duration than contact in traditional policing settings. Analogies can also be drawn between the work of prison staff and that of police offender managers, whose role it is to provide support.These officers are at the same time enforcers and motivators. However, in an effort to gain useful intelligence and provide meaningful support, police offender managers would no doubt have sought to seek to build rapport with Sunnyvale offenders. The extent to which these relationships were developed and nurtured would have been expected to have important implications, not only for the shifting nature of the power relations involved, but also for the validity of Sunnyvale police claims to legitimacy. It therefore seems crucial that good relationships emphasising fairness, as characterised above, should have been replicated within the setting of Sunnyvale IOM. It is here that IOM police legitimacy may be won.

How IOM police legitimacy might be lost Just as legitimacy may be won within the locus of positive police–​offender relationships, particularly those involving Sunnyvale offenders and offender managers, it may also be endangered and eroded. Procedural justice theory, along with other possible dimensions of police legitimacy, has so far been framed positively: it precipitates cooperation and compliance with police directives and more broadly the law. However, as Bradford (2017: 58) points out, it is a ‘bi-​ directional relationship’, which means that police activity experienced as unfair may encourage offending, perhaps indirectly, in situations where Sunnyvale offenders disengaged with the scheme and/​or rejected offers of support and returned to a life of crime. The aspect of the IOM police–​offender relationship most vulnerable to complaints of procedural unfairness is that of enforcement, that is, police action where intelligence suggests a person has returned to crime. Perceptions of

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unfairness are likely to be as diverse as the dimensions of fairness discussed above, but in the specific context of enforcement, a sense of procedural [in] justice is most likely to arise where DET officers treat offenders with disrespect during encounters, are physically abusive, apply legal rules inconsistently and are disproportionate in the use of sanctions for misconduct (Pilling, 1992; Liebling, 2004). Much of this type of conduct is likely to take place on the street. Here police officers are most in control of their work situations and whilst their discretion is perhaps most in evidence, the basis for police decision-​ making tends to be at its least transparent from the perspective of those on the receiving end of the decisions. The importance of this last point relates to the Bottoms–​Tankebe (2017: 75) approach to legitimacy, which emphasises the empirical significance of procedural fairness within police–​citizen legitimacy dialogues (also, Bottoms and Tankebe, 2020: 90). Contributing to the content of the dialogue will therefore be citizens’ judgements on the fairness of the processes employed to reach specific decisions, including the quality of (police) decision-​making. What is required, therefore, is objectivity (same application across all citizens), transparency (understanding of the reasons underpinning decisions) and opportunities for participation (opportunities to be heard and listened to). However, in Sunnyvale IOM, it was the RAG framework, guiding police operational practice, that was followed. It placed considerable emphasis on a careful and measured assessment of whether persons should be selected onto the scheme for intensive monitoring and support or moved off IOM when no longer considered to be at risk of offending. Yet the same risk assessments needed to be rooted in up-​to-​date intelligence reports, often obtained only through the sorts of intrusive tactics most likely to be resented by offenders: repeated street stops, unannounced home visits and so on. A further problem was that the basis of the Sunnyvale police activity (dynamic risk assessments) was unlikely to ever be disclosed to offenders, with the result that those experiencing intensive police activity could view it as a form of harassment as they may not have believed they were doing anything to warrant police scrutiny. There is a danger therefore that aspects of Sunnyvale police operational methods and practices could have had negative implications for offender legitimacy judgements, particularly if the activity harmed ongoing police–​offender relations. Street policing activity carried out by DET police officers may have placed stress on positive relationships between police offender managers and offenders (e.g. by eroding mutual trust and respect). Journeys towards normative compliance may have been rendered more complex in these situations (McNeill and Robinson, 2013). It is equally possible, however, that aspects of Sunnyvale policing that might otherwise be viewed as procedurally [un]fair could be trumped by good relations with some Sunnyvale police, the latter being the locus wherein legitimacy was founded. Data presented in Chapter 6 are used to explore these ideas directly by unfolding how Sunnyvale participants perceived and understood Sunnyvale police activity.

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Conclusions This chapter has provided an account of two key aspects of the theoretical perspectives that informed this study of IOM and the policing of prolific offenders: procedural justice and police legitimacy. In setting out the work of Tyler and his colleagues on procedural justice, along with the Bottoms–​ Tankebe approach to criminal justice legitimacy—​ideas which offer an interactionist starting point for the analysis of Sunnyvale policing—​my concern has been to lay the foundations for posing the following question: was there a tension between Sunnyvale policing and procedural justice theory? Research has shown strong links between citizens’ perceptions of fair treatment and their beliefs about police legitimacy, yet at the same time, some Sunnyvale policing efforts—​particularly enforcement measures, broadly intended to secure instrumental compliance—​had the potential to be perceived by Sunnyvale offenders as unfair. Such an outcome, according to procedural justice theorists, would likely erode offender perceptions of the scheme’s legitimacy, reducing compliance, possibly inhibiting offender chances of accessing the help they needed to desist from offending. But these assumptions stem from the findings of procedural justice studies concerned with conventional policing encounters. IOM, on the other hand, involves a broader range of enduring interactions and relationships, where concepts of fairness may have taken on a more diverse meaning for Sunnyvale offenders. Given the emphasis in the procedural justice literature on fairness, this suggests the chief context in which Sunnyvale legitimacy was won or lost will be a relational one. Crucial to this process will have been the way in which officers deployed authority and exercised discretion, for this will have shaped the substance and parameters of Sunnyvale police–​ offender relationships—​both the formal and the informal.

Note 1 For example, see Braga et al. (2009), Papachristos et al. (2007) and Kennedy and Wond (2009).

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Bottoms, A.E., and Rose, G. (1998). ‘The importance of staff–​prisoner relationships: Results from a study in three male prisons’, in D. Price and A. Liebling (eds.), Staff Prisoner Relationships: A Review of the Literature. Unpublished report submitted to the Prison Service. Bradford, B. (2014). ‘Policing and social identity: Procedural justice, inclusion and cooperation between police and public’, Policing and Society, 24(1): 22–​43. Bradford, B. (2017). Stop and Search and Police Legitimacy. London: Routledge. Braga, A.A., Piehl, A.M., and Hureau, D. (2009). ‘Controlling violent offenders released to the community: An evaluation of the Boston re-​entry initiative’, Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 46(4): 411–​436. Carrabine, E. (2005). ‘Prison riots, social order and the problem of legitimacy’, British Journal of Criminology, 45(6): 896–​913. Crewe, B. (2011). ‘Soft power in prison: Implications for staff–​prisoner relationships, liberty and legitimacy’, European Journal of Criminology, 8: 455–​468. Epp, C.R., Maynard-​Moody, S., and Haider-​Markel, D.P. (2014). Pulled Over: How Police Stops Define Race and Citizenship. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Jackson, J., Bradford, B., Hough, M., Myhill, A., Quinton, P., and Tyler,T.R. (2012).‘Why do people comply with the law? Legitimacy and the influence of legal institutions’, British Journal of Criminology, 52: 1051–​1071. Jackson, J., Huq, A.Z., Bradford, B., and Tyler, T. (2013). ‘Monopolizing force? Police legitimacy and public attitudes toward the acceptability of violence’, Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 19(4): 479–​497. Karakus, O. (2017). ‘Instrumental and normative pathways to legitimacy and public cooperation with the police in Turkey: Considering perceived neighborhood characteristics and local government performance’, Justice Quarterly, 34(1): 25–​54. Kennedy, D.M., and Wong, S.L. (2009). The High Point Drug Intervention Strategy. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice. Lee,Y.H., and Cho, S. (2021). ‘Assessing a multidimensional model of police legitimacy in South Korea with latent class analysis’, Journal of Crime and Justice, 44(3): 353–​374. Liebling, A. (2004). Prisons and Their Moral Performance: A Study of Values, Quality and Prison Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Liebling, A. (2011). ‘Moral performance, inhuman and degrading treatment and prison pain’, Punishment and Society, 13(5): 530–​550. Madon, N.S., Murphy, K., and Sargeant, E. (2017). ‘Promoting police legitimacy among disengaged minority groups: Does procedural justice matter more?’, Criminology & Criminal Justice, 17(5): 624–​642. Mazerolle, L., Bennett, S., Davis, J., Sargeant, E., and Manning, M. (2013). ‘Procedural justice and police legitimacy: A systematic review of the research evidence’, Journal of Experimental Criminology, 9: 245–​274. McNeill, F. (2006). ‘A desistance paradigm for offender management’, Criminology & Criminal Justice, 6(1): 39–​62. McNeill, F., and Robinson, G. (2013). ‘Liquid legitimacy and community sanctions’, in A. Crawford and H. Anthea (eds.), Legitimacy and Compliance in Criminal Justice. Cullompton: Willan, 116–​137. Murphy, K. (2015). ‘Does procedural justice matter to youth? Comparing adults’ and youths’ willingness to collaborate with police’, Policing and Society, 25(1): 53–​76. Murphy, K., and Cherney, A. (2012). Understanding cooperation with police in a diverse society. British Journal of Criminology, 52(1): 181–​201.

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Papachristos, A.V., Meares, T.L., and Fagan, J. (2007). ‘Attention felons: Evaluating project safe neighborhoods in Chicago’, Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, 4(2): 223–​272. Paternoster, R., Bachman, R., Brame, R., and Sherman, L.W. (1997).‘Do fair procedures matter? The effect of procedural justice on spouse assault’, Law and Society Review, 31(1): 163–​204. Pilling, J. (1992). Back to Basics: Relationships in the Prison Service. Eve Saville Memorial Lecture to the Institute for the Study and Treatment of Delinquency, reprinted in Perspectives on Prison: A Collection of Views on Prison Life, supplement to Annual Report of the Prison Service 1991–​1992. London: HMSO. Pósch, K., Jackson, J., Bradford, B., and Macqueen, S. (2020). ‘“Truly free consent”? Clarifying the nature of police legitimacy using causal mediation analysis’, Journal of Experimental Criminology, 17: 563–​595. Raz, J. (2009). The Authority of Law (2nd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Reisig, M.D., Bratton J., and Gertz, M.G. (2007). ‘The construct validity and refinement of process-​based policing measures’, Criminal Justice and Behaviour, 34(8): 1005–​1028. Robinson, G., and Ugwudike, P. (2012). ‘Investing in “toughness”: Probation, enforcement and legitimacy’, Howard Journal of Criminal Justice, 51: 300–​316. Rowe, M., Irving, A., and Soppitt, S. (2018). ‘The legitimacy of offender management programmes in a post-​TR landscape’, Safer Communities, 17(2): 69–​80. Schulhofer, S., Tyler, T., and Huq, A. (2011). ‘American policing at a crossroads: Unsustainable policies and the procedural justice alternative’, Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, 101: 335–​337. Sparks, R., and Bottoms, A.E. (2007). Legitimacy and Imprisonment Revisited: Some Notes on the Problem of Order Ten Years After, in J.M. Byrne, D. Hummer, and F.S. Taxman (eds.), The Culture of Prison Violence. Boston: Pearson, 91–​104. Sparks, R., Bottoms, A.E., and Hay, W. (1996). Prisons and the Problem of Order. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Sun, I.Y. Li, L. Wu, Y., and Hu, R. (2018). ‘Police legitimacy and citizen cooperation in China: Testing an alternative model’, Asian Journal of Criminology, 13(4): 275–​291. Sunshine, J., and Tyler,T. (2003). ‘The role of procedural justice and legitimacy in public support for policing’, Law and Society Review, 37(3): 513–​548. Tankebe, J. (2009). ‘Public cooperation with the police in Ghana: Does procedural fairness matter?’ Criminology, 47(4): 1265–​1293. Tankebe, J. (2013). ‘Viewing things differently: The dimensions of public perceptions of police legitimacy,’ Criminology, 51(1): 103–​135. Trinkner, R., Jackson, J., and Tyler, T.R. (2018). ‘Bounded authority: Expanding “appropriate” police behavior beyond procedural justice’, Law and Human Behavior, 42(3): 280–​293. Tyler, T. (2013). ‘Legitimacy and compliance: The virtues of self-​ regulation’, in A. Crawford and A.W. Hucklesby (eds.), Legitimacy and Compliance in Criminal Justice. Cullompton: Willan, 8–​28. Tyler, T., and Fagan, J. (2008). ‘Legitimacy and cooperation: Why do people help the police fight crime in their communities?’, Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law, 6: 231–​275. Tyler, T., and Wakslak, C. (2004) ‘Profiling and the Legitimacy of the police: Procedural justice, attributions of motive, and the acceptance of social authority,, Criminology, 44(2): 253–​282. Tyler, T.R. (1990). Why People Obey the Law. New Haven:Yale University Press.

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Tyler, T. R. (2006). Why People Obey the Law. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Tyler, T.R., and Huo, Y.J. (2002). Trust in the Law Encouraging Public Cooperation with the Police and Courts. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Tyler,T.R. and Jackson, J. (2013). ‘Future challenges in the study of legitimacy and criminal justice’, in J. Tankebe and A. Liebling (eds.), Legitimacy and Criminal Justice: An International Exploration. New Haven:Yale University Press, 83–​104. Weber, M. (1978). Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Weitzer, R. (2010). ‘Race and policing in different ecological contexts’, in S.K. Rice and M.D. White (eds.), Race, Ethnicity and Policing: New and Essential Readings. New York: New York University Press, 118–​139.

Chapter 3

Police decision-​m aking in a criminal justice setting

Introduction This book is concerned with IOM policing, which inevitably involved looking closely at Sunnyvale police activity and what was driving it, particularly when it came to decision-​making. Both sets of Sunnyvale police—​ uniformed District Enforcement Team (DET) officers and police offender managers—​were legal decision-​makers. By this I mean that these officers routinely made decisions, the contours of which were determined by law (see Chapter 5). Police decision-​making is underpinned by vast amounts of discretion; this is well documented and understood (see, e.g., Dixon, 1992, 1997; McConville et al., 1991; McConville and Shepherd, 1992;Young, 1991; Waddington, 1999, 1998). Likewise, discretion permeated Sunnyvale policing. It was the means by which legal frameworks governing police powers (e.g. the Police and Criminal Evidence Act [PACE 1984]) and other police organisational rules (e.g. official guidance on the management of Sunnyvale offenders) were translated into action by DET officers and police offender managers. The police were an integral part of the multi-​agency teams which formed the bedrock of Sunnyvale IOM. There was little doubt that police decisions concerning Sunnyvale offenders had the potential to impact on the day-​to-​ day lives of these individuals. For example, DET officers, focused on enforcement, were able to make choices about whether to conduct street stops and/​ or arrest offenders, whereas offender managers, perhaps more focused on supporting offenders, could be more sophisticated and dynamic, even subtle in their use of legal and organisational rules (this is shown in Chapter 6). How powers/​r ules that were used during these interactions informed the types of relationships Sunnyvale police developed with Sunnyvale offenders and thus contributed to offender perceptions of the legitimacy of Sunnyvale policing (see Chapter 6). It is important, therefore, that we are able as much as possible to understand the factors and criteria employed by officers when arriving at a decision. In what follows, I widen the lens through which Sunnyvale police behaviours and practices (and the decisions that underpinned them) could be understood by transposing Keith Hawkins’s ideas concerning discretionary DOI: 10.4324/9780429287664-3

Police decision-making in a criminal justice setting  47

decision-​making within a criminal justice setting into the wider context of IOM.

Structural determinants of police decision-​m aking: surround, field and frame The police do not exercise discretion in total isolation from any wider sociopolitical or organisational context. Resource allocation, organisational demands, ideological orientation and occupational pressures all, to varying extents, impact upon police decision-​ making. Keith Hawkins argues that decisions made by actors within a criminal justice setting ‘can only be understood by reference to their broad environment, particular context and interpretive practices: their surround, field and frames’ (Hawkins, 2003: 189). As Hawkins explains further: Criminal justice decisions are made in the broader setting of a surround and within a context or field, defined by legal and organisational mandates … Decisions are made in a rich and complex environment, which acts as the setting for the play of shifting currents of broad political and economic values and forces. Decision frames, the interpretive and classificatory devices operating in particular instances, are shaped both by surround and field. To understand the nature of criminal justice decision-​making better, a connection needs to be forged between forces in the decision-​ making environment and the interpretive processes that individuals engage in when deciding a particular case. (2003: 189) Hawkins’s ideas provide a theoretical lens through which to explore and understand better the decision-​making practices of Sunnyvale police officers. The surround, for example, is the wide landscape within which criminal justice decision-​making takes place. It is the site of crime trends that criminal justice agencies are mandated to address, particularly those that precipitate public and political concern.The surround is also the political and economic environment for individual decision-​making and the activities of legal bureaucracies like the Home Office, the National Offender Management Service and the Ministry of Justice, where decision-​making takes place.The surround is fluid and subject to change, which is often perpetuated through frenetic media interpretation and representation of the criminal process (Ericson and Haggerty, 1997; Hutter and Manning, 1990). Both the sociopolitical and socio-​economic climate may shift.The changed environment then becomes part of a new organisational and decision-​making space for criminal justice actors. In this way, both the organisational field and the process of interpretation and classification by decision-​ makers (frames) are affected.

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Surround The surround primarily concerns the sociopolitical and socio-​economic climate. This can be broken down further when we consider the policies which have shaped criminal justice over the last few decades. Combating crime, being tough on crime and a general concern for the safety and security of an ostensible law-​abiding majority have been important election pledges of most political parties. Once in power, most (including the 2010–​215 coalition government, at the time of this study) make the ‘safety and security’ of the ostensibly ‘law-​abiding citizen’ a key priority of their criminal justice policy (Ministry of Justice, 2010: 1). Breaking the reoffending cycle by punishing, reforming and rehabilitating offenders was the coalition government’s mission statement. This can be viewed against a backdrop of a rise in managerialism and actuarial criminal justice approaches (Garland, 2001; Feeley and Simon, 1994) over the last several decades. This form of justice emphasises the identification and classification of ‘dangerous’ or ‘risky’ segments of the population (Brownlee, 1998: 323) who must be risk-​managed at minimum cost (Garland, 2001; Pratt, 2000). The result is a ‘shift in the goals, principles, and procedures of criminal law in the direction of compliance-​based law enforcement, which uses surveillance and record keeping as the primary form of control’ (Ericson and Haggerty, 1997: 52–​53; also, Ericson, 1994a and 1994b). This shift makes up a key part of the current surround within the context of IOM. Since the late 1990s, primarily under the last Labour government, wide-​ranging programmes have been developed specifically to prevent crime and manage risk. Hybrid civil-​criminal legislation providing for the confiscation of criminal proceeds (e.g. the Proceeds of Crime Act [POCA 2002]) and various civil behaviour orders (e.g. the Crime and Disorder Act [CDA 1998]) are but two examples. Those responsible for law enforcement policymaking must adapt to changes in the surround in more ways than merely introducing new legislation. Transformations, shaped by the changing political environment, have already taken place in the field of policing. Privatisation, joint venture arrangements, payment by results and financial incentivisation became political buzzwords within criminal justice over the last decade (Hansard, 2011). This is perhaps a reflection of ‘managerialist’ trends and market value disciplines infusing criminal justice practices. As Sanders,Young and Burton (2010: 39) note, ‘criminal justice has been much influenced by the “new public management” promoted by successive governments from the early 1980s onwards’. More recently, Thomas Winsor (then Chief Inspector of Constabulary for England and Wales) made clear, at the time of the Sunnyvale study, the government’s position on 21st-​ century policing, suggesting that ‘the primary role of the police is the prevention of crime and disorder’ (Winsor, 2013: 5).1 The idea is that focusing on would-​be offenders, likely victims and potential crime hotspots will save taxpayers’2 money and increase public safety and security. Yet perhaps what is really at work here

Police decision-making in a criminal justice setting  49

is the integration of two key aspects of Hawkins’s surround. Focusing on preventative, risk-​management criminal justice strategies can be located in the actuarial justice aspect of the surround, but also reflected the socio-​economic climate of the day—​austerity. Law enforcement has adapted to this ‘new’ criminal justice paradigm in two main ways. Firstly, the changes in criminal justice policy, briefly explored above, have been conveyed from centralised, national criminal justice agencies to localised police and probation services for implementation on the ground (Hawkins, 2002). Thus, IOM can be firmly situated within the actuarial justice paradigm. The scheme aims to disrupt criminal behaviour amongst a criminal cohort, identified, through surveillance and knowledge gathering as a ‘dangerous’ section of the population. In other words, IOM is, broadly speaking, an exercise in risk-​management criminal justice. Secondly, however, as Hawkins (2002: 50) explains, ‘changes in the surround can prompt an immediate change in practice’. In other words, Sunnyvale police and other workers may have modified their own decision-​making in response to perceived changed expectations. For example, public criticism relating to the failure of specific police operational practices might, in an effort to stem any diminishing public confidence, precipitate changes in force policy or the launch of force wide operations. In turn, decisions made concerning the management of offenders may have been subsequently overridden by the change in policy. Field Changes occurring in the surround can alter the decision field, the ‘legally and organisationally defined setting’ (Hawkins, 2002: 52) in which Sunnyvale police worked. Cuts to the central police budget, for example, may generate changes in force policy direction or precipitate new more ambitious operational targets. A preoccupation with risk and public protection might, for a time, dominate government criminal justice policy. New rules of engagement may be formulated; mantras, such as ‘zero tolerance policing’ (Johnston and Shearing, 2003), may surface. This language of governance may in turn precipitate new, more radical and ‘far-​reaching [criminal justice] approaches [and] more effective ways of using scarce resources’ to reduce crime (Carter, 2003: 1; Newburn, 2007). Nonetheless, Hawkins (2003: 189) reminds us that law ‘determines the contours and reach of the field by establishing and defining a mandate and how this mandate must be attained’. Within the context of IOM, sections 5 to 7 of the CDA 1998 place a statutory duty on local authorities to formulate and implement a strategy for combating the misuse of drugs and the reduction of crime and disorder in the area. This is evidence of a change in the surround changing the field. The 1998 Act originated from the broader surround, but has also formed part of the field for operational police officers as it defined, in part at least, their legal and organisational mandate. Sunnyvale IOM was

50  Police decision-making in a criminal justice setting

the localised response to a legal mandate emanating from the surround and expressed the ideas about how it should be attained. As Hawkins (2002: 50) explains, differential distribution of ‘values, expectations and aims’ occur across different people depending on their precise context and occupational position. The way in which the organisational mandate is transposed into the field will therefore be filtered through a lens coloured by rank and occupational role. For senior police managers, working within an IOM framework, the sine qua non is likely to be reducing recidivism (and thus crime in general) through support and enforcement (Police Operations Handbook, 2010: 1).3 On the other hand, frontline police, both uniformed enforcement officers and offender managers, may have their own vision, perhaps one more closely linked to traditional police cultural practices,4 of how the mandate might be attained. This may serve to complicate matters if the culture is not disrupted. For example, police offender managers might prove resistant to the wholesale attitude changes required to take on a traditionally probation-​orientated role during interactions with offenders, instead remaining intent on preserving their ‘police officer’ status.5 In this way, ‘frame’ responds to the ‘field’ since the legal and organisational aspects of the mandate are, as Hawkins (2003: 190) puts it, ‘defined by the decision-​maker in occupational terms’. Frames, working assumptions and rules Decision frames constitute the means by which ‘features in a particular problem or case are understood, placed and accorded relevance’ (Hawkins, 2003: 190). They include the knowledge, experience, values and meanings that the police employed during interactions with Sunnyvale offenders. Both DET officers and offender managers ‘framed’ interactions with offenders or ‘events’, as Hawkins (2002: 190) describes them (see Chapter 5). For example, if DET officers received a report of a potential breach of a prison licence condition by a Sunnyvale offender, the frame addressed such questions as, ‘What sort of case is this?’ It is a classificatory act which provided officers with a ‘set of rules for … organising the ascription of meaning to events’ (2003: 190). Frames have the ability to fill the inevitable legal vacuum, which arises where the law fails to prescribe how and when certain police powers should (or should not) be used. In this context, framing can be viewed as interchangeable with the ‘structuring of discretion according to working rules developed by policing on the ground’ (McConville et al., 1991: 22–​23). The requirement that, prior to stopping and searching citizens, police officers must reasonably suspect that relevant evidence of an offence will be found, provides an instructive example of when ‘working rules’ and thus frames can become operative in everyday policing. Reasonable suspicion is an amorphous, undefined legal mechanism, aimed at preventing officers from conducting indiscriminate searches, which

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are often predicated on vague, subjective concepts such as instinct and experience (Quinton, 2011). Where legal rules have failed to constrain police decision-​making, officers have developed working ‘assumptions’ and ‘rules of thumb’ (Ericson (1982)) which appear to shape police–​suspect interactions (McConville et al., 1991: 22). It is during these encounters that officers find themselves confronted by a barrage of conflicting sensory information: a witness describing their account of events, for example, or perhaps evidence found at a potential crime scene. On the one hand, working assumptions may arise from officers’ interpretations of these social interactions, whilst on the other hand, assumptions, made about people, incidents or circumstances may also drive interpretations of a particular interaction or situation. As Hoyle (1998: 21) explains: Understanding social interactions, and the context within which they are taking place enables [police officers] to arrive at certain ‘working assumptions’ about what has occurred, what is occurring, and what is likely to occur. During this interpretive stage, judgements are based on how the police officers routinely make sense of information. It is only when these judgements are made that officers know which ‘working rule’ to apply. The negotiation process as well as their own cultural capital allows them to decide on the appropriate rule for the assumption. The rule cannot be chosen without having first made the assumption. Working assumptions, therefore, play just as important a part in the structuring of police discretion as working rules. In essence, these assumptions become a prequel to the deployment of rules6 by officers. Again, it is important to draw a comparison between the working ‘rules’ and ‘assumptions’ and ‘frames’ (Hawkins, 2003) adopted by police officers during encounters with the public. Like working rules and assumptions, frames are ‘indicated by cues or signs such as a word, action or event’ (Hawkins, 2003: 191). That is to say the frame is ‘keyed’, as Hawkins (2003: 191) puts it. What cues or signs were recognised by Sunnyvale police and what they mean, however, depended on the frame employed. Frames and keys are both negotiable and open to redefinition (2003: 190–​2). For instance, merely passing a Sunnyvale offender in the street may have ‘keyed’ and precipitated a ‘general suspiciousness’ frame for the police officer that observed the behaviour. Adoption of the frame keyed in this way might have resulted in the offender being stopped and spoken to (stop and account) or, in more extreme circumstances, searched and perhaps arrested. Similarly, a matter framed as a ‘serious arrest situation’ could have been re-​keyed (especially if a bargaining relationship existed between the police officers and the decision subject) as a ‘trivial matter requiring no enforcement’ by a subsequent word, action or event, for example, the receipt of some valuable intelligence. Nevertheless, a change in frame does not uniformly produce a different

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outcome. According to Hawkins, it merely provides ‘an occasion for the development of a new basis for defining material as relevant (and discarding other previously relevant material) as well as a new basis for interpreting the decision to make the outcome rational’ (2003: 192). Particular types of police officer framing will be more resistant to change than others. For instance, it is probable that an offender, framed as ‘suspicious’ or ‘known to the police’ on one occasion, is likely still to be framed as ‘known to the police’ or ‘suspicious’ on the next. This may be the case regardless of the outcome of the interaction which precipitated the particular frame. It is possible, of course, that these types of working rules were viewed by Sunnyvale police as too important to be abandoned on the basis of a single interaction. This is because the rule usually provides the basis or justification for enforcement strategies or action taken by police officers (this is shown in Chapters 4 and 5). ‘Information received’ (McConville et al., 1991: 25) about a Sunnyvale offender, perhaps resulting from an encounter with a police offender manager, may have resulted in the deployment of police surveillance teams to catch the person in the act of committing a crime or breaching prison release licence conditions. It may, on the other hand, have triggered an unofficial home visit by the police.The point is, however, that the key and the frame (or indeed working rule) govern the transaction or, at least, ‘… mark out the territory on which matters are to be conducted’ (Hawkins, 2002: 55). This is important given the likely significance of negotiation within the parameters of Sunnyvale police–​ offender encounters and broader relations. Decision-​f raming and the culture of frontline police officers Framing is also shaped by occupational and professional ideology although exactly how varies according to the world outlook of the decision-​maker and is dependent on their professional training and socialisation (Hawkins, 2002: 53). Teachers, for example, may frame matters in terms of ‘learning outcomes’; psychiatrists may frame matters in terms of ‘mental health’; judges may frame matters in terms of what is ‘legal’. In this sense, organisational culture can influence how decision-​makers understand a case, a problem or even a person. This is an important claim, one that must be carefully considered within the context of Sunnyvale police decision-​making. That frontline officers are required to interpret and selectively apply their legal powers whilst carrying out police work has pre-​occupied academic research on policing since the 1960s. Much of this work has focused on street-​level police decision-​making during interactions with the general public (Banton, 1964; Bittner, 1967; Skolnick, 1966; Dixon, 1992, 1997; McConville et al., 1991; McConville and Shepherd, 1992;Young, 1991;Waddington, 1999, 1998; Loftus, 2010; Cram, 2018; Bacon, 2016, 2022). The research has largely been driven by a desire to understand police decisions to arrest, to stop and search and/​or to

Police decision-making in a criminal justice setting  53

detain those they suspect of criminal activity. The result has been to expose the way in which frontline officers are able to manipulate their legal powers to suit non-​policing objectives. The underlying reason for the use of police powers can be fluid. One salient example is the deliberate exploitation of the anguish felt by people brought into police custody. Choongh (1998), who conducted an ethnographic study of police station procedures, witnessed police powers being informally used during the custody process, primarily to enforce a type of ‘social discipline’ on those detained by the police (1998: 623). By ‘social discipline’, Choongh means the use of police powers (e.g. to interrogate, search and so on) to punish, humiliate and extract submissiveness from the ‘same dross’ (1998: 628)—​criminal classes that continuously fall within the police purview. Similarly, Skinns (2011) found that detaining suspects, under section 37 of PACE 1984, for such period as is ‘necessary to secure or preserve evidence …’ can easily become an opportunity informally to punish suspects or to ‘let them stew’ before interview. Loftus (2010: 117) also witnessed police officers delaying the release or interview of suspects in order to increase intelligence-​gathering opportunities. Yet whilst this work usefully highlights the way in which the police can use the formal resources of the criminal process to pursue their own objectives, the contention that social disciplinary practices are the primary purpose of police custody, as Choongh suggests, is perhaps an oversimplification. Rather, it is likely to be one of a range of purposes. As Skinns (2011: 129) points out, ‘in practice the custody suite is too busy for the police to maintain the degree of malice and foresight consciously to arrange the custody process in a way that suits their ends’. Nonetheless, the subversion and manipulation of legal rules by the police extends far beyond the confines of the custody suite. Section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986 is sometimes employed against individuals who challenge officers’ authority on the streets (Brown and Ellis HORS, 1994).7 The legislation enables frontline officers to reassert their authority by charging people with ‘offences to which they have no real defence’ in order to win something of a ‘moral victory’ (Loftus, 2010: 113–​114). Powers of arrest serve several functions in addition to bringing suspects before the courts. They can, for instance, be wielded as an expression of power, or used as a punishment (Feeley, 1979) or a means of ‘control and harassment’ (Dixon, 1997: 77). Stop and search powers are also susceptible to manipulation, on occasion being used ‘not to enforce the law per se, but to secure broader objectives: social surveillance, the imposition of order … [and] the acquisition of information’ (McConville et al., 1991: 16). Frontline police officers are clearly not averse to manipulating legal rules and procedure on the street in order to further their own independently defined aims, many of which have little to do with enforcing the law.

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Cop culture Examination of the ‘linked series of decision stages’ (Bottomley, 1973: 35), through which suspects pass before entering the more formal stages of the criminal justice process, has been of crucial significance in identifying a common thread which runs through frontline policing. This is that whenever officers choose whether or not to use the powers at their disposal, their decisions are invariably coloured by a unique set of commonalities arising as a result of the unique and enduring pressures of street policing (Skinns, 2011; Loftus, 2010; Barton, 2003). These commonalities have been variously identified as including an exaggerated sense of mission, a desire for action and excitement, the glorification of violence, an Us/​Them divide of the social world, isolation, solidarity, prejudice, authoritarian conservatism, suspicion and cynicism (Reiner, 2010: 119–​132; Bowling et al., 2019).8 Together these ‘values, norms, perspectives and craft rules which inform police conduct’ form ‘cop culture’ (Reiner, 1992: 109), which is transmitted and reinforced throughout the immediate rank-​and-​file peer group (Skolnick, 1966).9 Offender managers are drawn from rank-​and-​file police officers (often recruited from the frontline or intelligence units). It should be expected, therefore, that they exhibit many, if not all, of the same occupational characteristics as officers on the street. Whilst orthodox accounts of police culture have exercised considerable influence over understandings of police everyday decisions and practices, several criticisms have also been levelled at the concept. Challenges to orthodox accounts of cop culture: does talk translate into action? Waddington (1999) points to a distinction between ‘cop culture’ orientations, implied and expressed by officers during the course of their work, and ‘canteen culture’, the values and beliefs privately expressed during off-​duty socialising. In other words, there is a disparity between talk, likely to be heard in the canteen, and action which takes place on the streets. In this case, talk represents a valuable outlet and an ‘expression of solidarity and cohesiveness’ (Hoyle, 1998: 74) amongst police officers. Moreover, it is a rational response to the unique role of frontline policing, which in no way corresponds with actual police practices (Waddington, 1999). It has also been pointed out that language forms and manifested values and beliefs may diverge; in other words, canteen talk may not reflect officers’ internalised thoughts (Loftus, 2010). Some research on policing seems to support Waddington’s argument. Smith and Gray (1985: 388–​389), for example, found that ‘racial prejudice and racialist talk … [were] pervasive … expected, accepted and even fashionable’ amongst frontline police officers; nonetheless, there appeared to be little continuity between these attitudes and officers’ behaviour towards ethnic minorities. Similarly, Hoyle (1998: 76–​78) observed a divide between negative cultural

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attitudes, held in relation to domestic disputes, and the sympathetic and sensitive way in which some officers actually dealt with these disputes. If rhetoric has no relationship with reality, then perhaps the utility of police culture as a model for examining police behaviour may be limited. Waddington’s argument, however, is sustainable only if previous cop culture scholars have based their understandings on ‘cop canteen talk’ alone. This is not the case. Much of the key cop culture literature is based on empirical studies of cops ‘in action’. For example, McConville et al.’s concept of police ‘working rules’, borne primarily out of observations of rank-​and-​file police officers, can be viewed as an attempt to distil cop culture into its component parts. The argument is that these rules can be discerned from patterns of police behaviour, not simply—​or even at all—​by what the police happen to discuss in the canteen. Waddington (1998: 302) himself accepts that a number of cop culture norms (e.g. the willingness and ability to use force, the sense of crime fighting mission and the abusive often racist denigration of police property) can be seen in action, not merely in words. Often words can help us understand actions; it is actions, however, that matter most. Other criticisms of the concept of police culture have emerged from policing literatures. Janet Chan, for instance, insists that police culture is a ‘poorly defined concept’ which lumps values, beliefs, attitudes, informal rules and practices together under one umbrella, rendering it ‘of little analytical value’ (1997: 110). Instead, Chan, drawing on Bourdieu’s (1990) theory of culture, and Sackmann’s (1991) framework on cultural knowledge in organisations, suggests that any conceptualisation of police culture must recognise its interpretive and creative aspects, as well as the legal and political context of police work (1997: 109). It is these aspects, Chan claims, that have the potential to shape the nature of police organisations and their working culture, in other words, to modify police culture from without. Yet police culture is already transforming. After all, it is not invariant nor, as Reiner puts it, ‘monolithic, universal, nor unchanging’ (2010: 132). It is far too simplistic to suggest that all police officers are peering at society through a singular lens. Rather, world outlook varies across ranks, forces, genders, ethnic backgrounds and time periods. Moreover, changes in recruitment strategies have increased the presence of females and ethnic minorities among the demographics of police personnel, thus directly challenging the dominant white heterosexual male culture, pervasive within early accounts of police culture (see, e.g., Westley, 1970).10 Subcultures may, therefore, be contained within police culture, although this may also be too narrow a generalisation because it misses the fact that internal rivalries and conflicts often exist between officers themselves (Fielding, 1989, 1994; Loftus, 2010).There is also evidence that individual officers adopt individual styles of policing (Hoyle, 1998). This is perhaps inevitable as police officers are likely to cope with the pressures of the frontline differently.

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Other writers have suggested that orthodox accounts of police culture can be criticised for their assumption that the concept is insulated from the wider sociopolitical, legal and economic landscape (Loftus, 2010). These accounts appear to overlook that policing is structured according to core organisational mandates, which greatly influence police behaviour. Accordingly, there appear to be some strong arguments which suggest that police culture is a problematic concept. However, none have proposed that the concept should be abandoned completely. If anything, police culture must merely be considered alongside many other factors and the broader context within which it arises. With this in mind I turn now to consider the continuing relevance of police culture within the modern policing like IOM. Cop culture and its use as an analytic concept The various challenges laid out above suggest that the power of orthodox police culture as an analytical concept may have been overstated at times. It is not immovable or homogeneous and there does appear, at times at least, to be a gap between canteen talk and police action. Furthermore, it may be that diversity drives, training and community policing initiatives have ‘interrupted’ the dominant culture (Loftus, 2010; Hoyle, 1998). Even cumulatively, though, these criticisms do not entirely negate the analytical usefulness of police culture. As Loftus explains, ‘successive generations of researchers have observed predominantly similar characteristics in the sentiments and practices of officers across different times and jurisdictions’. She suggests, drawing on her own recent study of police culture, that these characteristics appear to have stubbornly resisted any reordering of the policing landscape (2010: 198). Moreover, while the way officers express themselves in ‘private’ may not correspond exactly with the way they behave in public, ‘it does provide a crude barometer of their attitudes, which do have some impact on their behaviour’ (Hoyle, 1998: 81). Canteen reconstructions, albeit at times exaggerated, of interactions with the public help define the operational limits within which police officers act whilst on the streets. Rhetoric of this nature can serve to inform new recruits of how other more experienced officers think and feel, educating them into the boundaries of behaviour which is ‘acceptable’ during routine police–​public encounters. This is important because officers will want to know when other officers will back them up and when they will be perceived to have ‘over-​stepped the mark’ and are ‘on their own’. It cannot be said, therefore, that even this culinary manifestation of cop culture bears no relation with reality; on the contrary, it seems the relationship between the two is both discernible and enduring. The tenacity of cop culture It is important not to abandon orthodox ideas about police culture or overlook the challenges made to the concept. Rather we should consider the concept as evolving (Bacon, 2022). Perhaps the role of the modern police officer is

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also evolving. Skolnick’s (1966: 42) earliest identification of a collective culture amongst police officers described it as a ‘working personality’, since the culture was born out of the demands of everyday police work. One would expect, therefore, that as that work changes so to an extent the culture should change. The atypical nature of the police offender manager role, within broader constructions of policing, makes it likely that these officers put the core characteristics of cop culture into practice in ways which are uniquely shaped by the pressures of working within the setting of IOM. This claim, however, requires further empirical qualification and will be more fully examined in Chapter 5. For now, it is enough to suggest that, when considered against the backdrop of IOM, the concept of police culture remains useful. Firstly, it explains the way in which rank-​and-​file officers conceptualise and interact with the social world (Dixon, 1997; Reiner, 2010; Loftus, 2010; Skinns, 2011) and, secondly, it helps us understand better the wider context within which decisions were made by Sunnyvale police during interactions with offenders. Whilst my empirical examination of Sunnyvale IOM was not explicitly intended to be a pure study of police culture, it is clear that understanding the core cultural traits exhibited by Sunnyvale police, particularly, offender managers, was essential to understanding the routine interactions between these officers, offenders and others within Sunnyvale IOM. It will also help advance our examination of what kind of policing was taking place within IOM. For example, views held by offender managers, both personal and professional, about Sunnyvale offenders, or the ‘same dross’ as Choongh (1998) puts it, may have impinged on the way a given event was framed by some officers. Research suggests that police attitudes towards offenders are ‘rooted in stereotypes’ (Skinns, 2011: 71). This may represent a manifestation of the dichotomous ‘us’ and ‘them’ view of society often held by rank-​and-​file officers. It emphasises the ‘isolation and solidarity’ (Reiner, 2010) referent of cop culture. Clear divisions are apparent within the ‘them’ and ‘us’ outlook which makes clear distinctions between types of ‘them’ (e.g. ‘good-​ class villains’, ‘police property’, ‘rubbish’) as well as of ‘us’ (e.g. ‘challengers’, ‘disarmers’, ‘do-​gooders’ and ‘politicians’) (Reiner, 2010, 92). Sunnyvale offenders were likely to be characterised by most Sunnyvale police as ‘police property’, that is to say ‘low status, powerless groups whom the dominant majority see as problematic and distasteful’ (Reiner, 2000: 93). Officers may accordingly have seen it as vital to maintain police dominance and authority over Sunnyvale offenders, a concern which may not always have been congruent with the mandate emanating from the field. These are matters that I return to in Chapters 5 and 6 where data on Sunnyvale police–​offender interactions is presented. Interactions between surround, field and frames The surround and field influence which frames move from background to foreground and vice versa; in this way they are in mutual interaction (Hawkins, 2003: 190). As a hypothetical example, let us say, for instance, that force policy

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dictates that all incidents of cannabis possession, whether involving IOM offenders or not, are to be treated in a specific manner on pain of discipline. How a police offender managers frame IOM offenders caught smoking dope in a park will probably be influenced by the mandate emanating from the organisational field. It may, therefore, be framed far more seriously, or less seriously, than would be so in the absence of this influence. The direction of influence is not one-​way; the organisational field may have to accommodate long-​established patterns of framing. Senior IOM managers, for example, who know that frontline practices are entrenched, at times may modify organisational rules and targets to ‘fit reality’ rather than trying to make ‘reality’ fit organisational policy. In other words, senior management may formulate operational targets, but this formulation might in fact be done via consultation with those on the ground, thus making targets achievable. The surround may also be aligned by the government to fit frontline reality in the knowledge that it will coincide with the grain of what police officers want to do. This in turn might help neutralise police opposition to planned budgetary cuts. In this way, both field and surround might be influenced by typical police offender manager framing. Organisational policy, for instance, which dictates the arrest of all IOM offenders found in possession of cannabis, may be modified to resonate with the preferences of police offender manager occupational culture. The modification could be rationalised as allowing the ‘interests of justice’ to be served by permitting the suspect to remain at large, perhaps in view of some future intelligence haul or increased surveillance capability. Thus, with the frame ‘rekeyed’, police offender managers could still pursue objectives pertaining to organisational subcultural norms and values. Alternatively, the impetus for reworking of this nature may be the reasonable aim of increasing the offender’s chances of long-​term desistance. Hawkins’s theory allows us to understand better the nature of criminal justice decision-​making. It is inherently linked to the exercise of discretionary powers and therefore allows us to make a tangible connection between forces in the decision-​making environment and the interpretive process engaged by offender managers. In this way one can begin to explain holistically the complex decision-​making processes in which offender managers inevitably engage during interaction with IOM offenders. Hawkins’s ideas are thus used in this book as part of an empirical research framework, which examines the policing methods of IOM and their implications for offender perceptions of legitimacy of Sunnyvale IOM policing.

Conclusion To summarise, there are two main points to be made. Firstly, theories of legitimacy provide an important backdrop to the present research. The body of work above, from which I draw,11 suggests that the potentially invasive nature

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of the scheme’s strategic enforcement options may reduce offender motivation and undermine the legitimacy of the scheme in the eyes of offenders. These methods and practices may have an effect on offender chances of long-​term desistance, particularly if ‘disproportionate’, or they go beyond the restrictive measures deemed ‘necessary’ to ‘manage’ the risk posed by the offender. One of the objectives of this study, using the theoretical constructs outlined above, is to explore empirically the relationship between the tactical interventions and offender perceptions of the scheme, critically assessing the data against the background of desistance literatures. The second point to be made is that there is a need to integrate both orthodox and contemporary accounts of police organisational subculture with theories about criminal justice decision-​making more broadly. Notwithstanding the challenges, described above, to the analytical power of police organisational culture, it is clear that the concept remains hugely useful. Traditional cop culture is alive and well within the consciousness of rank-​and-​file police officers; this has been confirmed by the collective evidence of numerous ethnographic studies.12 In many ways, however, offender managers do not represent the archetypal police officer.The role, particularly the more social or supportive aspects of it, is unique. Yet this does not insulate offender managers from police occupational thinking; rather it may be that the role merely precipitates something of a modified form of cop culture, one which is shaped by the uniquely altered policing landscape of IOM. At the same time my framework remains alive to the risk of presenting cop culture as the dominant way of understanding how offender mangers think about and interact with offenders and others within IOM. In broader terms, the status of offender managers as legal decision-​makers needs to be recognised and understood, particularly given the potential impact of their decisions on the lives of offenders. The ideas of Keith Hawkins are useful in this regard as they help us to understand better the wider contextual factors that influence discretionary decision-​making within a criminal justice setting. In the chapters that follow, Hawkins’s theory of decision-​making, along with core aspects of the police culture literature, are drawn upon to enable the examination of the choices made by offender managers during routine interactions with offenders and others within IOM.

Notes 1 Emphasis added. 2 Emphasis added. 3 See also s.17(1) of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 (as amended by s.108 of the Policing and Crime Act 2009), which provides policing authorities with a duty to ‘do all that it reasonably can to prevent, crime and disorder and re-​offending, in its area’. 4 The concept of ‘police culture’ is examined in detail below.

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5 It is also possible that any insecurity, which may also play a part in officers resisting any adaptation of their role, is closely linked to anticipated changes in the surround, such as privatisation of aspects of the police role. 6 Research has uncovered a mosaic of police ‘working ‘rules’. Examples include: suspects who challenge the authority of the police are usually arrested; arrestees should always be detained; being ‘known’ to the police is sufficient to arouse suspicion; prosecution is a high priority for those suspected of regular criminal activity; officers spend only as much time on a case as they believe it deserves. McConville et al. (1991) perhaps provide one of the most recent and in-​depth discussion of the operation of police working rules. Other examples can be found within the writings of Skolnick, 1966; Stroshine et al., 2008; McConville et al., 1991; Hoyle, 1998; Loftus, 2010; Choongh, 1998; Fielding, 1989; Feder, 1996; Fitzgerald, 1993. 7 Section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986 makes it an offence to use threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour or disorderly behaviour within the hearing or sight of a person likely to be caused harassment alarm or distress thereby. It is sufficient for conviction that a police officer—​based on his own evidence—​felt ‘alarmed, harassed or distressed’, by the behaviour in question: see DPP v Orum [1988] 3 All ER 449. These concepts are vague and difficult to challenge, particularly considering the evidence is largely based on the arresting officer’s subjective judgements. 8 The sub-​occupational world outlook of the police has been identified by numerous police researchers, all of whom have spent much time observing DET officers. Some good examples of policing studies, highlighting these subcultural traits, see, for example, Bittner, 1967; Wilson, 1968, Punch, 1979; Manning, 1977; Skolnick, 1966; Skolnick, 1994; and Crank, 1998. 9 However, see Reiner, who acknowledges that officers are not ‘passive or manipulated learners’ (1992: 109). 10 However, see Loftus (2010) who suggests that the diversity drive has only ‘interrupted’ the dominant culture, largely pushing aspects of it such as racism underground or into exclusionary ‘white spaces’ rather than stamping it out altogether (also, Skinns, 2011: 28). 11 On legitimacy, proportionality and privacy see, for example, Sparks and Bottoms (1995), Tyler (2003) and Goold (2007) and on desistance, see, for example, Farrall (2004) and Farrall and Caverley (2006). 12 For a detailed overview of this research see, Cockcroft 2020.

References Bacon, M. (2016). Taking Care of Business: Police Detectives, Drug Law Enforcement and Proactive Investigation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bacon, M. (2022). ‘Desistance from criminalisation: police culture and new directions in drugs policing’, Policing and Society, 32(4): 522–​539. Banton, M. (1964). The Policeman in the Community. London: Tavistock. Barton, H. (2003). ‘Understanding occupational culture –​a precursor for reform: The case of the police service in England and Wales’, International Journal of Public Sector Management, 16(5): 346–​358. Bittner, E. (1967).‘The police on skid row:A study in peacekeeping’, American Sociological Review, 32(5): 699–​715.

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Bottomley, A.K. (1973). ‘Parole decisions in a long-​term closed prison’, British Journal of Criminology, 13(1): 26–​40. Bourdieu, P. (1990).‘Structures, Habitus, Practices’, in The Logic of Practice. Cambridge: Polity. Bowling, B., Reiner, R., and Sheptycki, J. (2019). The Politics of the Police (5th ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Brown, D., and Ellis, T. (1994). Policing Low Level Disorder: Police Use of Section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986 (Home Office Research Study No. 129), London: HMSO. Brownlee, I. (1998). ‘New labour–​new penology? Punitive rhetoric and the limits of managerialism in criminal justice policy’, Journal of Law and Society, 25(3), 313–​335. Carter, P. (2003). Managing Offenders, Reducing Crime: A New Approach. London: Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit. Chan, J. (1997). Changing Police Culture: Policing in a Multicultural Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Choongh, S. (1998). ‘Policing the dross: A social disciplinary model of policing’, British Journal of Criminology, 38: 623–​634. Cockcroft, T., (2020). Police Occupational Culture, Research and Practice. Bristol: Policy Press. Cram, F. (2018).‘The “carrot” and “stick” of integrated offender management: Implications for police culture’, Policing and Society, 30(4): 378–​395. Crank, J.P. (1998). Understanding Police Culture. Cincinnati, OH: Anderson. Dixon, D. (1992). ‘Legal regulation & policing practice’, Social & Legal Studies, 1: 515–​541. Dixon, D. (1997). Law in Policing: Legal Regulation and Police Practices. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Ericson, R. (1982). Reproducing Order: A Study of Police Patrol Work. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Ericson, R., (1994a). ‘The division of expert knowledge in policing and security’. British Journal of Sociology, 45(2): 149–​175. Ericson, R., (1994b). ‘The royal commission on criminal justice system surveillance,’ in M. McConville and L., Bridges (eds.), Criminal Justice in Crisis. Aldershot: Edward Elgar, 113–​140. Ericson, R.V., and Haggerty, K.D. (1997). Policing the Risk Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Feder, L. (1996). ‘Police handling of domestic calls: The importance of offender’s presence in the arrest decision’, Journal of Criminal Justice, 24(6): 481–​490. Feeley, M. (1979). The Process Is the Punishment. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Feeley, M., and Simon, J. (1994a). ‘New penology: Notes on the emerging strategy of corrections and its implications’, Criminology, 30(4): 449–​474. Fielding, N. (1989). Police culture and police practice’, in M. Weatheritt (ed.), Police Research: Some Future Prospects. Avebury: Aldershot, 77–​87. Fielding, N. (1994). ‘Cop canteen culture’, in T. Newburn and E.A. Stanko (eds.), Just Boys Doing Business: Men, Masculinities and Crime. London: Routledge, 46–​63. Fitzgerald, M. (1993). Ethnic Minorities and the Criminal Justice System, Royal Commission on Criminal Justice, Research Study No. 20: London: HMSO. Garland, D. (2001). The Culture of Control: Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Hawkins, K. (2002). Law as Last Resort: Prosecution Decision-​Making in a Regulatory Setting. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Hawkins, K. (2003). ‘Order, rationality and silence; some reflection on criminal justice decision-​making’, in L. Gelsthorpe and N. Padfield (eds.), Exercising Discretion; Decision-​ Making in the Criminal Justice System and Beyond. Cullompton: Willan, 186–​219. Hoyle, C. (1998). Negotiating Domestic Violence. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hutter, B.M., and Manning, P.K. (1990). ‘The contexts of regulation: The impact upon health and safety inspectorates in Britain’, Law and Policy, 12(2): 103–​136. Johnston, L., and Shearing, C. (2003). Governing Security: Explorations in Policing and Justice. New York: Routledge. Loftus, B. (2010). ‘Police occupational culture: Classic themes, altered times’, Policing and Society, 20(1): 1–​20. Manning, P.K. (1977). Police Work: The Social Organisation of Policing. Cambridge and London: MIT Press. McConville, M., and Shepherd, D. (1992). Watching Police,Watching Communities. London: Routledge. McConville, M., Sanders, A., and Leng, R. (1991). The Case for the Prosecution; Police Suspects and the Construction of Criminality. London: Routledge. Ministry of Justice, Breaking the Cycle: Effective Punishment, Rehabilitation and Sentencing of Offenders, 2010, Ministry of Justice, available here: http://​web​arch​ive. natio​nala​rchi​ves.gov.uk/​201​2011​9200​607/​http:/​www.just​ice.gov.uk/​consul​tati​ons/​ docs/​break​ing-​the-​cycle.pdf (accessed 30/​12/​2021). Newburn, T. (2007). ‘Tough on crime’: Penal policy in England and Wales’, Crime and Justice, 36(1): 425–​470. Police Operations Handbook. (2010). Unpublished. Pratt, J. (2000). ‘The return of the wheelbarrow men or the arrival of the postmodern penality?’, British Journal of Criminology, 40(1): 127–​145. Punch, M. (1979). Policing the Inner City: A study of Amsterdam’s Warmoesstraat. London: Macmillan Press. Quinton, P. (2011). ‘The formation of suspicions: Police stop and search practice in England and Wales’, Policing and Society, 21(4): 357–​368. Reiner, R. (1992). The Politics of the Police (2nd ed.). London: Wheatsheaf. Reiner, R. (2000). The Politics of the Police (3rd ed.). London: Wheatsheaf. Reiner, R. (2010). The Politics of the Police (4th ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sackmann, S.A. (1991). Cultural Knowledge in Organizations. Exploring the Collective Mind. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Sanders, A., Young, R., and Burton, M. (2010). Criminal Justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Skinns, L. (2011). Police Custody: Governance, Legitimacy and Reform in the Criminal Justice Process. Abingdon: Willan. Skolnick, J. (1966). Justice Without Trial: Law Enforcement in Democratic Society. New York: Macmillan. Skolnick, J. (1994). Justice Without Trial: Law Enforcement in Democratic Society (3rd ed.). London: Wiley. Smith, D.J., and Gray, J. (1985). Police and People in London. London: Gower. Stroshine, M.S., Alpert, G.P., and Dunham, R.G. (2008). ‘The influence of “working rules” on police suspicion and discretionary decision making’, Police Quarterly, 11(3): 315–​337.

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Thomas Winsor’s speech to the Royal United Services Institute, April 2013. Available here: www.hmic.gov.uk/​media/​hmcic-​spe​ech-​polic​ing-​in-​the-​new-​dyna​mic-​envi​ ronm​ent-​20130​429.pdf (accessed 15/​5/​2022). Waddington, P.A.J. (1998). Policing Citizens. London: UCL Press. Waddington, P.A.J. (1999). ‘Police (canteen) sub-​culture: an appreciation’, British Journal of Criminology, 39: 287–​309. Westley,W. (1970). Violence and the Police: A Sociological Study of Law, Custom and Morality. Cambridge: MIT Press. Wilson, J.Q. (1968). Varieties of Police Behavior. New York: Harvard University Press. Young, M. (1991). An Inside Job. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Chapter 4

Mission orientation Partnership working within Sunnyvale IOM

Introduction This chapter begins to unfold the type of policing that took place within Sunnyvale IOM. Alongside the police, probation workers, prison officers and drugs workers were all involved in the policing of prolific offenders.The chapter begins by reflecting on the political surround (policy and law) of partnership working within criminal justice. The Crime and Disorder Act 1998 places a statutory duty on the various agencies to work together to reduce crime. This formed the bedrock of the Sunnyvale approach. However, literature suggests that as a consequence of different histories, cultures and traditions, agencies engaging in multi-​agency community crime prevention work tend to pursue conflicting ideologies, strategies and practices. The chapter therefore advances an exploration of the historical cultural values of staff from other agencies that work with the police within IOM and of the working relationships between the police and other agencies on the ground within IOM today. Two primary concerns underpin the exploration: (i) whether being propelled into a closer working relationship had resulted in cultural and ideological changes to the world outlook of the various IOM partners and a concerted move away from inter-​agency historical conflicts and differences; and (ii) whether the multi-​ agency aspect of IOM moderated traditional police cultural practice. To anticipate what follows, it appears that the presence of police officers working as offender managers within the IOM framework had done little to dilute cop-​ culture or more traditional forms of policing, despite the rhetoric. Rather it appeared to precipitate a form of IOM in practice which bent offender management towards the interests of policing goals.

[Re]defining the organisational field: traditional relationships, multi-​a gency partnerships and integrated offender management As briefly touched upon in Chapter 1, since the 1980s,1 localised criminal justice strategies have been driven by a belief that multiple agencies, working DOI: 10.4324/9780429287664-4

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together, are better than one at tackling crime and disorder (Worrall and Gaines, 2006: 579). Broadly, the rationale for requiring agencies like the police, social services, probation, education, health services and the voluntary sector to work closely together is to drive out inefficiencies, duplication of effort, inconsistencies in emphasis and confusion of purpose (Home Office, 1997). These ideas are crystallised within the sections 5–​7 of CDA 1998, which place a statutory duty on local authorities to formulate and implement a local strategy for combating the misuse of drugs and the reduction of crime and disorder. The legislation forms part of the political surround (Hawkins, 2002) and has altered the landscape of the police organisational field in two ways. Firstly, at a formal level, the CDA 1998 provides the various agencies with a strategic mandate: work together to reduce crime. Secondly, at an informal level, it provides expectations as to how the mandate should be pursued and objectives attained, for example, through the formation of ‘Community Safety Partnerships’ and the sharing of information to identify and resolve local crime issues (Mawby and Worrall, 2011a: 88). In line with managerialism, agency resources should be pooled and management objectives, driven by data and evidence, coordinated through the implementation strategies and services on the ground (Pycroft and Gough, 2019; Burnett and Appleton, 2004: 35; Nash, 1999; Padfield and Maruna, 2006). Shared surveillance technologies—​information sharing and record-​keeping (Ericson and Haggerty, 1997: 58)—​mitigate against duplication of effort but also benefit the ends of crime control (Worrall and Gaines, 2006: 579). Examples might include drug courts (Butts and Roman, 2004), police–​ probation partnerships (Murphy and Lutze, 2009), multi-​agency public protection arrangements (MAPPA; Nash and Walker, 2009) and youth offending teams (Ellis and Boden, 2005; Burnett and Appleton, 2004). These collaborations facilitate intensive, joint supervision of offenders and, it is hoped, reduce crime and victims of crime. Similar thinking and practice underpinned the subsequent introduction of a multi-​agency approach to the supervision and management of known prolific offenders in the community, through the establishment of Sunnyvale IOM in 2008. For its part, Sunnyvale IOM drew on the main criminal justice agencies involved in the management of offenders: Prisons and Probation, Police and Criminal Justice Intervention Teams (drugs workers). Where offenders were traditionally dealt with separately by these agencies, the Sunnyvale partnership aimed to avoid inconsistencies in approaches and variations in priorities (Hopkins and Wickson, 2013; Ellis and Boden, 2005). A further aspect of the IOM rationale was that criminogenic factors driving recidivism amongst Sunnyvale offenders (e.g. health, debt, housing, education and employment) needed to be addressed by more than one agency. The intention, however, was not to create an amalgamation of the agencies into one; rather, it was to combine the knowledge and abilities of a range of organisations to focus on one issue—​in this case combating recidivism. Throughout the fieldwork, sound-​ bite reminders of the ‘common purpose’ and ‘coordinated’ ‘common sense’

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provision of ‘joined up’ services, within the framework of IOM, emanated from both the surround (e.g. Ministry of Justice, 2010; House of Commons, 2011) and organisational field (e.g. senior Sunnyvale police and probation managers). However, as Burnett and Appleton (2004: 34) observe, there is ‘considerable room for disjunction between the policy statements and how they are realised on the ground’. Crawford and Jones (1995: 20), for instance, found that alongside the common-​sense appeal of multi-​agency working, conflict and structural power struggles are also likely to exist, ‘As a consequence of different histories, cultures and traditions, organisations engaging in multi-​agency community crime prevention work pursue conflicting ideologies, strategies and practices’. Organisations, Crawford and Jones (1995: 20) continue, ‘bring to “crime problems” competing claims to specialist knowledge and expertise, as well as differential access to both human and material resources’. Walters (1996: 88), when investigating multi-​agency crime prevention in Australia, documented ‘structural tensions and consistent and persistent struggles over limited resources, power, prestige and ownership’. Inter-​organisational power struggles have also been reported within situations where no specified framework of multi-​agency coordination exists, for example, within police custody suites (Skinns, 2011). The workings of Sunnyvale IOM were also found to be permeated with contrasting world views and competing interests. Of course, opinions were varied within each organisation and there was evidence of good working inter-​agency relationships at a worker-​to-​worker level, but on the whole I found Sunnyvale IOM to be a far less unified organisation than that presented by the mission-​type statements found within glossy promotional pamphlets. Past positions, values and historical challenges The ideological and cultural foundations of the police and other criminal justice agencies, but particularly the probation service, have traditionally resulted in starkly contrasting positions within the criminal justice system (Mott, 1992; Crawford and Jones, 1995). Vanstone (2004), for example, describes traditional probation values and ways of working as ‘humanitarian’. In practice, this means probation workers are generally focused on more welfare-​orientated intervention methods that involve rehabilitation and precipitating change among the men and women they encounter (Mawby and Worrall, 2011b: 7). This position fits with probation workers’ belief in the ability of people to change and their broader recognition of the human worth of offenders. But the thinking is also aligned with what have been the central objectives of the probation service since the early 2000s: protecting the public and reducing reoffending (Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Probation [HMIP], 2021). This aims to do through a combination of ‘rehabilitation’, which assumes that people can change, and

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‘risk management’ of offenders (also achievable through rehabilitation/​changing offenders) (HMIP, 2020).2 Drug workers maintain a similar outlook to probation staff in terms of the possibility of offender change. Typically, these workers adopt a ‘management’ approach … centred on rehabilitation, change and working ‘alongside the offender’ (Dennis et al., 2020; Day et al., 2019; Hunter et al., 2005; Beyer et al., 2002; Kothari et al., 2002). The police, on the other hand, have historically given short shrift to notions such as rehabilitation. Instead, cop culture propagates ideas about the containment and neutralisation of ‘career criminals’ that are simply unable to change. For frontline officers, dealing with these ‘types’ typically involves a staple diet of traditional catch and convict policing practices (Young, 1991). Research on prison officer culture is more limited than that of the police, but although, as Liebling (2007) contends, prison staff cultures do vary considerably across institutions, the literature has over time and space identified some shared cultural traits by prison and police officers, including discretion, suspicion and cynicism, prejudice, authoritarianism, isolation and solidarity and a ‘them’ and ‘us’ attitude towards prisoners and senior managers (Crawley, 2004; Kreiner et al., 2006; Liebling, 2011; Mawby and Worrall, 2011b; Cockcroft, 2016). Traditionally, the culture of prison officers has been found to precipitate an aggressive and punitive attitude towards prisoners, one that is also cynical about the possibilities of rehabilitation (Crewe et al., 2011: 108). Notwithstanding that a common purpose had brought the core partners of Sunnyvale together, the distinctions between the roles of the various organisations have historically often led to distrustful relationships and sometimes conflicting missions (Murphy and Lutze, 2009: 65). The overlap between police and prison service culture (and the day-​to-​day work carried out within each organisation) might be expected to propel police and prison officers into a good working relationship within a strategic partnership.This assumption, however, has proved unfounded. Nash and Walker (2009: 172–​173), who examined multi-​agency collaboration within MAPPA, found ‘blockages’ and ‘barriers’ to communication between the police and prison service, particularly concerning the sharing of risk-​related information about offenders. This precipitated a view among some police officers, interviewed by Nash and Walker, that the prison service was a ‘problematic’ partner. The historical relationship between the police and probation service is one best characterised as fraught with indifference, suspicion and hostility. ‘We let ‘em out and the police locked ‘em up, pretty much’, one probation worker reported to Mawby and Worrall (2011a: 86), when asked to recall relations with the police during the 1970s. In the Sunnyvale IOM study, seasoned police officers recalled a historical climate of animosity, suspicion and conflicting interests between the two organisations. One officer, David, provided the following example of how tensions between the organisations had played out in ‘territorial disputes’:

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We never used to have a relationship with probation. It would be—​you as a police officer would be jumped up and down to find an offender—​ find he’s at probation—​go to arrest him—​they shout and scream and say what are [you] doing in the building—​well we work for the same people you know. Past relationships between the police and drug workers were similarly disjointed. Hunter et al. (2005: 348), who examined arrest referral schemes in London, found evidence of ‘frost’ and ‘scepticism’ within the outlook of police officers (particularly ‘old stalwarts’) directed towards drug workers and the referral scheme itself. Drugs workers, like probation officers (Mawby and Worrall, 2011b), were viewed as ‘hippy-​types’ and ‘tree-​huggers’. One Sunnyvale drug worker (drawn from the Criminal Justice Intervention Team3) I encountered (with many years of service) recalled how distrust and suspicion were overtly expressed within the police custody areas he had worked in, in the past: I’ll never forget this police officer—​he had been in the job since the 1970s, 1980s—​because I’ve got a good sense of humour it’s how I break down and get in with people and stuff.This sergeant, he printed out a bit of paper and put it on our wall and there was a circle and one outside the circle and he said, ‘Look at that, you see that circle?’, he said. ‘That’s us and that’s you’ and I said to him, ‘You what? Thank fuck for that, if that’s how you feel [….]’. But it was only him to be honest and he was a bit of a beast. I had loads of scenarios with him. Culturally, the relationship between the prison and probation service has also been ‘uneasy’ due to previously opposed missions and strategies (Mawby and Worrall, 2011b: 81). Both organisations share the mission of keeping communities safe, but the strategies employed are very different. Probation responsibility for public protection and community safety begins with managing offender resettlement in the community (Parsons, 2018; Padfield, 2012; Padfield and Maruna, 2006), whereas prisons retain primary responsibility for keeping offenders safely locked away from the community. The missions of the two organisations overlap when it comes to reintegrating offenders back into society and for several decades probation officers have been located and working inside prisons (Mawby et al., 2005: 128; Taylor et al., 2017). Within the walls of the prison, however, the cultural conflict has been played out variously. Mawby and Worrall (2011b: 81–​82) observe that probation workers have been subject to sexism, racism and violence by prison officers. Mawby and Worrall found two cultural issues precipitating uneasiness within the relationship: (i) probation workers feared ‘cultural acclimatisation’ and ‘institutionalisation’ resulting from working within an environment that was ‘anathema to everything they stood for’; and (ii) there was anxiety amongst prison officers they would ‘be deprived

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of those aspects of their job that gave them the most satisfaction and stopped their role from being exclusively that of “turnkey” or “jailor” ’. Such differences might also have been anticipated in relationships between prison officers and drug workers who formed part of the Sunnyvale IOM partnership. Past research provides evidence of negative attitudes amongst prison officers towards drugs users and treatment. McIntosh and Saville (2006: 238) for instance, during their study of the provision of drug treatment in Scottish prisons, observed that a majority of mainstream prison officers retained negative and unsympathetic orientations towards prisoners who experienced problem drug use. They found that these offenders were considered by officers as ‘scum’ who deserved to be ‘put against the wall and shot’. Such attitudes had the potential to hinder working relations between prison officers and other more welfare-​orientated professionals within the Sunnyvale IOM structure. Inherent differences were apparent within the historical world outlooks of the various partnership agencies. Police and prison officers shared a culturally informed view of the need to deal with offenders coercively and authoritatively, whereas probation officers and drug workers presented a more humanitarian view of managing offenders and their criminogenic needs. Nonetheless, shared objectives, philosophical changes (Murphy and Lutze, 2009: 65), an increasing culture of managerialism and a growing public protection agenda have precipitated the forging of closer links between criminal justice organisations (Nash, 1999; Nash and Walker, 2009). This represents a concerted move away from penal welfarism to a more punitive, crime control-​ orientated, risk-​management agenda (Garland, 2001; Pratt, 2000). We live in a ‘risk society’, scholars such as Beck (1992) and Holloway and Jefferson (1997) argue, a society driven by actuarial concerns and media-​inspired ‘moral panics’ (Thompson, 1998).The police, the prison, probation services and drug workers are now tightly bound up in the management of those deemed by elements of society to be ‘risky’. This development had significant implications for partnership working under the umbrella of Sunnyvale IOM, which are explored below. Mission orientation: partner agencies as intelligence gatherers Multi-​ agency criminal justice working aims to promote what Gough (2010: 23) describes as a ‘risk-​complex’—​that is, to make shared decisions and ensure broader aims of public protection and security are met. This required sharing of relevant information within the Sunnyvale framework, but there were no formal protocols governing the process. What was clear, however, was that the formal role of police offender managers was to generate intelligence on Sunnyvale offenders. This positioned these officers first and foremost as knowledge workers (Ericson and Haggerty, 1997: 21), producing information to support the RAG system,4 which informed the day-​to-​day management of Sunnyvale offenders. However, the offender managers I encountered did not

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always work alone in this sense, with officers readily enlisting the assistance of the partnership agencies in their intelligence-​gathering activities. Some partners were more open to providing such assistance than others. Prison workers, for example, were content to be involved in policing activity. Consider the following fieldnote: I accompanied Dave [offender manager] to visit a Sunnyvale offender he was responsible for managing. The man was in custody, but in a hospital having swallowed drugs in an effort to smuggle them into prison. Dave explained that his objective was to gather any intelligence that might be generated by the situation. Gerald [a prison officer and part of the Sunnyvale unit] was asked by Dave to accompany him on the visit. ‘This should smooth access to [the prisoner]’, Dave noted. When asked about the attempt to take the drugs into the prison, the motive, the man said he had done so to ‘keep him [supplied] during his sentence’. Dave did not accept the explanation, instead asking the man repeatedly whether he owed people money for the drugs, whether anyone was ‘after him’, both on the street and in prison. The man said he did not owe anyone for the drugs, but he would talk more if the prison officers from the local prison guarding him left the room. The officers agreed if Gerald handcuffed the man to his own arm to prevent escape. The officers left the room and the man began to talk—​ providing names of drug dealers and who were ‘after him’. At times, the stream of information was interrupted by the man’s tearful cries of ‘you’ve got to help me’, to which Dave and Gerald said, ‘Look the more information you give us, the more we can help’. Dave and Gerald made notes whilst the man continued providing intelligence. Neither officer mentioned the support aspect of the Sunnyvale scheme. On leaving the hospital Gerald revealed how useful the visit had been. ‘I can now go back and put a security intelligence report in on the basis of what we’ve heard today. He was going to bring £3,000 worth of drugs into the prison. That’s a lot. He would have used it to pay his debts, to buy his freedom. We now know he was attempting to traffic drugs into the prison. I need to find out though whether he tried to get himself arrested’. ‘That [visit] was well worth it’, Dave agreed. For Gerald, his participating in police intelligence gathering exercises seemed to be just as important to prison security as it was in contributing towards Sunnyvale’s broader policing objectives. The above episode also reaffirms the primacy of the intelligence-​gathering frame for some offender managers. Here the frame (or working rule) overrode any desires Dave might have harboured to provide the man with support; instead, all requests were ignored, diverted or renegotiated by Dave in favour of good quality intelligence. Dave made no attempt to build a rapport with the man or even dangle Sunnyvale’s ‘carrot’ of

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support. Instead, what I observed was a close working relationship between a police officer and a prison officer, intent on deploying their authority in an effort to procure culturally informed objectives suited to the core aims of both organisations: extract valuable intelligence on criminal activities and persuade the man to inform on other prisoners. Sunnyvale police–​probation relations, whilst perhaps less naturally formed than those between police and prison staff, were found to offer immediate and tangible benefits. During the fieldwork, police offender managers pointed to the various opportunities available to them for generating useful information on activities of Sunnyvale offenders.Visits to the homes of offenders were seen as a particularly important aspect of this form of operational practice. But as one offender manager, Chris, pointed out, working closely with the probation service had facilitated a new level of access to the homes of people managed by Sunnyvale, significantly without the use of legal powers: In the past if police officers needed to go into someone’s accommodation on a warrant or to arrest them, they’d have to have reasonable grounds to suspect they had committed and offence. Or we’d actually have a warrant to go into the premises. But we’re in a very privileged position—​police officers on [Sunnyvale]. We can go on home visits with probation. Going into people’s houses, take a look around, see any footwear that they might have there, clothing, property that may be there, which ultimately may or may not have been involved in crime. Where offender managers were unable to accompany probation workers to appointments with offenders, probation and other workers could still be asked to gather knowledge on behalf of the police. In practice, this extension of traditional police surveillance methods (Ericson and Haggerty, 1997) meant that probation (and drug workers) were asked to covertly record information on the auxiliary traits of offenders. The following fieldnote captures this type of request: Two probation workers, Anna and Greta, were discussing a request they had received from Sunnyvale District Enforcement Team (DET) police. The officers had requested that Anna record details of an offender’s clothing and trainers during an appointment scheduled for later that day. Anna was unable to make the appointment and passed the request onto Greta who would meet with the offender in her stead. Anna noted ‘they think [XXXX] is responsible for a recent spate of burglaries in the local area.’ Greta said, ‘I’ll do it, Mike [police offender manager] mentioned this the other day, he said the “burglary squad”5 want to know this stuff as well’. When questioned about assisting with police intelligence gathering, probation workers gave varied responses. Six out of the seven interviewed reported being

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involved in police investigations at some point, albeit in some cases in a minor role. All said that they believed that assisting the police in this way was not part of their role in Sunnyvale. Furthermore, mirroring the findings of Murphy and Lutze (2009: 70), some longer serving probation workers, like Martin, said they felt vulnerable to ‘mission distortion’. That ‘prioritisation of law enforcement objectives might come at the expense of providing support to Sunnyvale offenders’. Others, like Julie, complained that police requests to report on offenders in this way made her feel ‘very uncomfortable’ and that ‘strength of character is needed to resist that kind of pressure’. The general suggestion from probation workers was that if the police required this information then ‘they should come into the meeting and ask those questions of the offender, or perhaps, lean over the banister and have a look themselves’. However, despite these complaints, in practice probation workers were active partners in the police intelligence gathering process where there was strong evidential basis for getting involved in the process. As Julie, a probation worker, explained: If I had significant concerns about somebody, say if I’d read a piece of [police] intelligence that said we have reason to believe that last night a house was burgled at X street and I had someone come in and say, ‘I was at my friend’s house at X street last night’, I might then say he was at X street. Because it’s intelligence. As Tangen and Briah (2018: 7) observe, ‘probation officers accept public protection and multi-​agency working as uncontroversial core aspects of their role’. This shift also means that probation workers are now active participants in the production of knowledge upon which decisions can be made about risk assessment and management. At their disposal are surveillance technologies, like saliva testing, electronic tagging and doorstep monitoring (Padfield and Maruna, 2006: 338). When communicated to police officers, the information provides a steady source of contemporaneous intelligence, as one probation worker acknowledged: Probably some of the intelligence [the police] get from us is probably some of the best intelligence they get. We are seeing people regularly. We are seeing changes in behaviour. We are monitoring drug use. We are—​we’ve got that information. Surprisingly, in light of these and other comments, Sunnyvale police viewed the flow of information from other Sunnyvale partners as inadequate. As one DET officer informally noted during a routine patrol, ‘I don’t think the information sharing is very good; it would be better if they could tell us more about these offenders; probation don’t seem to want to tell us anything’. Drug workers were also seen as less than forthcoming with information on offenders. ‘Sharing information is against their ethos of client-​centred approaches’, one

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police offender manager suggested. What was less clear, however, was how far the partnership agencies should go in assisting police with their enquiries. For some, recording and reporting of the auxiliary traits of offenders during appointments was clearly an acceptable way of working; others, however, as the following conversation reveals, were prepared to get more deeply involved in police investigations: FRED:  Have you been involved in police investigations? ROGER: Yeah, there was an incident where we there was

a robbery. I was very heavily involved in that investigation. FRED:  In your role as a [Sunnyvale] probation officer? ROGER: Yeah, helping the process of investigation, supplying the information to the major crime investigation unit, helping them in achieving their objective which was to apprehend the perpetrator and absolutely, yeah, I felt I was quite key to the whole process, because the offender was released on bail and he was coming in for my appointments and the unit dealing with the incident were quite interested in what was he wearing, what shoes was he wearing, what was his demeanour like, things he said. What are his drug tests like? Where is he staying? I was doing frequent home visits during this period and this whole information was fed back to them trying to find out who the individual was and also about trying to identify who the perpetrator was. And I came back on a Monday morning having been away and the police showed me this caption on CCTV. The CCTV that was in the building that was robbed, and I recognised the gait of this individual which was unique to the guy that I was supervising—​the particular way this man came through the door—​I’d got to know that about him. So, I fed that information back to the team and yeah, he was arrested. Mirroring the attitudes of most Sunnyvale probation workers, a majority of Sunnyvale drugs workers (two out of three interviewed) said they were concerned about becoming a conduit for police intelligence gathering. One worker noted that in the early stages of the scheme he was ‘fearful’ that he might be ‘[used] to gather information about what the police want to know’. Another drugs worker expressed similar anxieties about whether ‘therapeutic sessions [with offenders] were going to be used to provide intelligence to the [police]’. Yet, despite this unease—​like probation workers—​drugs workers did in practice provide offender managers with information (e.g. on offender living arrangements, general progress in the community and current medication dosages). Indeed, one drugs worker suggested that ideas about the potentially sinister motives of Sunnyvale police were misconceptions: I felt part of my function was going to be to get intelligence to hand over to the police. But it’s actually, not the case. It’s discussing cases [with police] for the purpose of planning [offender] care, which is not the same thing

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at all. We were talking about—​should we go and see this person and see what’s happening—​get them to new accommodation whatever. I haven’t ever felt like I’m being asked to betray someone’s confidence for the sake of informing the police. Other drugs workers, however, suggested that they would simply refuse to provide information to the police if they felt that to do so would be inappropriate: Lot of times they come to us and ask us for information that’s not appropriate—​and I’m confident and I’ll say, that’s not really appropriate to give you that information. It’s not fair to the client, it’s not going to benefit anyone. All it’s going to do is help you kick their doors down and nick them for what? You know what I mean? Largely, probation and drug workers were in agreement; it is the role of the police—​more specifically offender managers—​to gather relevant, contemporaneous intelligence, not that of the partner agencies. Consequently, despite shifts in the organisational field, which have precipitated the partnership agencies to be more public protection and law enforcement orientated (Nash, 1999; Nash and Walker, 2009), there appear to be areas where some workers were unwilling to extend their ways of working outside of accustomed boundaries. But what we saw is that some workers had been drafted into the activities of the police. The question that remains, however, is whether the collusion of non-​police agencies in such practices was a result of inter-​agency relationships and changing attitudes within Sunnyvale. Convergence and divergence: occupational attitudes and relationships Participants suggested that relationships between workers from the partnership agencies were reasonable and cooperative. My own observations confirmed that interactions between partners were generally cordial. On several occasions, I witnessed what I would describe as good-​ humoured banter between workers from different organisations. What fuelled and shaped this banter appeared to be a set of underlying tensions between the different occupational attitudes to offenders. In particular, police scepticism about the possibility of offender desistance manifested itself in some of the ‘office banter’ between offender managers: Karen noted how she didn’t like a particular offender because ‘he beats up his girlfriend, he’s skinny and horrible and won’t ever change’. This comment provoked laughter amongst the other offender managers and a comment from Bob, who sarcastically suggested that Karen’s comment was

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‘not very IOM’. ‘Next time you see him you better give him a hug’. More laughter. (Fieldnote) Scepticism towards the worthiness of attempting to precipitate change amongst Sunnyvale offenders links to the underlying police working assumption (fuelled by police pessimism and cynicism) that those with previous (by definition all prolific offenders) are ‘career criminals’ that are never going to change. ‘If it was up to us’, one offender manager noted during an informal conversation, ‘we’d lock them all up’. The police working rule is to arrest people as soon as they are ‘at it’ with a view to ‘getting them off the streets’ as soon as possible. However, there was limited acceptance that a handful of offenders might change and, at times, attempts were made to direct those who were believed to be ‘at it’ towards the available pathway support mechanisms, rather than the more obvious police response, arrest (see further below). Although dependent on the facts of each case, attempting to re-​engage offenders with available support mechanisms might have been the more proportionate and therefore legitimate response to the behaviour in question. Yet, and perhaps in reflection of police ideas about the likelihood of offender change, talk of attempting to support Sunnyvale offenders through the pathway mechanisms, which is part of the ‘official job’ of police offender managers (Police Operations Handbook, 2010), was relatively non-​existent amongst the majority of officers I encountered. For one police sergeant, it seemed to be a source of embarrassment: This morning the Sunnyvale sergeant (Ken) was discussing an impending trip to London with Mike, an offender manager. The sergeant was putting the finishing touches to a presentation he was scheduled to give to some metropolitan police officers about the Sunnyvale approach to managing prolific offenders. Ken complained that it was difficult to ‘fit in’ the slide on the role of Sunnyvale police in the rehabilitation of prolific offenders. ‘Just take it out’, Mike suggested, whilst laughing. ‘I’d like to’ Ken replied, ‘I don’t think anyone up there will be interested, in any case–​yeah. I just think I’ll take it out’. (Fieldnote) Murphy and Lutze (2009: 69), who examined police–​probation public safety partnership in North America, also found that activity beyond that of typical crime control-​focused policing was often viewed negatively by police officers. That some police officers appeared uncomfortable at being required to engage in the rehabilitation of offenders also reflects some of the central concerns of police culture. Scepticism around the likelihood of offender change can be situated within the police officer’s inherently cynical disposition (Reiner,

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2010). The desire to focus on crime control-​orientated catch and convict strategies responded to the police sense of mission as crime fighters. Offender managers who did on occasion attempt to put support measures in place for offenders tended to be sceptical that they would prove successful. For example, one method of managing risky Sunnyvale offenders or giving them ‘more attention’, as Bob put it, was to meet offenders at the prison gates on release. The idea behind this was to mitigate the risk of offences being committed on immediate release from prison. Typically, however, as the following fieldnote captures, such methods appeared to be viewed as a pointless exercise: Mike was going to pick up an offender from the prison. He had visited the offender back in December (because the offender was known to be risky because he had a massive drug problem and a general ‘pain’) and who had requested some help from Sunnyvale back in December, specifically regarding housing and drugs. Mike had made the relevant referral to the drug agency and today was to take him from prison to begin a drug rehabilitation programme. Mike, after liaising with the probation service, had managed to organise some accommodation for the offender whilst he participated in the drug treatment program. I asked what Mike thought the offender’s chances of change were. His response was revealing: ‘I’m not sure; he’s making all the right noises but [….] he could just “stick two fingers up at us” today, but there you go … I think he’ll stay there for a couple of weeks and then he’ll have a slip. He’s been offending like it’s going out of fashion. I don’t see any reason why he’s suddenly going to change now’. Whilst deep-​rooted pessimism shaped police thinking about offender chances of change and rehabilitation, in marked contrast, probation and drugs workers held a universal belief that offenders can and do change. For example, the comments of one probation worker reflected this theme: With probation work there is a rule of optimism that people can change and be rehabilitated. It isn’t really shared by police; they tend to work from the other end of the viewpoint. My feeling is they tend to work from a rule of pessimism; people will offend given the opportunity. During the study, drugs workers provided anecdotal accounts of prolific offenders that had ‘turned their lives around’, were now ‘doing very well’ and were held up as examples of ‘how [Sunnyvale]’ can work’. One drugs worker expressed the following view when asked whether long-​term change was possible for prolific offenders: Yes of course. I mean it requires a jackpot of a lot of different things coming together at the same time. Sometimes it doesn’t require that at all. Just by

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everyone’s efforts something comes along and just changes their lives.You can never write people off. All of sudden they turn up and they’re on a service user panel and they’re doing voluntary work, you’re doing interview panels with them and two years ago you were picking them up off the floor. So, you just never know. Police officers, probation and drugs workers held different philosophies that reflected the goals of their organisations. Police assumed long-​term offender change was unlikely; the crime control-​ orientated frame or working rule adopted by officers, therefore, was that recidivists will inevitably offend again. As a result, these people must be speedily caught, convicted and returned to prison. Probation and drug workers on the other hand maintained a steadfast belief that many Sunnyvale offenders could, if supported, desist from offending. This viewpoint could be tied to values associated with both services more broadly: the recognition of the human worth of offenders and a fundamental belief in the rehabilitation of even the most prolific offenders (Burke and Davies, 2011; Robinson, 2013; Mawby and Worrall, 2011b). In the next section, I examine whether close working within Sunnyvale gave rise to structural and cultural transformations among Sunnyvale probation workers. Cultural change Sunnyvale workers suggested that there had been a cultural transformation amongst those working within the scheme. A good working example of this was the insistence by a majority of probation workers that police attitudes had changed towards both them and offenders. Probation workers reported that police officers had at first been sceptical about whether precipitating change amongst IOM offenders was possible. ‘I think initially [the police] were just there waiting for everybody to [unfinished sentence] … I think they were sceptical. Everybody’s going to slip up sometime; we’ll be there when they do’, sort of thing, Barry, a probation worker, commented during interview.Yet despite the deep-​rooted police scepticism documented above, when questioned about whether police thinking had changed since the formation of the partnership, probation workers largely agreed that it had. As Barry continues to explain: Now they’re asking about how [offenders are] doing and seeming like they want to see them do well, where I think at the start they thought that they didn’t want to see them do well, that they’re just going to mess up; now I think they genuinely do want to see people do well. Other probation workers went further, arguing that police practices were moving ‘more towards probation culture than the other way around’. Matt, for example, made the following interview comments:

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The police are more inclined to do diversionary work or rehabilitative work than I thought they would be interested in doing. I don’t hear people moaning, ‘Well we should just be locking these people up’, and I see evidence of offender managers doing things like making referrals, going out of their way to get people into housing and there’s not a probation person’s involved with that case at that time.You know, being more like what a picture of probation officers might be, whatever our stereotype. Observations also suggested that some police officers had adopted a way of working and thinking more closely associated with core probation service values. On several occasions I witnessed offender mangers supporting offenders into housing, education and drugs-​related services. Offenders were given lifts to appointments, collected from the prison gates and referred to various agencies. On more than one occasion, one police offender manager, Adrian, attempted to connect with Sunnyvale offenders on a personal level. The following fieldnote provides a salient example: We arrived at the local prison to visit an offender with whom Adrian had been working with. The man had been ‘self-​harming’ since his return to prison. Adrian listened carefully and patiently to the problems the man was facing (e.g. with family relationships, and medication). Adrian responded empathetically, ‘Come on, I’ve known you for years, since my days on the burglary squad. I’ve seen what happened to your mum.You don’t want that do you mate? We need to try and get you motivated, get you into rehab. You need to speak to someone when you’re feeling low and we need to make sure you’re getting the right medication’. The man started crying and Adrian immediately put his arm round the man to comfort him. ‘I’m really going to push for rehab for you fella, we need to get you some help’. Later, during formal interview, I pressed Adrian on his role as a Sunnyvale police officer: My role is centered around offering pathway support to individuals that I manage—​offering support around housing, health care, drug rehabilitation, their families, education and training. Just finding the right agency to people at any given point during their time on the scheme and during their recovery. We work closely with the probation service, the prison service and people from the criminal justice intervention team and there’s also an expectancy for us to know the other agencies that are on the periphery and to engage with them on a regular basis. Adrian’s conceptualisation of the police role within Sunnyvale was far removed from the dominant catch and convict frame, historically associated with frontline police officers. Rather it appeared closer to the welfare-​orientated approach of

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the probation services and that of drug workers. Adrian, therefore, seemed to have drifted away from the culture of the police organisation towards that of the probation service or perhaps even of drugs workers. However, as some police offender managers pointed out during interviews, the methods of Adrian were far from normative from a policing point of view. As Mike observed, [Adrian] has very much gone down the route of probation. Very much gone down that kind of care route compared to people like Chris who is very much a traditional, ‘No I’m a police (emphasis added) offender manager’, I won’t be doing those forms; that’s not my job. Moreover, some police offender managers ridiculed what they viewed as liberal offender management. On one occasion in the police office, following a conversation about some problems a Sunnyvale offender was having around retrieving clothes from an address following his eviction, I asked Karen, whether she would help the man retrieve his belongings. Her answer was revealing: ‘We don’t move people, well some of us don’t anyway, those of us that are still police officers’. Other police offender managers situated nearby laughed at this comment. The sergeant then turned to me noting, ‘I’m afraid that’s a bit of a standing joke here. Have you seen the [Channel 4, 2011] documentary? Some officers seem to take the support side a little too far in some of our opinions’. Whilst this episode demonstrated further that office banter was rooted in occupational tensions about the practices used to support Sunnyvale offenders, it also reinforced the point that for the vast majority of police offender managers, the focus was on gathering as much intelligence as possible. Police offender managers: the dominance of the intelligence gathering frame When questioned about their general role within Sunnyvale, police offender managers reflected on their mission by emphasising the importance of intelligence gathering during encounters with Sunnyvale offenders. Seven out of eight officers interviewed viewed this as the main role of police officers within the IOM framework. Chris explained this further during interview: My primary role is to glean intelligence—​you know—​see what their [modus operandi] are in relation to when they offend—​what drug issues they’ve got, what clothing they’ve got on—​new clothes, new trainers anything like that really. I will endeavour to try and get to all their appointments with their probation officers to obviously see whether they’re testing positive/​negative,

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what they’re wearing, who they’re hanging around with, just generally where they’re at, how positive and how willing they are to engage with us. That’s obviously from a police point of view, so I can feed that intelligence back into the system, seeing whether they’re toeing the line or not. What Chris was describing here was an intelligence-​gathering frame (Hawkins, 2002; Goffman, 1972). The frame was used to make sense of the offender manager role. However, it was also linked to the organisational field (Hawkins, 2002) mandate, the expectation that police officers will focus on policing-​ related issues, mainly intelligence gathering for enforcement purposes. As Nash and Walker (2009: 303) explain, multi-​agency working is meant to combine the knowledge and abilities of a range of relevant agencies brought together on one issue. In this sense, the whole is stronger than its constituent parts, but its strength arises from its constituent parts (Crawford, 1998: 119–​120). For Sunnyvale police offender managers, the constituent part was gathering intelligence. It was a principal frame and working rule (McConville et al., 1991), one which took primacy over offering offenders support, as the following fieldnote illustrates: On arrival at the court cells, we found a man Derek had been trying to locate for some time. He had been arrested on a warrant. As Derek had expected the man was ‘in a state’, apparently caused by drug and alcohol abuse. The man was currently risk-​assessed as ‘green’ because until now had not been committing any offences. In fact, Derek suggested that the man ‘did not need to be on the scheme anymore’. He had a methadone prescription, was apparently ‘stable’. By now the man had recovered from the previous night’s inebriation but was quite non-​responsive to Derek’s questions. He provided only yes or no answers. Derek was polite and patient but determined. He asked whether the man was ‘out robbing anymore’ ‘No’. ‘How much methadone are you on?’ ‘50ml’. ‘Are you reducing [the dose]?’ ‘Not at the moment’. ‘Are you stable?’ ‘Yes’. We left the court building, Derek seemingly satisfied with what he had found. I asked what Derek had hoped to get from the visit. Derek said he wanted to confirm his own idea that there was no need for the offender to be on the scheme and also whether the offender was on enough methadone to prevent him from committing crime to ‘top up’. Despite what appeared to be a set-​back for the man (arrest, intoxication and subsequent night in the police cells), Derek did not offer any support options such as referring him to drug and alcohol agencies for help. Derek later conceded that he had been struggling with the support side of his role: As a police officer trying to offer as best I can, the support that probation do to reduce offending, not by putting people away but by rehabilitating them [is] the more difficult part [of the job] for me because that’s not my

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normal day job … That’s something slowly sort of building up in layers with a bit of knowledge. However, adopting a welfare approach to managing Sunnyvale offenders and intelligence gathering were not always mutually exclusive activities. Offering support to offenders could provide a different means for offender managers to achieve the same end. As Adrian explained during an informal conversation: It’s about building relationships and offering support to these people. Some offender managers seem to think that it’s not their job to provide support to offenders; rather that their sole responsibility is to get intelligence. What they don’t realise is you get far more intelligence from people if you build up a rapport with them and try to support them. Police officers that appear support-​ orientated in their outlook may be as focused on intelligence gathering as their more overtly conservative colleagues. If the ‘problem’ of supporting offenders is understood, placed and accorded relevance (Hawkins, 2002: 52) within an intelligence-​gathering frame, perhaps the idea of building a rapport with offenders becomes more acceptable to police officers. The result is that any conflict between providing support to Sunnyvale offenders and the core values of cop culture may be more easily overcome. Take, for instance, Gina, who explained that she had recently taken over responsibility for an offender from Adrian. ‘I’ve worked with him before—​ got him some bedding when he last moved into supported accommodation’. The activity appears welfare-​focused and perhaps to an extent it is. However, the following comment reveals more of Gina’s motives, He was really grateful and said, ‘I never thought I’d see the day when I’m going to hug a copper’—​just for the help I gave him. It’s all about rapport building; I do something for you, you do something for me. The formation of social support-​type relationships could be viewed as an extension of what some uniformed officers do day-​to-​day on the streets: seek to develop good relations with petty persistent criminals, prostitutes and the homeless as a way of building an informal network of informants (Hobbs, 1988; Skolnick, 1966). Further, there was an element of social discipline within the practice, given that regular contact between police and Sunnyvale offenders communicated control and reminded them that they were under surveillance. Yet the actions and attitudes of a small minority of Sunnyvale police officers went further than these conventional police tactics. Police officers like Gina, who advocated that ‘if people want to help themselves you should do your utmost to help them to get off a life of crime and get their life together’ and Ben, who recognised that a ‘large part of the [offender manager] role is to engage with [Sunnyvale] offenders and try and offer them as much pathway support as we can’, appeared to have moved beyond a pure catch and convict

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policing mentality, instead adopting a more welfare-​orientated approach to the management of prolific offenders. Whilst the police and probation services approached the management of offenders from the opposite ends of the cultural spectrum, this did not prevent a certain amount of overlap between the roles of police officers and probation workers within the framework of Sunnyvale IOM. The experiences of Sunnyvale police officers along with comments made by probation workers intimated that a small minority of police officers (e.g. Gina, Ben and Adrian) had adopted attitudes and operational practices more traditionally associated with probation’s rehabilitative approach to offender management. Consider the following comments made by Adrian during interview: For me it’s never been about locking individuals up. It doesn’t work for me. I find it a lot harder. Although I go into the prison every week my job is made a lot harder by having to deal with individuals within the prison system. I’d much rather be dealing with people in the community where I’ve got the support at hand and I’m able to help them. To an extent these methods and practices, framed by some officers as rapport building, had furthered the organisational field mandate of intelligence gathering. Officers like Adrian had ‘found their own way’ of achieving policing objectives. Thus, in the main, these officers were perhaps more unyielding in their professional orientation than their actions first suggested. The excesses of cop culture were still evident within their approach to the management of Sunnyvale offenders. Indeed, rather than ‘being alongside the offender and committed to his welfare’ (Nash and Walker, 2009: 304), the vast majority of police officers I encountered were pessimistic about the likelihood of prolific offender change. This scepticism further embedded the crime control-​ orientated approach to offender management. As a result, offender managers largely adopted the approach of attempting to catch and convict offenders (preferably at the earliest opportunity). These methods could be linked to the policeman’s exaggerated desire for action and excitement. Despite close working between the police and probation organisations within Sunnyvale, values associated with the probation service had done little to moderate the central aspects of police cultural practice (also, Maguire et al., 2001: 37). What requires closer examination, however, is whether the culture of the police was dominating the practical operation of Sunnyvale IOM and/​ or had precipitated cultural shifts within the other partnership agencies towards the police. Probation worker attitudes: going the way of the police Multi-​agency working arises from a public protection agenda that promotes the increased control and risk-​management of certain dangerous offenders. Whilst

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public protection is not beyond the remit of the probation service, the notion of public protection through surveillance and other preventative measures is familiar territory for police. Yet the now shared agenda of public protection is also precipitating a shared language. As Nash (1999: 367) observes, ‘the probation service is now much more ready to discuss surveillance, control and risk-​management and reduction than previously’ (also, Kemshall and Maguire, 2001). Consider, for example, the following interview exchange: FRED:  Going

back to—​you were saying about the challenging police cultural stuff—​do you feel like traditional probation attitudes have been challenged by this way of working? MARK: Yeah. I think historic probation attitudes.The probation service itself has gone through such a shift in 20 years, from quite a sort of social, support kind of agency, befriend, assist and advise, befriend type service, to a public protection agency now and that’s all we are. Again, people like myself who have been in the service for 7 to 10 years, that’s all we’ve kind of known, that culture, whilst there’s a culture of motivate and change we are still primarily about managing risk. As Mark suggested, the culture of the probation service had already, prior to IOM, shifted towards risk-​ management. Indeed, Gelsthorpe and Mellis (2002: 227) have argued that core probation principles have been transformed from ‘advise, assist and befriend’ to ‘enforcement, rehabilitation and public protection values’. IOM joins risk-​management to these redefined objectives. Consequently, probation is now bent towards public protection through enforcement and risk-​management. This precipitates natural ideological continuities between the police and probation service, as both are now responsible for the pre and post-​conviction risk-​management of offenders (Mawby et al., 2007). However, Sunnyvale probation officers did point to differences in culture and practice between the organisations within the partnership. For example, many probation workers, particularly those working within police buildings, struggled with the negative attitudes held by the police towards offenders. For the majority of probation workers, offenders were people that needed encouragement and support in order to effect change in their lives. Some workers, therefore, on transition to a more police-​centred environment, were ‘shocked’ by the negative language used by some police officers to describe Sunnyvale offenders. Burnett and Appleton (2004: 38) also reported a disjuncture between the language used by police and that used by social work colleagues within a youth offending team. However, although not as frequently as their police colleagues, within Sunnyvale probation workers were observed describing offenders in equally negative terms. Indeed, some of the workers who initially claimed they were ‘shocked’ at the disparaging language used by the police were later found

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to be using the same, or similar terms to describe Sunnyvale offenders. The following fieldnote, recorded at Southside, provides due illustration: Kirsty, a probation worker, mentioned that she had moved over to IOM from ‘ordinary probation’ just over 4 months ago. I asked her how she had experienced the transition. ‘It’s been fine actually; I don’t mind it at all. I was a bit, well, I wondered what working closely to the police would be like, but it’s been ok, so far. Although I initially felt quite shocked about the negative way they talk about offenders, it’s everybody, the way everybody talks about offenders’. Later in the morning I overheard Mike [police offender manager] and Anna [probation] discussing Mike’s appointment with an offender, earlier that day. ‘Offenders just tell you want you want to know’, Anna said to Mike, who laughed, noting, ‘He’s a smarmy git, that one’. Anna laughed and responded, ‘Tell me about it. I know his family; they’re all little shits’. It is possible that structural change within the organisational field, enabling closer working between the police and probation service, has resulted in some cultural transference between police officers and probation workers, as evidenced by the shared use of language. On the other hand, what I witnessed may have amounted to no more than what Mawby and Worrall (2011a: 90) term ‘pockets of cultural distortion within the general ideological standoff ’. Nonetheless, throughout the study a minority of probation workers referred to IOM offenders as ‘liars’ and ‘wasters’, who were incapable of change. In one instance, two probation workers described a Sunnyvale offender as ‘presenting well, but actually a nasty little fucker’, whilst on another occasion Anna suggested an offender she was required to supervise was ‘a liar and a complete waste of space, who had no chance whatsoever of change or rehabilitation’. These descriptions seemed to fit more closely with the police world outlook, suggesting a level of cultural transference between the two organisations. Nevertheless, the shift also appeared to manifest at a more practical level. During the fieldwork, one drugs worker surprised me, taking me aside and saying, ‘I need to have a word with you. Some of these [Sunnyvale] probation officers have become wannabe cops’. I asked Ivan to explain. What he said was very illuminating: Yesterday, I saw one of the probation officers at […] police station and she was a bit pumped up about something and said to me, ‘We’ve just nicked […]’. I was like, so what? She was trying to high-​five me. I thought, that’s not something to high-​five me about; you can high-​five me when we get someone into treatment for 6 months, then I’ve got something to celebrate, not because you’ve just nicked someone … I think she got the hump about it afterwards, that I didn’t share the same view as her about it. She’s gone quiet but I’m not bothered.

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There was also evidence that a deeper organisational understanding between the police and probation service had arisen: RALPH: 

I think traditionally probation has been perceived as being quite sort of soft, but this scheme has allayed that. I think this scheme has put that perception to rest and you would have a lot of police officers now that would agree that community sentences are actually far harder to comply with. It takes a lot of effort for someone to come in and actually stick in the community, provide negative drug tests, stick to the rules and that perception has been challenged and I think that’s been something quite positive that we’ve worked out and the system has helped in achieving that objective. FRED: Is it the perceptions that have been challenged and not so much the attitudes of probation officers? RALPH:  No these are the perceptions that I have from other people and probation has worked very hard at challenging those perceptions and I’ve done it myself in conversations with people. No, I don’t agree with you there; this is my opinion; and it’s taken discussion and debates over that opinion and people get to appreciate that probation is an organisation that ought to be trusted. They’re doing their court orders accountably and it has taken time to challenge that but I think we’re getting there. The formation of strategic partnerships, like Sunnyvale IOM, has led to subconscious questioning and reformation of conventional relationships between agencies within the partnership. In this instance, attitudes outside of probation, directed towards and about probation, were confronted. Other probation workers suggested that close working promoted a growth of a two-​way understanding amongst the police and probation officers. A senior probation worker, Roger, made the following remarks: I think that the police have become much more aware of the limitations of taking enforcement action. Especially around drug use. I think the police offender managers on the team have become much more aware that if somebody has been using crack or heroin for ten years, they’re not going to stop the moment they’re arrested and given a community order and enter into treatment.That it’s a process that’s going to take time. Also, I think, our awareness [as an organisation] maybe for some staff of getting more police intelligence, finding out what is actually going on, has maybe knocked a bit of naivety off some staff, definitely not all of them, but an appreciation of what the police have to face, day-​to-​day. You can’t work closely with another organisation without learning something; well, you shouldn’t be able to. Police cultural traits were now better understood and accorded relevance by probation workers in the light of new realisations about the lived experiences

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of day-​to-​day policework. Equally, from the point of view of both Ralph and Roger, police attitudes seemed to have changed towards probation workers and the service in general. As one police offender manager, Gary, remarked during interview: Police, want to lock people up, probation want to rehabilitate them—​you know—​and it’s oil and water. If you’re put in a situation where you have to work together, then misconceptions tend to fall, and I think that’s the same with anything. New operational understandings While workers from the police and probation service pointed to previous differences in culture and practice between the two organisations, new operational understandings appeared to have developed within the IOM partnership. Some police offender managers reported that a new appreciation of what probation do had developed out of closer working between the two agencies. One officer, for instance, reported a new ‘appreciation’ of how arresting offenders immediately after or during probation appointments could amount to a conflict of interest between the two organisations: FRED:  Do DANNY: I

you view probation differently now from what you once did? totally understand now. If people are going to be totally fearful of police everywhere every time they come near probation [….], it’s an appreciation again that they’re not going to be able to do their work which means you’re shooting yourself in the foot if you just keep trying to be a bit belligerent and trying to go about it in the same old way. And my old view of probation was a bit young in service. I was told to go get them; you go get them. If somebody’s in your way if you’ve got powers; you go straight through them. But that’s it. At the end of the day if that person gets in the way you get a grilling; you just let an offender get away. It’s a bit different now. I don’t need to chase offenders around. I imagine, I kind of have to explain that now to other officers when they phone up. ‘Can we come and get him?’ ‘Well no—​but what we can do is …—​I’ll arrange. He’ll be on a street nearby at this time’. So, it’s just little things like that. It is just stupid, but they accept being picked up a few streets away. Why, well because we were told you’d be in the area. You know, they don’t seem to. Being picked up from the front door seems to be a bit too much for them. So yeah, I mean, my 90% of my working time with probation has been here so I’ve not got any gripes with it. It’s almost 8 years ago type thing where it was a total conflict of interest.

Yet, despite the protestations of Danny, the newfound appreciation for the work of the probation service amongst police offender managers had not yet filtered

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through to the thinking of Sunnyvale’s uniformed DET branch. The following fieldnote was recorded during my time at Westside: Having been though the MacDonald’s drive-​through, Morgan parked the police car up so we could drink our cups of coffee before continuing on the routine patrol. I took this opportunity to ask Morgan about his views on the probation service. Morgan responded by noting that he felt annoyed … that probation don’t really want us arresting people from outside probation. They tell us they’ve got someone who’s in breach or whatever, but then [probation] say, ‘You can’t pick him up from the probation office, you have to get him round the corner’. I’d like to just be able to pick them up as soon as they fall off, never mind the relationship they’ve built up with probation. They’re lucky enough to be in the community anyway. When they fuck up, they need to go straight back. Nonetheless, certain probation workers were regarded by police officers as particularly trustworthy. This was due to their police-​orientated outlook: Anna [a probation worker] and Mark [a police offender manager] had been discussing an offender’s up and coming court appearance and the likely outcome. Anna was suggesting that the man was likely to be released back into the community with some kind of supervision requirement. ‘Come on Mark you know what magistrates are like?’ Anna said, ‘He’ll get out, I expect, and I’ll have to manage him again’. With that Anna left the office to go to another appointment. Mark then looked over at me and said that Anna was ‘more like a police officer. She’s more like one of us, Fred’. Here the Sunnyvale sergeant joined the conversation, enthusiastically agreeing with Mark. ‘Anna is a good probation officer primarily because of her attitude. She sees everything in black and white. It’s no nonsense. It’s not always like this with some of the other PO officers. It’s been said before, she’d make a good police officer’. (Fieldnote) Nash (1999: 366) describes the phenomenon of probation workers moving towards a more police-​orientated way of working as the ‘entry of the polibation officer—​an amalgam of police and probation officers’. In other words, multi-​ agency workers experience a loss of individual identity coupled with a degree of fusion in their role (Mawby et al., 2007: 129). In some instances, such a coupling appeared to be more of an outright take-​over by the dominant police culture than a mere melding of roles. Consider, for instance, the following informal conversation recorded during the fieldwork: As we were driving towards the appointment, Anton [a probation worker] turned to Mark [a police offender manager] and stated that [probation workers] were no longer able to recommend custody where the offender

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could not be said to pose a high risk of harm to society.‘What’s it all coming to?’, Mark questioned [looks at the sky], ‘What’s good about Britain now?’ However, Anton had a ‘solution’ to the problem, ‘I should be able to word the report in a way that gets round this if [despite other evaluations] we think the offender is risky’. Something of a cultural transformation seemed to have taken place. Anton’s comments suggested he had adopted aspects of the prevailing police world outlook, one that also seemed resistant to changes in the organisational field. This was in line with Mawby and Worrall’s (2011a: 90) findings that the actions and attitudes of some probation workers were now bound up in a culture of crime control, rather than welfare-​orientated work (also, Worrall and Mawby, 2014; Nash, 1999). Indeed, one probation worker, Daniel, suggested that the role had morphed and was now about ‘being investigators, going about investigations and being a crime fighter’. Burnett and Appleton (2004: 37) observe that the confusion of values and roles must be expected within multi-​agency working. However, perhaps at an operational level there was no confusion because the modern probation organisation is, as reflected in comments made by Daniel, reported above, already public protection orientated. What was clear, however, was that within Sunnyvale IOM a minority of probation workers were working and thinking in a way that was more akin to police officers. Attitudes of prison officers working within the Sunnyvale structure Beyond the police and probation service, changes in outlook had taken place amongst some prison officers. It might be expected that the prison officers would welcome the political shift towards a more crime control-​orientated way of managing offenders because it resonated with their traditional cultural values and the way in which they had previously viewed and interacted with offenders (Crewe et al., 2011). Prisons are traditionally places of surveillance, authority, discipline and punishment (Jackson et al., 2010: 5; Crewe et al., 2011: 109). In line with these ideas, the involvement of the prison service in IOM at an organisational level seemed to be associated with enforcement and discipline. Prison officers were working in the community to ‘remind offenders what was waiting for them should they mess up’, as one put it. Consider the following fieldnote: It’s not such a big deal for them to see probation and the police working together; that sort of thing has been happening for years, but when they see a prison officer turn up at their door, they are like, ‘Wow how’d you do that then?’ Prison officers in an offender’s own environment have a big impact. We’re there to tell Jonny to pull his socks up or we’ll have him back inside.

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Yet despite the apparent emphasis placed on enforcement, at a practical level three out of the four prison officers I encountered during the study seemed to have readily adopted a welfare-​orientated approach to dealing with IOM offenders. These officers were working in both the prison and the community with the aim of promoting desistance through encouraging offender engagement with support mechanisms, rather than through threat of force: When we got to the court cells, we found an IOM offender who had been arrested just two days after his release from prison. The man was offered support with housing. Nigel [a prison officer] suggested, ‘We put in a housing referral for you straight away mate; let’s get you somewhere to live first’. Adrian [a police offender manager] asked the man if he was now ready for some help with his drug problem. ‘Look fella you’ve just been on another bender last night and look where it’s got you. We can get you some help, maybe some treatment’. Adrian and Nigel also promised to try and find the man’s solicitor and tell him that the offender had indicated that he was prepared to work with IOM, so as to help the man in court that morning. (Fieldnote) McIntosh and Saville (2006: 238) observe that prison officers, like police officers, have historically displayed negative attitudes towards the likelihood of offender change. Crew et al. (2011: 108), for example, who examined prison staff culture, found that amongst prison officers any expectation that offenders might turn away from a life of crime was minimal and that it was thought to be a ‘waste of time’ to believe otherwise. In the present study, one or two IOM workers, like John [probation], did suggest that they had previously viewed prison officers as ‘hard-​line’ and ‘security-​orientated’ workers. Nonetheless, the actions of Nigel indicate that the thinking of Sunnyvale prison workers had become more welfare orientated. Note, for example, the comments made by another prison officer, Prab, during interview: [IOM] it’s about the community … People’s lives do change, and we don’t always get things right. Our offenders, they’re people; they need help and support and it’s almost right that they can ask for it. Pre-​existing partnership working with the probation service, within the prison walls, may partly explain the apparent development of humanitarian values amongst some Sunnyvale prison officers. Prison regimes have been increasingly exposed to rehabilitative ideals in the form of prison drug treatment, behavioural programmes and provision of resettlement planning (Mawby and Worrall, 2011b: 83; Padfield and Maruna, 2006: 339). Indeed, McIntosh and Saville (2006: 238) found that the attitudes of prison officers had changed as a result of moving into a treatment role within the prison walls. Officers had

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become more sympathetic towards drug users and offenders more broadly.This, they discovered, could be attributed to officers’ increased familiarity with the individual plight of offenders, making them more human. A combination of factors, working closely with more welfare/​support-​ orientated organisations within IOM and engaging more with issues faced by offenders within the community, might have been responsible for changes amongst the attitudes of some prison workers. One probation worker, Martin, suggested that joint working with prison staff (both prison officers and prison-​based drug workers6) operating within the prison had made mindsets ‘hugely better’ and a ‘100% closer’. When it came to the provision of offender support, a majority of prison officers had made a cultural shift away from the authoritarian and disciplinary approach generally associated with mainstream prison officers, towards a more humanitarian approach to the management of offenders.7 Drug worker attitudes By contrast, the outlook of Sunnyvale drugs workers appeared to remain largely in line with the welfare-​orientated values of the Criminal Justice Intervention Teams, from which they were drawn. Mirroring findings by Skinns (2011: 168), the relationships between drug workers and other agencies within the partnership could be described as ‘reasonably cooperative’. Yet unlike the close proximity of the police, probation and prison services, the Criminal Justice Intervention Team appeared to be on the fringes of the IOM scheme. Unlike police offender managers, probation workers and some prison staff, during the early days of the study, drug workers were located in police stations rather than with the rest of the IOM team. This contributed towards what can be described as a ‘climate of separation’ between drug workers and the other IOM organisations. Drug workers were conspicuously absent from multi-​agency meetings, as well as other strategic or tactical discussions about the management of IOM offenders. One senior probation worker, Roger, noted that the criminal justice intervention team were ‘pretty separate’ and that probation ‘didn’t have a huge amount of contact with them’. Equally, one police officer conceded that she was ‘not sure’ what drug workers did or whether they were ‘woollier than probation’ in their outlook. Drug workers also appeared to distance their role from that of the other partnership agencies: We’re not here to be probation officers, or police, or to get people locked up. Our job is to look after the needs of our service users. It doesn’t stop me working with them, but I have to stay true to who I am and what I believe in. (Ivan—​drug worker)

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Skinns (2011: 172) similarly found that drug workers generally did not want to ‘pally up to the police’, as over familiarity might undermine the working relationship enjoyed with Sunnyvale participants. However, putting distance between themselves and the other agencies may have prevented the reciprocal learning, evident within relationships between the other partnership agencies, from taking place within IOM.8 Police officers, for instance, argued that drug workers maintained a ‘sluggish’ approach to informing the police when Sunnyvale offenders missed appointments with drug workers. This type of attitude, one police officer, Karen, argued missed ‘the whole point, which was to get [offenders] back before the courts to teach them the error of their ways’. Equally, some drug workers, in this instance Bob, also noted the negative capture and punish attitudes of some police officers and the ‘cultures of the police’ more broadly. As Ivan put it: We get a lot of comments that are negative about service users but also about what we do and the function of it and its worth. [….] Someone called someone a smack head and then asked what should I call [these] people? I said I would say ‘people who use drugs’. The whole room burst out laughing. Everyone thought it was hilarious, which is fine. I got on with those people. I can take that, but that would be just a day-​to-​day normal thing to happen. We’re all in the room; we all know that we have completely different ideas about how to deal with those people. Whilst the attitudes underlying the language used at times by the police appeared to be accepted by Ivan as part of day-​to-​day normality within the police custody setting, there was little evidence that drugs workers had adopted any of the traditional cultural traits of the police. There did not, for example, seem to be what Maguire et al. (2019) describe as: Penal drift—​the gradual adoption of criminal justice culture, language, and working practices—​ in voluntary sector organisations commissioned to deliver services to offenders. Furthermore, Ivan seemed to identify a difference between the attitudes of DET police and police offender managers, the latter viewed as possessing ‘more of an understanding of all the issues involved’ than their uniformed DET colleagues. This meant that one or two drug workers were able to maintain working relationships with some of the more welfare-​orientated police offender managers. At times throughout the study police offender managers accompanied drugs workers visiting offenders in the community. Such arrangements were viewed by drugs workers as valuable because police officers were able to reinforce the ‘authority’ of the scheme, whereas drugs workers, due to their lack of legal powers, could not. Of course, for police officers, generally preoccupied

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with the production of knowledge (Ericson and Haggerty, 1997), close working with drugs workers provided officers with greater access to IOM offenders. Recalling offenders to prison: a disparity between police officer and probation worker thinking The majority of Sunnyvale offenders who received close attention from the police and probation service had been released from prison, subject to various licence conditions.9 Those I came across during the present study were typically required to adhere to some or all of the following (standard and additional) licence conditions: to stay in touch with their offender manager (usually a probation worker), receive home visits, live at a specified residency (and notify any change of address), provide notification of or change of employment, travel restrictions and to be of ‘good behaviour’. Some had additional licence conditions imposed10which, for example, included ‘association restrictions’, which meant that they needed to avoid contact with specified people or particular areas. Others had requirements to address substance misuse problems and drug testing. As has been noted above, a catch, convict and return to prison philosophy was found to be pervasive amongst the majority of police offender managers. In practice this meant that while most officers were prepared to offer limited support to IOM offenders, generally their focus was on ‘real police work’, like the enforcement of licence conditions. Whilst ‘intelligence gathering’ has been identified as a primary ‘frame’ (Hawkins, 2002) shaping police offender manager thinking, the focus on enforcing licence conditions did not supersede this frame. Intelligence gathering and the enforcement of licence conditions were not mutually exclusive activities. If officers were able to seek out and subsequently pass relevant information to probation workers, for instance, that an offender was not complying with licence conditions, the offender was likely to be recalled to prison. The police part in the prison recall process also allowed officers to draw on their stock of cultural knowledge (Quinton, 2011). We have seen above how institutional cynicism about the potential rehabilitation of the criminal classes (Padfield and Maruna, 2006: 339) has given rise to a crime control-​orientated mode of offender management.The recall process presented an opportunity for exciting, action-​orientated missions wherein police offender managers were able to get involved in ‘banging up’ offenders. In the following interview extract a police offender manager described the excitement of the ‘game’: BARRY:  I get excited by it. I get excited by a recall. FRED: What’s generating that excitement? BARRY:  It’s a game isn’t it. They do their thing and

we want to make sure that they’re not doing it anymore and if we’ve done all that we can to help them and it’s failed, then I think to get into a stage where they go back and serve

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their sentence is the correct thing. I like to sort of think of things. How would the normal member of the public want something dealt with? If someone gets four years for burglary, they want them to serve four years, so that the fact that they’re out on license is a benefit to that person and the fact that they’re out on license, they should respond to any conditions put on them and if they’re breaching those then they should go back and serve the rest of their sentence. So, if I can send them back to prison then I will. Where police offender managers viewed offenders as having breached their licence conditions, they tended to favour immediate recall to prison or at the very least a tightening of licence conditions. As Karen put it, For me it comes down to severity … Licences should be watertight. I mean, you’re serving your sentence in the community, therefore, if you put yourself in a position of arrest (i.e., that you could be arrested) then this goes against the spirit of a Home Office licence. What the officer was referring to here was the standard licence condition that an offender must: Be of good behaviour, not commit any offence and not take any action which would jeopardise the objectives of supervision [i.e., to protect the public, prevent reoffending and secure successful reintegration into the community]. The condition is broad and for both police offender managers and DET officers provides a ‘catch all’ stipulation that if ‘breached’ should mean an offender is immediately returned to prison. On several occasions throughout the study, police officers complained that offenders were not ‘being of good behaviour’ and therefore should be recalled, whether or not the ‘offence’ might appear fairly minor: Lauren (probation worker) was meeting an offender for an appointment at a drug agency. The man was required to attend the appointment as part of his licence conditions. Barry and I waited outside the appointment so as to provide the probation worker with a lift back to the office. Lauren returned to the car following the appointment. ‘How did that go?’ Barry asked. ‘Yeah, ok actually, he admitted he’s been using methadone but at least he attended the appointment’, Lauren replied. Barry asked what the offender had been taking? ‘Methadone’, Lauren replied. This admission prompted Barry to push for a prison recall. If he’s taking drugs he’s not ‘being of good behaviour’, Barry argued. However, Lauren did not seem to view non-​ prescribed methadone as a ‘drug’ and had therefore not thought to initiate recall proceedings. Barry, however, argued that offenders on licence, who

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admitted taking methadone without prescription, were firstly committing a criminal offence and secondly not being of good behaviour. By contrast, most probation workers largely found the police desire to recall offenders back to prison, though accepted as inevitable at times, difficult to reconcile with their general ‘rule of optimism’ around the likelihood of offender change. This optimism, which also responds to the traditional ‘welfare and humanitarian approach’ (Nash and Walker, 2009: 302) of the probation service, meant that probation workers were less ready to recall IOM offenders to prison. For example, one probation worker noted what was important when working with offenders was ‘building trust and a working relationship and trying to do what I can to get this guy through his licence and to get him to engage with pathway support’. In some cases, therefore, workers felt pressurised by police officers to recall IOM offenders back to prison: It is the way [police] call up and say: ‘I’ve arrested X for X, recall them’. My response is always the same: ‘Well have they been charged?’ ‘No’. ‘OK, that’s not your place to ask me [to recall them].Your job is to provide me information’. (Jerry—​probation officer) However, a majority of probation workers, four out of five interviewed, suggested that working more closely with police offender managers had promoted a growth of understanding amongst the police about the prison recall process. In other words, police officers had come round to probation’s understanding of the process.This increased knowledge had apparently reduced conflict between the two organisations: FRED:  Do you think IOM challenges traditional agency attitudes? MARTIN: Yeah, I think it does and you can see we’ve done quite a

lot of work even since I’ve been here and there has been some fall back about what different agencies think of each other and what they can do and what they can’t do, examples specifically around breaches and recalls and things like that and what probation can and can’t do and what. The police in the team are understanding a bit more about differences of licences and what can be done and what can’t be done. You know again, going back previously the police would say we think this person’s dealing drugs; can’t you recall them? And we say no, not necessarily because if it’s based on you thinking it. If you think they’re dealing drugs, why don’t you go and charge them? Nowadays you hear some of the police officers within IOM making that sort of point to their colleagues because they are understanding it much better, because they’ve been rubbing up against probation.

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Tensions over the recall process that may once have existed between the police and the probation service had, according to Martin, been ‘educated out’ of the system. Yet this account contradicts the many conflicts over prison recalls that I witnessed throughout the study. Consider, for example, the following fieldnote: Karen [police offender manager] mentioned that an IOM offender hadn’t turned up for a probation appointment.The man should have attended the appointment on the Friday; but had forgotten. He was issued a warning and the appointment rearranged for Monday. However, it was Monday and once again the man had not attended. Moreover, the man, according to Karen, had also been caught out lying about a missed appointment with a drugs agency. He had also given a positive drug test. It was now time to start recall proceedings, Karen insisted. Karen put in a call to probation to discuss the matter with the probation worker responsible for the management of the offender, Ralph. Karen relayed the probation worker’s apparent response, ‘It’s only a couple of missed appointments and one positive test; we’re not going to recall him at this stage’. This response was received by Karen with indignation and frustration, ‘Turning up to probation appointments is a fundamental part of the prison licence conditions, but there you go’. Equally, DET police argued that probation workers at times inadvertently derailed the recall process by giving offenders prior warning of an impending recall: I asked Julian how he viewed the police relationship with the rest of the IOM team. ‘Well there’s not much to say. I don’t know any of them’. ‘What about the probation service how do you find them?’ ‘Some of them are bit “scrotey-​looking” [laughter] but I haven’t had lots of contact with them personally. They tell people when they’re going to be recalled. I just don’t understand that. Why tell an offender he’s going to be arrested just so he can go on the run for a few months? That’s a problem for us. They say it’s because they want to keep a good relationship with the offenders. These guys are just serving their sentence in the community; if they go off the rails they need locking up’. Many police officers were frustrated both about what they viewed as probation’s reluctance to recall offenders and their tendency to inform offenders of their impending arrest. On the other hand, whilst some probation workers seemed to acknowledge that a conflict existed between the two organisations, others believed that a cultural shift had taken place within the thinking of police officers. Thus, the picture painted by the probation service and the police,

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concerning the degree of cooperation between the two organisations during the recall process, was confused and disjointed.

Conclusions Sunnyvale IOM was a system of organised surveillance participated in, to varying extents, by all the partnership agencies. Nash and Walker (2009: 175) argue that the cultures, values and identities of criminal justice organisations may be much closer than they once were. Whilst the various agencies had different ideological and cultural standpoints, as a result of closer working new operational understandings had developed within the IOM framework. Police officers had a better understanding of what probation workers did and, according to drugs workers, a greater knowledge of the personal problems faced by Sunnyvale offenders. Probation workers reported a new appreciation of police work but, to an extent had also shifted their own management style to incorporate the emphasis on public protection emanating from the political surround. Likewise, prison workers appeared to have softened their historically disciplinary approach to offender management, seemingly working well with the police and probation service. Nonetheless, elements of the cultural divides of the past remained. For example, a disparity in opinions as to whether offenders were believed to be capable of real and lasting change was evident within the partnership. The probation service and drugs team were largely found to have retained their core humanitarian and welfarist traditions. These workers, therefore, were continually optimistic about the possibility of offender change. Likewise, in a move away from a historically authoritarian and cynical background, prison officers expressed similarly hopeful sentiments. However, police officers largely considered offenders as incapable of real and lasting change; reoffending amongst this group was inevitable. This viewpoint is rooted in the core centralities of police culture, suspicion and pessimism. But it also meant that the world outlook of most Sunnyvale police officers remained immersed in the dominant culture and broadly isolated from that of the other IOM partners. The pervasiveness of the dominant culture amongst Sunnyvale police officers has implications for the scheme at an operational level. Institutional cynicism has precipitated a ‘frame’ (Hawkins, 2002) of containment and risk-​ management amongst police offender managers. Consequently, the majority of police offender managers were reluctant, even embarrassed, to adopt a more welfare-​orientated approach to managing offenders, unless it suited their interest to do so. These findings contradicted reports by probation workers that police officers had adopted a more probation-​orientated world outlook and style of offender management.This was explained by the fact that a minority of police offender managers appeared to attempt to build a rapport with offenders by offering them support. At an operational level, therefore, some officers may have appeared more welfare-​orientated but, on closer examination, had merely

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reworked the intelligence-​ gathering frame so that it encompassed rapport building and the provision of support. On a deeper level, what was important to most police officers I encountered during the fieldwork was spying on IOM offenders with a view to returning them to prison as quickly as possible. Aspects of cop culture were also located within the outlook of a minority of non-​police workers who had adopted language and values traditionally associated with frontline cops. This type of cultural transference between organisations was most notable amongst probation workers. To a limited extent this impacted on operational practice, as some probation workers adopted more of a hard-​line stance towards offenders. Of course, any drift away from the intended orientation of the probation service towards that of the police may have had broader implications for offender perceptions of the legitimacy of the scheme. But it may also have been a reflection of broader changes in the political surround and the shift away from the traditional befriend, advise and assist probation ideology towards that of public protection and risk-​management. However, the majority of IOM workers remained resistant to any cultural transference that might have resulted from working closely with the police. The apparent conscious separation between the police and the other partners resulted in cultural and ideological battlegrounds, in two linked areas. Firstly, police officers sought to recruit partnership workers as covert intelligence gatherers.Whilst most such workers suggested that intelligence gathering was not within their mandate and that such police requests left them feeling ‘uncomfortable’, the majority admitted to being involved in these ‘investigations’, although largely in a minor role. Despite these reports, nonetheless, there was a steady, perhaps inadvertent, flow of information from the partnership agencies to the police. Yet a constant complaint by both police offender managers and DET officers was that the sharing of information by the partnership agencies, particularly probation workers, was limited. Secondly, the police were frustrated about the operational practices of the probation service when it came to recalling IOM offenders to prison. Broadly, officers viewed any conduct that was not, as they saw it, ‘of good behaviour’, as sufficient to justify recalling offenders to prison. Probation workers, however, seemed reluctant to return offenders to prison via this overly broad mechanism, instead often challenging the police to provide more information or charge the offender in question with a criminal offence. To summarise then, police offender managers attached huge importance to intelligence gathering. By closely monitoring IOM offenders, the police were able to drive forward the crime control goals of the organisation. Some police officers had been able to further this aim stealthily by incorporating everyday intelligence gathering into the provision of support, but the mission remained the same: survey, catch, convict and return IOM offenders to prison. Where other partnership workers obstructed the furtherance of this objective, conflict arose between the agencies. However, a minority of workers, largely from the prison and probation services, had seemed comfortable working

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closely with the police and thus drifting between crime control and rehabilitative approaches and ideals. In this way, there was a blurring of organisational roles or, as Murphy and Lutze (2009: 67) put it, ‘mission distortion’. IOM working had not moderated traditional police cultural practices. Furthermore—​and mirroring the findings of other studies of multi-​agency criminal justice working involving the police (e.g. Nash, 1999; Nash and Walker, 2009; and Murphy and Lutze, 2009)—​the police drove how IOM operated in practice, much more than any other agency. The attitudes of the police therefore are of significant interest in understanding Sunnyvale policing and thus are the focus of Chapter 5.

Notes 1 See, for example, Home Office Circular 8/​1984 issued to police forces, probation, education and the chief executive officers of local authorities, promoting a coordinated approach amongst criminal justice agencies. See also the Morgan Report (1991). For a more detailed history of multi-​agency crime prevention in Britain, see Gilling (1997). 2 The pivot of probation towards risk-​management is discussed in more detail later in the chapter, but suffice to say, sometimes risk-​management and rehabilitative approaches will clash and more or less of either approach may be thought necessary by those in charge of supervision. 3 See Chapter 1 for discussion of the history and role of the Criminal Justice Intervention Team, within the Sunnyvale partnership. 4 Outlined in Chapter 1. 5 Officially referred to as the ‘Priority Crime Team’. 6 Prison drug workers were referred to as the ‘Carat team’ (Counselling Assessment Referral Advice and Throughcare). 7 It must be stressed that we are dealing with small numbers here, and that these findings cannot easily be generalised beyond the specific setting within which this study was located. 8 There was, however, some general evidence that reciprocal learning was taking place within police stations where drug workers and police officers had been sharing space, since the 1990s. 9 The law on prison recalls is complex and beyond the scope of this study to discuss in depth. What is of most relevance is s.303 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003. This legislation largely came into force on 4 April 2005, when Part 12, Chapter 6 of the Act (Release and recall of fixed term prisoners [prison sentences over 12 months]) came into force. Sections 237–​68 concern arrangements for prisoners’ early release on licence, recall to prison following breach of an imposed licence conditions and further re-​release following recall. Under s.238, courts may recommend licence conditions for those serving sentences of more than 12 months. S.244-​253 allow for the release of offenders serving sentences of 12 months or more.These offenders will be released automatically on licence halfway through their sentence. Some (the vast majority of fixed-​term prisoners [see s.246]), on release, may be subject to home detention curfew. For a detailed and comprehensive examination (and

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a review of some rather alarming statistics) of recalls in practice, see Padfield and Maruna (2006). 10 Additional conditions may be imposed at the discretion of the Secretary of State (or her representative).

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Goffman, E. (1972). Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. New England: Northeastern University Press. Gough, D. (2010). ‘Multi-​agency working in corrections: cooperation and competition in probation practice’, in Aaron Pycroft and Dennis Gough (eds.), Multi-​Agency Working in Criminal Justice. Control and Care in Contemporary Correctional Practice. Bristol: Policy Press, 21. Hawkins, K. (2002). Law as Last Resort: Prosecution Decision-​making in a Regulatory Setting. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Probation. (2020). An inspection of central functions supporting the national probation service. Available here: www.justi​cein​spec​tora​tes. gov.uk/​hmipr​obat​ion (accessed 18/​8/​2022). Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Probation. (2021). Annual report: Inspections of probation services. Available here: www.justi​cein​spec​tora​tes.gov.uk/​hmipr​obat​ion (accessed 18/​8/​2022). Hobbs, D. (1988). Doing the Business: Entrepreneurship, Detectives and the Working Class in the East End of London. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Holloway, W., and Jefferson, T. (1997). ‘The risk society in an age of anxiety: Situating fear of crime’, British Journal of Sociology, 48(2): 255–​266. Home Office. (1984). Crime Prevention, Circular 8/​1984. London: Home Office. Home Office. (1997). No More Excuses—​A New Approach to Tackling Youth Crime in England and Cmnd. 3809. London: HMSO. Hopkins, M., and Wickson, J. (2013). ‘Targeting prolific and other priority offenders and promoting pathways to desistance: Some reflections on the PPO programme using a theory of change framework’, Criminology and Criminal Justice, 13(5): 594–​614. House of Commons Select Committee, Publications: The Role of the Probation Service, Uncorrected Transcript of Oral Evidence’ at the HC 8th of June 2011, HC 519-​xi www.publi​cati​ons.par​liam​ent.uk/​pa/​cm201​012/​cmsel​ect/​cmj​ust/​uc519-​xi/​ uc51​901.htm (last accessed 15/​1/​2021). Hunter, G., McSweeney, T., and Turnbull, P.J. (2005). ‘The introduction of drug Arrest Referral schemes in London: A partnership between drug services and the police’, International Journal of Drug Policy, 16: 343–​352. Jackson, J., Tyler, T.R., Bradford, B., Taylor, D., and Shiner, M. (2010). ‘Legitimacy and procedural justice in prisons’, Prison Service Journal, (191): 4–​10. Kemshall, H., and Maguire M. (2001). ‘Public protection, partnership and risk penality: The multi-​ agency risk management of sexual and violent offenders’, Punishment and Society, 5(2): 237–​264. Kothari, G., Marsden, J., and Strang, J. (2002). ‘Opportunities and obstacles for effective treatment of drug misusers in the Criminal Justice System in England and Wales’, British Journal of Criminology, 42(2): 412–​432. Kreiner, G.E., Ashforth, B.E., and Sluss, D.M. (2006). ‘Identity dynamics in occupational dirty work: Integrating social identity and system justification perspectives’, Organization Science, 17(5): 619–​636. Liebling, A. (2007). ‘Why prison staff culture matters’, in J.M. Byrne, D. Hummer, and F.S. Taxman (eds.), The Culture of Prison Violence. New York: Pearson, 105–​122. Liebling, A. (2011). ‘Moral performance, inhuman and degrading treatment and prison pain’, Punishment and Society, 13(5): 530–​550. Maguire, M., Miers D., Goldie, S., Sharpe, K., Hale, C., Netten, A., Uglow, S., Doolin, K., Hallam, A., Enterkin, J., and Newburn, T. (2001). An Exploratory Evaluation of Restorative Justice Schemes, Crime Reduction Series Paper 9. London: Home Office.

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Maguire, M., Williams, K., and Corcoran, M. (2019). ‘Penal drift and the voluntary sector’, Howard Journal of Criminal Justice, 58(3): 430–​449. Mawby, R.C., and Worrall, A. (2011a). ‘ “They were very threatening about do-​gooding bastards”: Probation’s changing relationships with the police and prison services in England and Wales’, European Journal of Probation, 3(3): 78–​94. Mawby, R.C., and Worrall, A. (2011b). Probation Workers and Their Occupational Cultures. Leicester: University of Leicester. Mawby, R.C., Crawley, P., and Wright, A. (2005). Project Chrysalis: Final Evaluation Report. Unpublished report to GOWM. Keele: Keele University. Mawby, R.C., Crawley, P. and Wright, A. (2007). ‘Beyond “polibation” and towards “prisi-​polibation”? Joint agency offender management in the context of the street crime initiative’, International Journal of Police Science & Management, 9(2): 122–​134. McConville, M., Sanders, A., and Leng, R. (1991). The Case for the Prosecution; Police Suspects and the Construction of Criminality. London: Routledge. McIntosh, J., and Saville, E. (2006). ‘The challenges associated with drug treatment in prison’, Probation Journal:The Journal of Community and Criminal Justice, 53(3): 230–​247. Ministry of Justice. (2010). Breaking the Cycle: Effective Punishment, Rehabilitation and Sentencing of Offenders. Available here: http://​web​arch​ive.natio​nala​rchi​ves.gov. uk/​201​2011​9200​607/​; www.just​ice.gov.uk/​consul​tati​ons/​docs/​break​ing-​the-​cycle. pdf (accessed 30/​12/​2021). Morgan, J. (1991). Safer Communities: The Local Delivery of Crime Prevention Through the Partnership Approach. Home Office, Standing Conference of Crime Prevention. Mott, J.R. (1992). Probation, Prison and Parole: A True Story of the Work of a Probation Officer. Lewes: Temple House Books. Murphy, D., and Lutze, F. (2009). ‘Police-​probation partnerships: Professional identity and the sharing of coercive power, Journal of Criminal Justice, 37: 65–​76. Nash, M. (1999) ‘Enter the polibation officer’, International Journal of Police Science and Management, 1(4): 360–​368. Nash, M., and Walker, L. (2009). ‘Mappa–​Is closer collaboration really the key to effectiveness?’ Policing, 3(2): 172–​180. Padfield, N. (2012). ‘Recalling conditionally released prisoners in England and Wales’, European Journal of Probation, 4(1): 34–​44. Padfield, N., and Maruna, S. (2006) ‘The revolving door at the prison gate: Exploring the dramatic increase in recalls to prison’, Theoretical Criminology, 6(3): 329–​352. Parsons, K. (2018).‘Virtual social media spaces, a relational arena for “bearing witness” to desistance’, Papers from the British Criminology Conference. Available here: www. probat​ion-​instit​ute.org/​s/​PQ12-​Final.pdf (accessed 11/​7/​2022). Police Operations Handbook (2010). Unpublished. Pratt, J. (2000). ‘The return of the wheelbarrow men or the arrival of the postmodern penality?’, British Journal of Criminology, 40(1): 127–​145. Pycroft, A., and Gough, D. (2019). Multi-​Agency Working in Criminal Justice. Bristol: Policy Press. Quinton, P. (2011). ‘The formation of suspicions: Police stop and search practice in England and Wales’, Policing & Society, 21(4): 357–​368. Reiner, R. (2010). The Politics of the Police (4th ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Robinson, G. (2013). ‘What is “quality” in probation practice? Findings from a study in 3 Probation Trusts’, paper presented at the Staffordshire and West Midlands Probation Trust Conference.

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Skinns, L. (2011). Police Custody: Governance, Legitimacy and Reform in the Criminal Justice Process. Abingdon: Willan. Skolnick, J. (1966). Justice Without Trial: Law Enforcement in Democratic Society. New York: Macmillan. Tangen, J., and Briah R.K. (2018). ‘The revolving door of reform: Professionalism and the future of probation services in England and Wales’, Probation Journal, 65(2):135–​151. Taylor, S., Burke, L., Millings, M., and Ragonese, E. (2017). ‘Transforming rehabilitation during a penal crisis: A case study of through the gate services in a resettlement prison in England and Wales’, European Journal of Probation, 9(2):115–​131. Thompson, K. (1998). Moral Panics. London: Routledge. Vanstone, M. (2004). Supervising Offenders in the Community: A History of Probation Theory and Practice. Aldershot: Ashgate. Walters, R. (1996). ‘The “dream” of multi-​agency crime prevention: Pitfalls and practice’, in R. Homel (ed.), The Politics and Practice of Situational Crime Prevention. Monsey, NY: Criminal Justice Press, 76–​96. Worrall, J., and Gaines, L. (2006). ‘The effect of police-​ probation partnerships on juvenile arrests’, Journal of Criminal Justice, 34: 579–​589. Worrall, A., and Mawby, R.C. (2014). ‘Probation worker cultures and relationships with offenders’, Probation Journal, 61(4): 346–​357. Young, M. (1991). An Inside Job. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Chapter 5

‘Still’ police officers The culture of policing within Sunnyvale IOM

Introduction In addition to influencing the nature and quality of interactions between the police and staff from the other agencies working within the Sunnyvale IOM unit, the values, beliefs and outlooks of police officers may also have shaped the service that Sunnyvale offenders receive. The law does not fully determine patterns of policing on the ground, rather it leaves room for discretion, and so the culture of the police is able to influence police action. Chapter 2 united different theoretical approaches with the purpose of examining police decision-​making practices and their implications. By taking this approach I was able to establish a link between Hawkins’s (2002) ideas about decision-​making within a criminal justice setting, police organisational subculture and broader theories about the legitimacy of police authority. This was necessary to understand better the interactions between IOM police officers, offenders and other IOM practitioners during the fieldwork that informed this study. Sharpening the focus, the present chapter examines the empirical links between the normative values exhibited by police offender managers and the organisational cultural traits broadly associated with uniformed cops. It draws police offender managers’ own accounts of their actions and decisions collected during observations and interviews. These reports provide the basis for a thematic discussion, the aims of which are twofold. Firstly, to explore whether the dominant characteristics of police culture are also driving police–​offender interactions, specifically in the areas of IOM District Enforcement Team (DET) work and police offender management. Secondly to sort out the question of whether there are sources of variation between the culture and practice of DET officers and offender managers, or a related set of assumptions, beliefs and practices that transcend the contrasting roles. This enquiry is made more urgent by the danger that police culture may obstruct the full acceptance of a role anchored in different sort of engagement with offenders, constructed, in part at least, in terms of rehabilitative support. It should also help illuminate the extent to which the relationship between carrot and stick is the constructive and integrated one suggested by IOM literature. DOI: 10.4324/9780429287664-5

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The culture of police decision-​m aking Several key ideas are advanced from Chapter 2 and must be briefly revisited, as they form the basis of the present discussion. Firstly, police working practices, particularly how rank-​ and-​ file officers exercise their broad discretionary powers, can, in part at least, be explained by reference to the concept of ‘police culture’. Organisational culture is the values shared by individuals within an organisation that manifest themselves in the working practices of colleagues within that environment (Worrall and Mawby, 2013: 104; Johnson et al., 2009). According to Morgan (2006), this includes operating norms, symbols and rituals of daily routine, language, stories, myths, working atmosphere, the physical environment and the shared systems of meaning that are accepted and acted upon.Various studies have unearthed the existence of unique working cultures in criminal justice settings, for example, prison staff culture (Crew et al., 2011), probation staff (Worrall and Mawby, 2013), police auxiliaries (Dolman, 2008) and private security workers (Hucklesby, 2011). But it is the concept of police, or ‘cop culture’, which has perhaps attracted the most criminological attention and been subject to sustained, critical research.1 It was Michael Banton (1964) who first suggested that police attitudes and decisions may be influenced by police cultural attributes. Soon afterwards Jerome Skolnick (1966) developed an account of the ‘distinctive cognitive and behavioural tendencies’ displayed by the police as an ‘occupational grouping’. Skolnick (1966: 41–​42) described these tendencies as the police ‘working personality’. Skolnick, drawing on his own observations, maintained that it becomes possible to predict what some, but not all, police officers will do in certain situations. Significantly, within the working personality of the police officer, Skolnick identified a complex system of values and attitudes including suspiciousness, solidarity, isolation and conservatism, which derived from key aspects of the police officer’s role: danger, authority, efficiency. These, he suggests, are ‘cognitive lenses’ through which the police make sense of people, situations and events. In the context of police culture debates, these themes have withstood the test of time and are now considered academic orthodoxy, although not monolithic. Since Skolnick and Banton’s early works, many other ethnographic studies of police work have uncovered an assortment of recurring informal cultural norms, values, beliefs and craft rules which appear to inform police conduct: an exaggerated sense of mission, a desire for action and excitement, the glorification of violence, an Us/​Them divide of the social world, a sense of internal solidarity—​a united ‘brotherhood’, but also social isolation, prejudice, authoritarian conservatism, suspicion and cynicism (Bowling et al., 2019). More recent ethnographic work (e.g. Loftus, 2010; Bacon, 2016; Loftus et al., 2016; Cram, 2018) has confirmed the remarkable durability of these traditional themes and in particular has identified the persistence of racism, sexism and homophobia.

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Research on police culture has elucidated the translation of law in books into the practicalities of everyday policing. But it seems that legal rules do little to constrain the actions of police officers; rather police powers are open to manipulation by officers’ intent on pursuing independently defined objectives that often have little to do with enforcing the law (e.g. social discipline, reinforcement of authority, communicative surveillance).2 Numerous studies of policing (e.g. Banton, 1964; Cain, 1973; Reiner, 1978; Holdaway, 1983; Punch, 1983; Foster, 1989; Young, 1991; Chan, 1997; Crank, 1998, and more recently Marks, 2004; Loftus, 2010; Skinns, 2011; Bacon, 2016; Loftus et al., 2016; Cram, 2018) provide evidence that pursuit of these objectives and the decisions that underpin them are linked to various normative orders that frame police actions and thinking.3 Police cultural traits are conveyed and reinforced throughout the lower echelons of the police institution through a process of socialisation that draws its authority from the fact that officers view police culture as the ‘embodiment of the collective wisdom of generations of police officers’ (Shearing, 1981: 30; Reiner, 2010: 109; Skinns, 2011). Police offender managers are drawn from the ranks of frontline police and therefore, whilst the role is substantively different to that of the typical rank-​and-​file officer, it is anticipated (although, not inevitable) that these officers will display many of the core characteristics of police culture. A further point to be made here concerns criticism levelled at the concept of cop culture that focuses on its conceptualisation as insulated from the broader socio-​economic and political arena within which the police operate (Chan, 1997; Dixon, 1997). I argue that Hawkins’s (2002) theory of decision-​ making addresses this claim by suggesting that rather than being insulated from social and economic factors, the broader sociopolitical context—​the police organisational field and the way in which police officers frame events—​can all play a part in the way officers make decisions. Therefore, police culture is not static; rather, it is shaped by and responds to various external and internal factors. Thirdly, police working ‘assumptions’ (Hoyle, 1998: 21) and ‘rules’ (McConville et al., 1991: 22) also inform police interpretation and decision-​making. Further, as demonstrated in Chapter 2, there is fluid interaction between police cultural values and the practical application of these assumptions and rules. Finally, we can extend ideas about police working rules and assumptions to a further conclusion; working rules and assumptions are interchangeable with Hawkins’ (2002: 52) concept of ‘decision frames’. Frames are influenced by occupational culture and operate as a dynamic interpretative device yet, like working rules, they instruct the decision-​maker how to understand an event, a problem or a person (Hawkins, 2002). Changes in the organisational field also inform police officer framing, shifting the way officers ascribe meaning to events.

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Making sense of the talk and action of Sunnyvale police Much empirical work has uncovered police behaviour that has a remarkable consistency with the core elements of police culture. But variants of police culture can be discerned within the broader culture. Reiner (2000: 86) describes these variants as subcultures, arguing that they are ‘generated by distinct experiences associated with specific structural positions or by special orientations officers bring with them from their past biographies’ (also, Westmarland, 2008). Thus, police culture may also be subject to a further refinement process, one that filters its normative orders through the very nature of the specific job undertaken by the police officers themselves. The IOM framework requires that police officers not only adopt individual styles of policing but also adapt to a new, innovative form of working, one that involves the divergence of officers away from their traditional policing roles.We saw that for police offender managers this meant providing Sunnyvale offenders with pathway support: specialist advice given to offenders, in an attempt to reduce the risk of reoffending, and the provision of action-​plans to address accommodation, employment training and education, mental and physical health, drugs, alcohol, finance, benefit and debt, family relationships, attitude, thinking and behaviour. This enhanced service provision was available to Sunnyvale offenders by virtue of their participation in IOM, as an incentive for people to engage and comply with the scheme. Traditional, more coercive police action, remained in the hands of uniformed police officers, specifically drafted in to operationalise the enforcement dimensions of Sunnyvale IOM. The police are thus both the stick (enforcement) and, alongside probation and other agencies, the carrot (support). This represents a substantial change to policing and (officially at least) how some police officers are required to frame police work (Cram, 2016). The analysis presented in Chapter 4 demonstrates that working within Sunnyvale IOM had largely failed to moderate many of the traditional traits of cop culture among most police offender managers or change old patterns of interactions, which have traditionally permeated relationships between the police and staff from other criminal justice agencies. The result was a form of IOM in practice which bent offender management towards the interests of policing goals. In the sections that follow, I offer an empirical account of how IOM police brought traditional cultural values, beliefs and attitudes to bear on their work. Folded into the analysis is a particular focus on the continuance of these cultural dimensions within the talk and actions of police offender managers. Sunnyvale DET officers: a desire for action and an exaggerated sense of mission The main substance to which the police are addicted is adrenaline. (Reiner, 2000: 89)

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A sense of mission is a central feature of police subculture. It generates a view among officers of policing as one of excitement, action and skill (Reiner, 2000). Frontline police officers pursue action and thrills, whilst attempting to steer clear of the mundane ‘bullshit’ and ‘rubbish’ (Reiner, 2000; Loftus, 2010). Domestic violence is a well-​documented example of work which is often treated dismissively by the police (McConville et al., 1991; Hoyle, 1998; Waddington, 1994). However, a sense of mission manifests on the street in dichotomous form. Police officers are the ‘good guys’, a thin blue line protecting the vulnerable from the ‘bad guys’, that is, would be predators and assailants. As Cockcroft (2013: 52) observes, ‘Policing represents a set of values that are viewed, at least by officers, as inherently righteous’. It is this sense of ‘noble cause’ (Reiner, 2000: 89) that for some frontline officers legitimises a preoccupation with policing centred on action and excitement. The following fieldnote, recorded during time spent with Sunnyvale DET officers, captures just how this sort of thinking became manifest in practice: Accompanying Richard and Derek [DET officers]. We drove through a part of town well known for ‘whores’ [prostitutes] and ‘punters’ [clients of prostitutes], as Derek described them. A car pulled out, directly in front of us, a manoeuvre apparently framed by Derek as ‘suspicious’, leading him to say: ‘Let’s have a chat with this guy then’. Quick flash of blue lights, alongside sirens and the car stopped in front of us on the side of the street. Richard went to the passenger door.The car immediately drove off. Derek shouted to Richard:‘get in the car’. Richard ran back to the car and jumped in. Derek sped after vehicle, but shortly lost sight of the vehicle. Richard then shouted: ‘he’s gone over the grass’. Derek followed over the grass, also putting out an alert for the car over the radio. We continued in pursuit but were unable to catch the vehicle or even bring it back into a line of sight. Derek abandoned the chase, but was furious about it, bemoaning Richard for ‘being too slow getting back in the car; damn, fuck it’. Turning to me he said, ‘this is probably the best part of the job, though, the bit that makes it worth it—​the adrenaline rushes from this stuff ’. This episode of ‘hot pursuit’ demonstrates the extent to which action-​packed and potentially dangerous activities were revered by Sunnyvale DET officers, but there is a tension between the caricature of policing as fast-​paced and action-​centred and the daily realities of policework. As Waddington (1998: 98) explains, ‘The police are not society’s crime fighters and officers who believe otherwise are deluding themselves’. The police role is diverse, including a broad range of services, many of which are nothing to do with maintaining order and catching criminals (Punch, 1979; Bayley, 1979). Most ethnographic contributions to police research suggest that in general police work is uneventful (e.g.Van Maaanen, 1978; Manning, 1997; Waddington, 1994; Loftus, 2010). For example, in the present research I found that patrol officers rushing to the scene

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of a crime and frantically apprehending criminals was a rare occurrence. On occasions where officers did rapidly respond to incidents, mostly they would arrive at the scene to discover that there was very little for them to do. This finding reflects the work of Smith and Gray (1983) who, during their study of the police in London, found that patrol officers would unnecessarily speed to incidents that did not in fact require an urgent response (see also, Loftus, 2009; Waddington, 1998; Holdaway, 1983). Beyond targeted operations, most time with Sunnyvale DET officers was spent driving around aimlessly waiting for something to happen; often it did not. Police offender managers: redefining concepts of action, excitement and mission As might be expected, unpredictable and dangerous physical interactions with citizens, rare highlights within the traditional milieu of frontline policing, did not form part of the day-​ to-​ day work of police offender managers. Observations revealed that the vast majority of Sunnyvale offender managers’ time was spent deskbound, entering intelligence reports into the local police computer database.When visits to the homes of Sunnyvale offenders did occur, these interactions were more reminiscent of ‘fireside chats’ than dangerous and confrontational encounters. As one offender manager explained: In terms of jumping in a police car and chasing after someone in a stolen thing. No, it’s not that kind of adrenaline rush of the frontline obviously. You generally come in and have a cup of coffee. It’s a slower paced job, action packed maybe not. This is not to say that offender managers did not exhibit hedonistic, action-​ centred aspects of police culture. For the most part, like their uniformed colleagues, they too desired the thrill of the ‘chase, the fight, the capture’ (Reiner, 2000: 89; Waddington, 1998). In fact, Sunnyvale offender managers appeared resistant to the idea that their role was one which encompassed a less action-​orientated dimension. Within the context of Sunnyvale IOM, therefore, the notion of action was redefined so as to fit with the police offender manager role. Consider remarks made by Gary, an offender manager, during interview: It really depends on what you mean by action. Joe Bloggs’ view of your average copper is in uniform racing around and doing what they do. Well, we don’t do any of that now. From my point of view action now is meeting these people and getting some nice information from them, building up a bit of a rapport with them; not being fluffy but building up a rapport with them so that they trust you, so that then they can tell you stuff without even realizing they’re telling you and you put a nice intelligence report in. It’s a bit dry; it’s a bit dry, but it’s a different way of looking at things. As

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much as I’d like to roll around on the floor with some of them sometimes, clearly, we’re not doing that, but yeah. For me I get a buzz. I like meeting people anyway and I get a buzz from going to someone’s house and talking to them and being able to have a look around without being there having just kicked the door in. The response here was typical amongst police offender managers, but the ‘buzz’ as Gary described it came from using interpersonal skills to out-​smart offenders, gaining their trust but at the same time acting against their interests. Police officers take a similar approach during interrogations (Ofshe and Leo, 1998: 2). Rather than being perceived as boring or trivial this sort of policework was viewed as something more akin to the intelligence work done by specialist police agencies, like the ‘Criminal Investigation Department’ for example. Although the work is not as action orientated as ‘rolling around’ with offenders, the police desire for action is sated by the exciting combination of outwitting and spying on Sunnyvale offenders. In other words, police offender managers were, as Young (2016: 30) puts it, ‘valorising action in the form of skilful detection’. Some offender managers seemed less inclined to accept the ostensible redefinition of their role as a ‘different type of action’. Instead, they continued to seek out what they saw as more thrilling, confrontational police work. The following fieldnote was recorded during my time at Sunnyvale: Recalling events of the previous day, Barry and Karen (police offender managers) mentioned that one of ‘their IOM offenders’, known to be disqualified from driving, had been seen sitting in the driving seat of a car. Whilst the sighting had taken place during ‘down-​time’ (in this case whilst driving to and from appointments) the officers described, with some enthusiasm, how they had parked up around the corner, but within viewing distance, and had waited for the person to drive off. When the offender did, Barry and Karen pursued the car but lost sight of it, then spotted the car again but this time unoccupied. A short time later when they caught up with the man who was out of the car and walking, Barry and Karen challenged him about driving the motor vehicle. The man apparently mocked the police offender managers saying, ‘I’m not that stupid to let you catch me driving like that’, which Barry and Karen took to mean that the offender had indeed been driving the car. Catching the offender in the act of driving whilst disqualified would have enabled the officers to put pressure on the probation service to return the offender to prison for the rest of his prison sentence. The ‘mocking’ was also viewed by Barry and Karen as ‘bad behaviour’ (and most likely a challenge to their ‘authority’) and alongside the alleged driving offence was considered by the police offender managers as enough for the offender to be recalled to prison.

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The ‘war stories’ (Van Maanen, 1978: 298) told by Barry and Karen depict activities that stretch beyond the remit of the offender manager role, as espoused in official IOM rhetoric. Instead, and congruent with police cultural narratives that celebrate crime fighting, they enthusiastically took the opportunity to participate in police work offering the promise of excitement. Both officers clearly viewed this event, attempting to get a ‘misbehaving’ IOM offender locked up, as real or proper police work (also Loftus, 2010: 91), as the following extract seems to confirm: As we walked into the café, I asked Barry and Karen whether they felt that police offender managers should be doing more of this kind of ‘work’. Barry, answered, confirming my suspicions that the (occasional) promise of this type of police work was what was really driving these officers: ‘Well, yes, we’re police officers, it’s what we’re supposed to be doing really’. Karen nodded as if concurring with her colleague. ‘If they’re not behaving themselves then they don’t deserve to be out in the community and it’s our job to make sure they get locked up again quickly’. This type of thinking, of course, resonates deeply with the exaggerated sense of mission, long identified as central to the police worldview (Reiner, 2000: 89; Loftus, 2009: 90). Pursuing this offender was an unnecessary course of action for these officers given that the information could have just as easily been handed over to Sunnyvale’s uniformed enforcement branch. However, two things appeared to preclude this approach. Firstly, pursuit of the offender is more broadly consistent with police officers’ moral (and cultural) commitment to the separation of social order from chaos. Secondly, attempting to get this criminal locked up provided these officers with an opportunity to engage in a challenging and exciting game of wits and skill. Police offender managers: resisting change This apparent thirst for action exhibited across both groups of Sunnyvale police officers had the potential to impede change initiatives originating in the police organisational field. For instance, an unofficial Sunnyvale policy sought to discourage offender managers from involving themselves in arrests of Sunnyvale offenders. Such activity, it was believed by senior police managers, would harm relations between offender managers and Sunnyvale offenders. But we saw that police offender managers remained concerned with excitement and action—​albeit reworked understandings of the concepts. One might, therefore, assume that these officers would be disinclined to retreat from arrest situations.Yet, whilst interviews with police offender managers revealed a consistent awareness of the informal policy discouraging arrests, they also captured something of a mixed picture in respect of operational practice. When asked during interview, ‘do you get involved in the arrest of [Sunnyvale] offenders?’,

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a minority of police offender managers reported that they were prepared to conform to this suspension of the main manifestation of police power. The reasons provided by these police offender managers echoed the concerns of senior management: Well, I’m a police officer, so if the chance or the need arose, I would have to do it. I feel that it’s important for me to maintain my role as a police officer but also maintain my role as, for want of a better phrase, a support worker for these individuals as well. So, I appeal to them, ‘Look if you’re ever wanted, hand yourself in. If you know that you’ve committed a crime, tell me. I can get it arranged by appointment that you can go in and speak to the officers involved’. But if it’s serious enough, I would get them arrested, maybe asking the uniformed enforcement branch to come in and arrest them. (Adrian—​interview) For the majority of police offender managers, however, the arrest of Sunnyvale offenders (‘if necessary’) did not present a conflict of interest within the job. Rather, as ‘police officers with warranted powers’, these officers believed they could and should be able to enforce the law, at their discretion: There isn’t any conflict there—​no not at all—​we set out when we first meet these offenders. It’s important for them to know yes, I am a police offender manager and yes, I’m here to help you, but I’m still what I am and if you commit offences and if I need to point uniform officers in the right direction, I will do that or I will come myself. (Claude—​interview) Despite Claude’s apparent conviction that police offender managers should use their arrest powers if the need arises, there remained a level of uncertainty as to when the appropriate time for the use of powers might be. Part of the police culture socialisation process, however, involves engaging in conversations with colleagues which help define what types of behaviour fall within acceptable limits of how to behave during encounters with the public. Such talk also serves to reinforce solidarity and a common sense of purpose amongst officers (Hoyle, 1998). In the extract that follows, this form of talk does so by reconstructing what, to the minds of two police offender managers, Claude and Mark, these officers face on a daily basis, but also how they should respond. Receiving reassurance from other offender managers promotes confidence that the frames adopted when dealing with Sunnyvale offenders are shared by other offender managers and will not be challenged. It also means that they will not be undermined by colleagues in front of members of the public. Preventing such occurrences is another powerful working rule (Hoyle, 1998). Many times, during observations I was privy to ‘canteen talk’ (Waddington, 1998) the

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purpose of which seemed, as much as anything else, to establish and transmit values, attitudes and behaviours throughout the ranks of Sunnyvale police: I accompanied Claude to the local hospital where we would meet a [Sunnyvale] offender. The man was due to come to the hospital as part of his ongoing mental health treatment. Claude intended to check on the man’s welfare and offer the support of Sunnyvale. As we waited for the man to arrive, three security guards appeared in the hospital lobby, apparently normal procedure for patients whose potential mental state requires a special room to be hired. The guards asked Claude if he was going to search the offender when he arrived. Claude suggested that he would if he saw reason to. The man, however, never turned up to his appointment. Shortly after the conversation Mark picked us up from the hospital. Claude relayed the conversation he had had with the security guards. Mike agreed that Claude certainly had the power to search the offender and should if he saw reason to. It was, ‘perfectly within the remit of [police offender managers] to search [Sunnyvale] offenders’. Claude asked Mike if he had searched [Sunnyvale] offenders before. Mike said he hadn’t but that he saw nothing wrong with doing so: ‘We’re still police officers’, he explained. (Fieldnote) This conversation is reflective of the cop culture socialisation process highlighted above. Neither Mike nor Claude, it seems, was fully comfortable with the idea of searching a Sunnyvale offender, despite both expressing the contrary during formal interview. It was evident Claude wanted reassurance from Mike that he would have been within his rights as a warranted police officer to search the man. During the ensuing pause I asked whether searching a Sunnyvale offender in the circumstances discussed would go against what police offender managers were ostensibly meant to represent, a different non-​ confrontational style of localised policing. Unsurprisingly, neither Mike nor Claude viewed searching an offender in the hypothesised circumstances as confrontational. Instead, as the following fieldnote illustrates, both officers then proceeded to highlight what they perceived as the dangerous nature of the police offender manager role and the need to have all available resources at their disposal: Mike and Claude began to talk about how at times offender managers had to deal with very difficult and potentially dangerous offenders. Claude said: ‘This is why we should have our “gear” on us … We go and see offenders in their homes on our own … Anything could happen’. Mike picked up the thread of argument, suggesting that: ‘Probation officers are vulnerable as well. It only takes an offender to stab a probation officer’.

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However, neither felt that there would be a change in practice ‘until something happens’. This episode suggested that the potential for action, excitement and conflict still remained very much a part of the police offender manager’s consciousness. Of course, it might be argued that this type of talk is, as Loftus (2010: 98) puts it, ‘a backstage aspect of the role mobilised to protect their occupational esteem in the absence of action and excitement’ (also, Waddington, 1998). Yet we have already seen that the role of police offender manager is neither dangerous nor action-​packed. In more than 400 hours of observation, I came across only one instance where a Sunnyvale offender appeared to directly challenge the authority of a police offender manager. As the following fieldnote captures, the situation was skilfully defused without recourse to traditional notions of action: Barry, Ron [probation officer] and I, went to the probation hostel to meet the offender. Both wanted to make sure the offender was fully aware of his prison licence conditions. We went into the hostel, where the offender confronted us. It was immediately clear by the man’s rigid body language that he was not going to cooperate with Barry and Ron. They were obviously viewed as untrustworthy authority figures. Barry sat passively as Ron attempted to clarify the offender’s prison release licence conditions, a daily 7pm–​7am curfew, and that he reside at and abide by the rules of the probation hostel. The offender repeatedly shouted down Ron, stating that for various reasons, he would not and could not accept the licence conditions. He urgently needed to see his mum and could not get there and back before the day’s curfew time was up. Barry politely—​but firmly—​reiterated Ron’s position. Indeed, politeness and decency, on the part of both Barry and Ron, was maintained at all times, despite the fact that the man was shouting and swearing in what seemed to be a direct challenge to their authority. As McConville et al. (1991: 25) remind us, disorderliness and abusive behaviour is often assumed by police officers to be a personal attack on their authority. This working assumption in turn precipitates a working rule, identified by this and other police studies (e.g. Choongh, 1998; Hoyle, 1998; Loftus, 2010; and Waddington, 1998). Abusive or confrontational suspects are arrested.This rule is appropriate as it allows officers to maintain their authority and enforce respect. Indeed, as Loftus (2010: 114) found, such a response is much more likely where, as in this instance, the officer has an audience. So powerful is the ‘arrest in the face of belligerence or hostility’ rule, that it has been suggested that an arrest in such situations is almost routine. Yet here the offender manager was not intent on involving himself in the confrontation;

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neither did he feel the need to reinforce authority. Rather the situation was left to the probation officer to handle. One explanation may be that the frame in these circumstances ran counter to the working assumption, which prevented the adoption of the ‘arrest rule’ by Barry. What had been an event that would usually be viewed as requiring an arrest response (so as to maintain dominance) appears to have been framed in this instance as a non-​arrest situation. Obviously, an arrest has the potential to disrupt the police offender manager–​offender relationship, making further intelligence-​gathering opportunities (particularly important with an offender deemed high risk) more problematic. Although, it should also be noted that, in this instance, a lack of trust already seemed evident between the offender and the Sunnyvale workers in attendance. The alternative interpretation might be that Barry remained passive in order to begin to build trust with the offender. The frame, so keyed, as Hawkins (2002: 191) describes the process, is therefore closely aligned to the localised organisational policy concerning the arrest of Sunnyvale offenders. More importantly, if Barry held a desire for action and excitement, the organisational field mandate, distilled through the frame, also overrode this.4 As the following fieldnote demonstrates, at times the desire for action and excitement trumped the non-​arrest frame: FRED:  What

about arrests generally? One thing you said about when you found out about the [offender manager] role is that it’s a question of stepping back and not … [interrupted by Gina’s answer] GINA:  I had to get involved yesterday … Sometimes, at the end of the day we’re still police officers and as much as they don’t want us to arrest people and become involved in investigations, I personally don’t think it’s possible, because you never know what’s round the corner. So, what’s the alternative? Close your eyes and pretend it’s not happening? You can’t do that either. Yesterday, for instance, I had some information received that this guy that had a prison injunction in place between him and his ex-​on-​and-​off girlfriend, that he was at the address. There’s been loads of domestic violence between the two of them … So, what’s the option? Close my eyes? I can’t do that. The chap that we’re talking about is not the kid’s dad. The mother, she’s known to the police herself. I just don’t understand the grip that this man has over her because, anyway, what happened next? Because I couldn’t just say, ‘Oh never mind’, because I also knew that he was wanted on—​in conjunction with—​some breach of bail conditions from the Crown Court. So, I spoke to his probation officer. He informed me that he’s stopped engaging and they had a job to get him in. For that last 3 months he was also in breach, something to do with the probation side of things. So, I grabbed the probation officer and I said: ‘Come on, let’s go out. We need to go and knock on the door and see what happens’. Meanwhile I had to phone up neighborhood policing because I’ve got no body armor or

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anything like that. I’ve got no personal protection equipment. This man is known because he’s got a warning for violence and stuff, so we went to [XXXX police station] and, surprise, there is no units. So, we’ve got to take some precautions, because if he kicks off and I get injured, then I’ll be the one to blame for not assessing the risk. So, we went to [XXXX police station] and in the end the sergeant there was quite nice. He left everything and he came with me. It is important to pause here and note that at this stage it would have been possible for Gina to pass on this intelligence to someone else. Gina had already indicated that the offender was wanted by police; that the Sergeant was willing to accompany Gina provides evidence of this. Nonetheless, the desire for action (and perhaps a sense of mission akin to a moral duty that the officer felt to prevent further domestic violence to the woman and her child) won out, apparently rationalised on the basis that to become involved was something of a ‘necessary evil’ in the circumstances. To continue Gina’s narrative: We got there and no one came to the door and, to get to the point, I kind of knew that he was inside there because of the sheer nature of how she was with us … I went in the lounge, and he was there. So, ‘Catch 22’, what do I do? Do I just say, ‘Oh never mind, you know you carry on being on the run for another 3 months?’ Meanwhile, there is a child at risk. There is risk of domestic violence because she got beaten up in front of the child and stuff like that. Or do I just nip it in the bud basically? So, I decided to just step in, and I agree maybe he might hate me now. He’s been remanded in custody. He got charged with the breach of injunction, which is an offence in itself, remanded in custody. He’s going to the Crown Court today, not the Crown Court, the magistrates. So, the reason I’m saying this, I know it’s kind of strange because we still have to work with these people afterwards, but sometimes it’s a necessary evil and you don’t get the choice actually. I was quite apprehensive because I didn’t know how my boss would take it. Any existing police–​offender relationship was potentially jeopardised by Gina’s decision to confront the offender personally, rather than passing on the information to Sunnyvale’s uniformed branch to handle the situation. The latter course of action would have posed much less of a risk to the relationship and of course would have been in line with organisational policy. Gina acknowledged the role conflict but did little to prevent it becoming operative. Both observations and interviews suggest that police offender managers were resisting Sunnyvale efforts to redefine their police role within the organisational field.The job one traditionally associated with confrontation, action and excitement has morphed into something far more explicitly mundane and routine. It quickly became evident that, to combat this, some offender managers involved

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themselves in situations that required an action-​orientated response, which at least offered the promise of excitement. For example, one police offender manager I was observing, having first driven a probation officer to an appointment, paused to participate in a surveillance operation (which he overheard on the radio) before heading back to the Sunnyvale office. On another occasion, when passing an armed response unit engaged in what appeared to be a fairly routine traffic stop, the officer I was accompanying flashed a warrant card and badge at the officers and asked if any help was needed. The point is that efforts to redefine the police offender manager aspect of Sunnyvale policing as one that requires a less confrontational dimension are potentially being undermined by offender managers who seem resistant to the change, instead retaining an inherent need to seek out a healthy dose of action and excitement. Women police within Sunnyvale IOM The cultural preoccupation with thrill seeking can be situated within what many policing scholars (e.g. Holdaway, 1983; Young, 1991; Fielding, 1994; Loftus, 2009; Atkinson, 2016; Silvestri, 2017) have characterised as a ‘cult of masculinity’. This, according to Young (1991: 191), creates an environment where ‘metaphors of hunting and warfare predominate’ and where status is allocated to ‘tough, manful acts of crime fighting and thief-​taking’. This has found its fullest expression in uniformed street policing (Brown, 2007), traditionally an overwhelmingly white, heterosexual, male world where (historically) attempts were made to exclude women (Loftus, 2010; Foster, 2003). As Young (1991: 251) explains further: In effect, there is no real place for a women in this world, and whenever possible it seeks to exclude this structural intruder by claiming she is a sensual, illogical creature, needing protection from her own aberrant nature and from the violence and malevolence of others. Whilst number of environmental and organisational changes have occurred in recent years, for example, the recruitment of more women, now representing 30.4% of police officers in England and Wales (Allen and Harding, 2021) and the appointment of women to senior leadership positions (Cockcroft, 2020), the importance of masculinity to policing persists (Brown, 2007; Loftus, 2009; Silvestri, 2017).5 For women, representations of policing as a masculine domain, whether authentic or not, create a difficult working environment (Atkinson, 2016; Waddington, 1998; Smith and Gray, 1983; Fielding, 1994). Loftus (2009: 53), for example, found that because of perceived stereotypical weaknesses, female officers were informally required to prove themselves, particularly within traditionally masculine-​defined roles such as armed response. In these types of environments, female police officers generally find it tough to gain acceptance from their male colleagues, a fact apparently reinforced by

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discrimination in recruitment and promotion (Brown et al., 2018). This is even though research has consistently found little to separate the effectiveness of male and female officers (Bloch and Anderson, 1974; Sherman, 1975; Noaks and Christopher, 1990). Sunnyvale DET officers: misogynistic talk, but not reflected in action Observations of Sunnyvale DET officers revealed undercurrents of misogynistic and patriarchal attitudes directed at women they encountered during routine aspects of their job. For example, a female police worker, responsible for the local force media presence, was casually referred to as ‘sugar tits’ by one of the male DET officers. The officer deflected the comment by asking, ‘who did you say that to the other day?’, to which one of the other DET officers, responded: ‘one of the bosses probably’. On some (but not all) occasions, derogatory and stereotypical phrases, such as ‘whores’ and ‘slags’, were unproblematically applied to female sex workers. In some instances, DET officers also sexualised their bodies: 8pm. Friday evening. In a patrol car with Richard and David. Attempting to track down two offenders wanted for a burglary. David suggested showing the offender’s picture to any known offenders and prostitutes that we might come across. Richard explained that David had managed to build up a rapport with some of the girls and this now meant that many of them ‘tell him stuff that they wouldn’t tell anyone else’.We drove through an area well-​known for the presence of sex workers. We drove down one road and could see two women standing at a junction. As we approached David said, ‘wow look at the size of those tits; they might knock my head off when I wind down the window’ [fieldnotes]. In the instances that were observed, where Sunnyvale DET officers spoke directly to sex workers (or other female members of the public that they encountered) they were, however, both courteous and respectful. This suggests that the rhetoric may have been what Waddington (1999: 110) describes as ‘canteen culture’, that is, ‘just something that cops do in the canteen [or office space], unconnected to anything else they do’. Police offender managers: the persistence of old misogynistic assumptions Whilst I witnessed no overt forms of sexist behaviour from Sunnyvale police offender managers, it was clear from my time spent in the field that the office in which these officers were located was a male-​dominated environment6 in which misogynistic dispositions towards women were facilitated, perpetuated

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and sustained. Note the following sexualised comment made by an offender manager about a probation worker: Mark mentioned that he was going on a prison visit with a member of the probation team Sara. I asked, in the hope that I might be able to accompany them, ‘Is that tomorrow?’ Mark replied, ‘Yes but we’re all booked in, and the prison needs 24 hours’ notice’. ‘Tell you what though Fred, Sara’s coming back tomorrow, and you’ll be pleased to see her; she’s well worth a look at’ (Laughter). (Fieldnote) Another instance was where one female police offender manager, who was complaining of having a cold, was informed by her male colleagues that she ‘could not possibly be unwell, as only men get flu … That’s why it’s called “man flu” ’. At various stages throughout the research, I witnessed male offender managers making stereotypical and discriminatory comments about female drivers. Mark, for instance, suggested that ‘Women simply can’t drive; I mean they can’t, they’re always having fender-​benders and backing into stuff, they shouldn’t be on the roads (laughter)’. This issue of being a woman in an overwhelmingly male team was addressed during interviews with the two female offender managers. The first declined to comment, which perhaps in itself suggests some underlying tensions, or perhaps reflects a desire not to be branded as a ‘troublemaker’ (Loftus, 2010). The second claimed not to have given the issue much thought, explaining further that although she was ‘in the minority’ (within Sunnyvale) she merely ‘got the same [abuse] as everyone else gets’. Clearly, within what remains a male-​ dominated, heterosexual environment of the police institution, those who fall outside of this mould face considerable challenges. Sunnyvale IOM appeared to be a microcosm of this broader arena. Sunnyvale DET officers and offender managers: a general absence of racism Given how police culture appears to interact with gender, it is perhaps unsurprising that it also impacts adversely on minority groups. This manifests in officer suspicion of, and hostility towards, members of racial and ethnic minorities (Lambert, 1970; Punch, 1979; Holdaway, 1983). Smith and Gray (1983), for example, found that police officers often appeared reluctant to investigate fully offences involving ethnic minority victims.The same authors, citing many examples throughout their work, also found that racial profiling influenced stop and search decisions. More than ten years later, Gibbons (1995) confirmed that Black people are more likely to be stopped and searched. McConville and Shepherd (1992) also argue that prejudicial attitudes, reinforced it seems by occupational culture, inform the way police deal with ethnic minorities.

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However, it is important not to reduce the explanation of unequal treatment of ethnic minority people to racist police culture alone. Research points to a complex interplay of a number of factors in shaping minority ethnic experiences of policing, including wider structural factors, indirect forms of discrimination and, of course, crude forms of racial bias by officers.Waddington (1999: 50), for example, points to various studies which he argues ‘simply fail to find that the police discriminate’ and to other factors such as the ‘predominantly lower-​class status’ of these individuals and their ‘exposure to conditions long associated with criminality’ (also, Waddington et al., 2004; Bowling and Phillips, 2007). More recent studies (e.g. Barrett et al., 2014; Hargreaves, 2018; Gaston, 2019), however, have highlighted that race remains an important factor in influencing police actions.7 Black men in particular continue to be subject to racially disparate policing, underpinned by prejudicial and negative assumptions. ‘Blackness’, it seems, is a symbolic marker for suspicion, threat and criminality (Bell, 2018). During my own work, I found that the uniformed officers I accompanied, rather than justifying stop and search decisions on racial traits, claimed that they did so on the basis of legitimate assumptions. Simply being known to the police, by virtue of previous, provides one non-​racially orientated reason for officers to target suspects. McConville et al. (1991: 23) quote one arresting officer as confirming that: ‘I think that’s our stock in trade … recognising people who were arrested in the past has got to be what we do for a living’. More subjective assumptions were also mentioned. David, for example, casually noted, ‘There’s nothing random about what we do or who we stop. It’s just anyone who looks “shit” or like a “crack-​head” ’. Of course, such subjective assumptions may themselves be shaped by unspoken racialised assumptions and prejudices. However, other commentators have suggested that racism displayed by officers may be no more than a reflection of societal racist tendencies (Waddington et al., 2004). In other words, the police are prejudiced, but only slightly more than society as whole (Reiner, 2000: 98). And prejudiced views do not always translate automatically into unequal treatment. This argument is strengthened by both Foster (1989) and Smith and Gray’s (1985) ethnographic policing studies, in which they found that the police tend to deal with ethnic minority groups in a respectful and appropriate way, notwithstanding any privately held prejudices they may hold. This last point supports the well-​rehearsed ‘canteen culture’ argument (Waddington, 1999) that racist banter one might come across in the police canteen is empty of meaning and wholly unconnected to police operational practice. But there is an obvious methodological problem with this position (and the findings of Foster [1989] and Smith and Gray [1985]). It is unlikely for the police to be openly racist when white, liberal researchers (or so perceived) are watching them. Some Black suspects, for example, have recorded interactions where the police are openly racist (when they don’t think anyone is watching/​ recording).

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In Chapter 2, I suggested, following a review of ethnographic policing research, that there is a relationship between police talk and the actions and behaviour of officers. Racist or sexist attitudes, therefore, are likely to be transferred into what officers do on the street and in the patrol car but also within their own workplace setting during interactions with other colleagues. In the wake of enquiries such as the Macpherson Report (1999), racism appears to have been driven underground within the police institution. Macpherson’s report followed a public inquiry into the botched way the Metropolitan Police Service investigated the now infamous racist murder of Black teenager Stephen Lawrence. The details of the enquiry and the way in which the police handled the investigations have been variously debated and require no further discussion here (see, e.g. Foster et al., 2005; McLaughlin and Murji, 1999). Instead, it suffices to state that the failures of the police investigation were attributed in no small part to ‘institutional racism’, defined by Macpherson (1999, at. 6.34) as: The collective failure of an organisation to provide an appropriate professional service to people because of their colour, culture or ethnic origin. It can be seen or detected in processes, attitudes and behaviour which amounts to discrimination through unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness, and racist stereotyping, which disadvantage minority ethnic people. The Macpherson recommendations for the reform of policy and practice placed immense pressure on the police. Macpherson argued inter alia that the police must reconsider how officers were trained in matters of diversity and how to deal with ethnic minorities. Subsequent research (e.g. Bull and Horncastle, 1989; Pearson et al., 1989; Loftus, 2010) confirms that changes in the demographic make-​up of police forces (due to increased recruitment of ethnic minority officers) coupled with post-​Macpherson training initiatives have generally reduced open expressions of prejudice. However, as Loftus (2009: 73) contends, such strategies have been undermined by ‘the persistence of a white heterosexist male culture that remains resistant towards the revised ethos’. There remain many safe areas (e.g. patrol cars, pubs after work and of course the canteen) that create space for covert discrimination (Holdaway and Barron, 1997; Macpherson, 1999; Cashmore, 2002). It is within these ‘backstage’ arenas that racist banter is most likely to be encountered (Holdaway and O’Neil, 2007). During observations of Sunnyvale DET officers, I witnessed examples of racial stereotypes applied to men of minority ethnic backgrounds. On one occasion, for example, David [uniformed DET officer] referred to a man of apparent Pakistani origin as ‘Mo’ (reflecting a racist notion that men of Pakistani origin are called Mohammad [The Guardian, 2014]), despite later conceding that he did not in fact know the man’s name. In a further instance, two Black

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men (of Caribbean and Somalian heritage, respectively) occupying a passing car were mocked by DET officers mimicking accents and making gestures stereotypically associated with Black Americans. But such mockery does not necessarily point to inherent racism within the ranks of Sunnyvale DET officers, as sarcasm of this nature could also apply to a pronounced English accent. I should also emphasise that events of this type were uncommon during the fieldwork. Indeed, I observed no incidents of racialised policing by police offender managers. As a young Black male (perhaps assumed to be a left-​leaning researcher and possible management spy) it would have been surprising if I had regularly encountered overt racist language or references directed either at offenders or ethnic minorities working within the Sunnyvale team (one probation officer). All I can say is that there was little evidence of racism exhibited by the Sunnyvale police officers I encountered during the study. Sunnyvale DET officers: suspicious, cynical and pessimistic What you’ve got to realise is, you’re dealing with a suspicious group of people; police officers are inherently suspicious people. (Mark—​Police offender manager) Suspicion is part of the normalcy of frontline policing and a core aspect of cop culture. It is a further response to the dangerous nature of policing and an outcome of the sense of mission. Officers routinely face dangerous and unpredictable situations, leaving them on constant alert to anything incongruous. Suspicions, as one uniformed officer pointed out during the present research, can be raised by ‘absolutely anything and absolutely nothing’. Suspicion is the product of being on constant lookout for something out of the ordinary, a sign of trouble, danger or a potential offence being committed. Police officers are typically most suspicious of low-​ status, marginal and excluded groups (Bowling et al., 2019). Constant contact with these groups also encourages officers to develop a cynical and pessimistic view of the social world. As Manning (1977: 26) explains, ‘… people in general are viewed as stupid, fallible, greedy, lustful, immoral and hypocritical’. Hyper-​scepticism of this nature manifests itself on a daily basis during interactions with the public. Central to suspiciousness, however, is a person’s incongruity with their surroundings, people in the wrong place at the wrong time. When the police believe individuals look out of place, without purpose, or are displaying odd behaviour, this tends to offend a police officer’s conception of the regular ordering of society (Bland, 2022: 1; Cockcroft, 2013). During observations I noted how certain characteristics or ‘situational attributes’, as McConville et al. (1991: 26) label them, became the basis for police–​citizen interactions.This much is evident from the following stop and account incident, recorded during a routine late shift with Sunnyvale DET officers:

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The man appeared to be quite indignant about being stopped [in the red-​ light part of town]. DAVID: Where have you been sir? MAN:  I’ve just dropped my daughter off. DAVID: Where? MAN:  I don’t know. DAVID:  I think you’ve been looking for a girl mate? Are MAN:  No, I was just dropping my daughter off. DAVID:  How many daughters have you got? MAN: One. DAVID:  Have you been drinking? RICHARD:  Shall we get a breathalyser? DAVID: Yeah. MAN:  I don’t drink, smell in the car. DAVID:  Ok, that’s not really the best way to tell, is it sir?

you married?

David moved away to do a check on the car, at which point I asked David what he thought the man had been doing. David explained, ‘He’s come to get a girl. Single middle-​aged man on his own in a car, doesn’t know where he’s dropped his daughter off at 11 at night, come on?’ The man passed the breathalyser and was sent on his way after a brief lecture about the dangers of driving through the red-​light part of town late and night and the likelihood of being stopped by the police if he chose to do so. Later I asked Richard why the man had not been arrested, when the police appeared to believe it was fairly obvious what he’d been doing. Richard explained, ‘You have to actually catch them right at it, usually in the car with the girl after he’s picked her up.You know what they’re going to say; she’ll say they’re old friends from school; he’ll say he’s just giving her a lift … it’s the same old story’. This event is consistent with Waddington’s (1998: 101) assessment that police officers have a distinctively jaundiced view of the world. Known suspects are distrusted but so, to a lesser extent, are members of the public and victims. Loftus (2009: 110), for example, found that police officers were ‘immediately doubtful’ of those who were intent on obtaining a crime number, suspecting that such requests meant the possibility of an ‘inside job’. ‘Regulars’ as well were particularly likely to encounter cynicism, and an unsympathetic and detached disposition from frontline officers: The first hour or so of the shift was spent looking for a wanted offender. Richard explained that this was a ‘DV’ (domestic violence) case. Apparently, the victim had reported the offence, but was now back with the offender who was reportedly living at her address. Both David and

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Richard shook their heads at this ‘ridiculous’ outcome. But according to David, this was quite a regular occurrence, especially when alcohol was involved. David mocked this situation, mimicking a drunk female: ‘Lock him up, lock him up’ … and then when they’re sober … ‘I loves him, I loves him’. Here the dismissive and unsympathetic attitude of Richard and David is reflective of a broader theme found within policing research. ‘DV’ cases are generally viewed by frontline police officers as ‘trivial’ (Hoyle, 1988: 68) ‘crocks of shit’ (Loftus, 2009: 129) that cannot be considered ‘real police work’ (Young, 1991: 315).8 What is of interest, however, is whether the suspicious and cynical disposition typically associated with uniformed officers can be found within the world outlook of IOM police offender managers. In what follows, I draw on observations carried out on both police offender managers (non-​uniformed police responsible for the ‘management’ of IOM offenders) and IOM response officers (uniformed police officers responsible for the enforcement side of IOM). The aim here is to examine the similarities and differences in the levels of suspicion and cynicism exhibited by both sets of police officers encountered during the study. The question of whether police offender managers possess an inherently suspicious or sceptical disposition was not directly approached during interviews. Observations of these officers, however, highlighted a pervading sense of suspicion and pessimism throughout their ranks. If, as Reiner (2000: 91) insists, this innate police attitude of constant suspicion ‘cannot be readily switched off ’, then it is perhaps unsurprising that police offender managers appear to have readily transferred this core aspect of police culture into the environment of IOM. Suspicion, as we shall see, constitutes frame which appears to shape police–​offender interactions within the Sunnyvale IOM field. An important example of the way in which hyper-​suspicion appears to have transposed its way into the IOM setting relates to the stereotyping of individuals. As noted above, both uniformed DET officers and non-​uniformed police offender managers appeared to stereotype Sunnyvale offenders. The ‘Them’ and ‘Us’ characteristic of police culture embraces such classification, shaping the distinction between types of ‘Them’ and types of ‘Us’. The DET officers I observed, for example, regularly stopped individuals on the basis that they looked like ‘shit’, an auxiliary trait that apparently indicated suspiciousness. Moreover, time spent with the same officers uncovered an obvious (and overt) distaste for Sunnyvale offenders (or for that matter any other potential suspects they came across). Terms frequently employed by Sunnyvale DET officers to describe people included: ‘dirty scroats’, ‘shits’, ‘horrible cunts’, ‘shit-​bags’ and ‘crack-​heads’. These references refer to individuals identified within orthodox policing literatures as ‘police property’ (Lee, 1981: 53).These are people of low-​ status, powerless groups, whom the dominant majority view as distasteful. The job of the police, in this respect, is to protect ‘ordinary decent people’ (‘Us’)

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from the ‘scum’ (‘Them’), whilst the majority turn a blind eye to the way in which it is done (Reiner, 2000: 93–​94). Police offender managers: the endurance of a suspicious, cynical and pessimistic outlook Observations revealed little difference existed between the stereotypical views of offenders and suspects held by police offender managers and those held by uniformed officers. Sunnyvale offenders were routinely described, by offender managers like Karen and Barry, as ‘vile’, ‘smackheads’, ‘walking abortion cases’, ‘dirty scroats’ and ‘wastes of space’. On one occasion Karen went so far as to suggest that ‘Putting them all down … would save us all a lot of money and do society a favour’. Like Sunnyvale DET officers, police offender managers appeared highly sceptical of information received from ‘civvies’, particularly Sunnyvale offenders. Consider, for example, the following informal conversation, recorded during my time at Southside: Mark: I saw [XXXX] recently, he seemed very modest, very positive about his rehabilitation, seemed serious—​admitted his part. Anyway, he, three days later, he’s caught throwing drugs over a prison wall; now in the cells awaiting interview. It reinforces the fact that these offenders lie. I mean I want to get into the mind-​psyche of these offenders. I mean what happens from Friday till now. On Friday he was an open book, honest about his drug use, how much money he’d made from selling drugs etc …, more honest than I’ve seen in a long time and then look here we are. I mean, what can you say to that? Leads me to be very sceptical in the future. A commonality exists between offender manager talk and that of uniformed DET officers, at least in relation to how Sunnyvale offenders were viewed. Like their uniformed counterparts, police offender managers were also found to retain a deeply cynical view of the social world around them. Some officers even suggested that social morality was being silently eroded around them. Policing literature describes this outlook as ‘police pessimism’. As Reiner (2000: 90) explains, ‘Officers often develop a hard skin of bitterness seeing all social trends in apocalyptic terms, with the police as a beleaguered minority about to be overrun by the forces of barbarism’. Police pessimism (and cynicism for that matter) can be located within officers’ negative feelings towards the criminal justice system and the law, more broadly.The police officer, Banton (1964: 144), explains: is frequently a critic of society; through what he sees in the courts, as well as on the beat. He is in an unparalleled position to observe the machinery of society in action.

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Police offender managers, for example, expressed a pessimistic view of the criminal justice system and of society as a whole. In line with earlier police research, defence solicitors were viewed with antipathy and regarded as obstacles to the pursuit of justice (McConville et al., 1991: 47). The courts were also routinely criticised for undermining the efforts of officers and continuously ‘letting offenders off ’. Magistrates, one offender manager suggested, could do with some proper training: ‘Let them see what we do for the day, and they might have a different attitude’ [Fieldnote]. Society, it appears, was seen by some police offender managers as in the grip of a moral crisis. Being suspicious is a core aspect of police culture but also policing more broadly. Police officers’ exaggerated sense of mission and preoccupation with action leads them to seek out signs of trouble and danger.Within this world,‘suspiciousness and stereotyping’ are, according to Reiner (2000: 91), ‘inescapable’. It is true, of course, that what police officers say and what police officers do can sometimes be distinguished (Waddington, 1998). Nevertheless, overwhelming empirical evidence points to a tangible link between the rhetoric of police culture and the behaviours of uniformed police officers on the street.9 Suspicion, cynicism and pessimism, therefore, play a key part in the occupational lives of rank-​and-​file officers and are supported by ‘canteen’ socialisation processes. These values, attitudes and the behaviours they generate also can be located in the culture and practice of police offender managers. Sunnyvale DET officers: a sense of isolation and mutual solidarity A dichotomous ‘Them’ and ‘Us’ view of the social world leaves many uniformed officers feeling socially isolated from the rest of society. A variety of reasons have been reported by officers for the difficulties they face in mixing with the public. Reiner (2000: 91) provides the following examples: ‘shift-​work, erratic hours, difficulties in switching off from the tension engendered by the job, aspects of the discipline code and the hostility or fear that citizens may exhibit to the police’. Generally, these aspects of the job mean officers naturally become an extremely insular group. Of course, this sense of isolation is reinforced by the notion of ‘Them’ and ‘Us’, but borne out of this is also a deep feeling of solidarity amongst frontline police officers: As we drove through the centre of town in a two [police] car convoy, Richard and me in one car and David and Brendon in another, David radioed through to Richard, stating that a well-​known offender is driving the car in front. David then suggested that Richard ‘get up beside the car in front’. Richard did this. 4 young men were in the car looking at Richard, smirking and grinning. David radioed through again, ‘Let’s have a word [with them]’.

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On go the car lights and sirens and the car driven by the men is shepherded into a side road by David and Brendon’s car. The men are then asked to get out of the car. As we pull up behind the other police car Richard notes, ‘This guy—​the one on the left—​is a fucking nasty bastard: a real shitbag’. We get out of the car and David is in conversation with the driver: DRIVER: Why you pull me over boss?10 DAVID: We know you’re involved in crime. DRIVER: We’ve only just been pulled [stopped] RICHARD:  I’ll check it out.

boss.

Richard then got on the radio to check the authenticity of the man’s claim. It turned out then men had been stopped that day but some confusion remained over whether they had been searched. RICHARD: Were you searched? DRIVER: We weren’t searched boss. DAVID:  Better search them.

At this point the demeanour of the men changed dramatically; they became aggressive. One of the men, but not the driver already questioned, ‘squared up’ to David. SECOND MAN: Why you want to search me boss? What grounds have you got? DAVID: I don’t need any grounds, just reasonable suspicion. I saw hand-​

movement when we pulled you over and that’s enough. fucking way, you’ve got nothing on us.You can’t search us for doing nothing. DAVID:  If you keep using language like that you’ll be arrested. DRIVER: You can’t nick him over that. BRENDON:  We can actually mate. S.5 of the Public Order Act 1984 says we can, so I’d suggest you shut up. THIRD MAN:  No

This incident provides an example of solidarity within Sunnyvale’s uniformed branch. These DET officers were prepared to reinforce the authority of each other, without question, in the face of public hostility. Indeed, core policing literatures suggest that solidarity is augmented by the fact that officers routinely face danger together and come to rely on each other in tight spots, at times shielding each other’s violations of procedure (Newburn, 1999; Loftus, 2010; Skolnick and Fyfe, 1993). There appeared to be no overt violations of procedure, in this instance;11 nonetheless, s.5 of the Public Order Act 1986 proved a useful tool in maintaining the officer’s collective dominance and authority over two hostile suspects.

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However, whilst a clear sense of solidarity seems to exist amongst rank-​and-​ file shift colleagues, to suggest that this sentiment is pervasive throughout the police organisation would be misleading. Waddington (1998: 100), for example, points to ‘a complex pattern of vertical and horizontal divisions within the police organisation’. Other research confirms that internal conflicts exist between ‘management cops’ and ‘street cops’ (Reuss-​Ianni, 1983), but also that specialism can create something of a gulf between frontline officers. In other words, officers can feel a sense of internal isolation within the organisation. Within the present context the question becomes whether within the specialist environment of IOM any isolation felt by police officers precipitated a sense of solidarity within the unit. Sunnyvale police offender managers: an isolated but not mutually cohesive group The question of whether police offender managers felt isolated from society was not directly addressed during interviews. However, it seems likely that they would at least partially share the same sense of isolation as their uniformed colleagues. Like other rank-​and-​file officers, observations found that police offender managers faced hostility from offenders and were distrustful of outsiders. These are two core precipitating factors of police officer isolation.Yet the police offender managers I encountered did not report a strong sense of solidarity between police officers within the IOM unit. Observations did, however, reveal signs of cohesion amongst police offender managers. For instance, every two weeks, on a Friday, police offender managers located at an office on the southside of the police area, including the team sergeant (and on occasion a member of the prison staff along with a Sunnyvale admin officer) would enjoy breakfast together at a local café. Talk on these occasions was informal, often non-​policing related and certainly did not revolve around current Sunnyvale intelligence issues. However, some police offender managers, once regular attendees at the breakfast, had begun to question its relevance to the job at hand: Friday morning, on the second week in the bi-​weekly cycle Mark, Claude and the team sergeant went for breakfast at a local supermarket café. On this occasion, however, two police offender managers, Barry and Karen, decided not to go for the breakfast, instead deciding to get straight out on offender visits. I decided to join them, inquiring later why they had decided not to attend the bi-​weekly.The reply from Karen was illuminating: ‘The more conscientious of us decided not to go. It feels like it’s happening too often, like it’s no longer a treat’. Barry at this point said: ‘We’ve always got too much work to do anyway on a Friday’.12 (Fieldnote)

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Scepticism about the usefulness of the Friday breakfast appeared to manifest a deeper divide between Sunnyvale officers concerning workload. It became clear throughout the research that some police offender managers deliberately pursued an easier pathway through the general workload of a police offender manager. At one stage during the observations, I asked Barry and Karen if they felt like they were the more proactive [Southside] police offender managers within the unit. Their answers confirmed my own assumption generated during earlier observations. Smiling, Karen said: ‘We do things differently’. When I suggested that was a fairly diplomatic answer, Karen just laughed. Barry, on the other hand, went on to say, ‘I think we are’. Cain’s (1973) comparative research on rural and urban policing identified the concept of police ‘easing behaviours’. She found that, to relieve mundane day-​to-​day work and due to the generally loose supervision of frontline police, officers spent time grazing in cafes, dropping into neighbouring police stations or running personal errands. Much like Cain, during my own observations I witnessed uniformed police officers regularly engaging in these practices. Examples included: ‘office football’,13 officers attending the gym during working hours and ‘nipping out for fresh air’. The Sunnyvale breakfast ‘meeting’ (certainly not something officially factored into the working of offender managers) perhaps can be best described as ‘easing behaviour’. Moreover, I witnessed many other types of easing behaviour whilst observing offender managers. On one occasion, for instance, Mark stopped at the training ground of the local football team to observe the team’s training preparations. During another shift, Gina went home to speak to a relative about a pressing personal issue. On both occasions, in an effort to conceal these instances of deviance from supervisors, I was asked to keep what had taken place ‘under my hat’ and in the second instance Gina suggested what explanation should be given in the event we were questioned about our absence. Small-​scale deception towards supervisors was, it seems, a culturally supported norm (also, Manning, 1977; Loftus, 2009). Two points should be made here. Firstly, episodes of ‘easing’ demonstrate that not all the police offender managers I encountered held a desire for continuous action and excitement. Several officers appeared content with an ‘easy shift’ (also, McConville et al., 1991: 31). Secondly, following earlier works (Manning 1977; Fielding, 1994), such behaviour suggests that a measure of defensive solidarity exists within the ranks of police offender managers. Despite this observation, however, officers claimed during interviews that the unit lacked solidarity because they were grouped in pairs with staff from the other Sunnyvale partnership agencies. These groups (referred to in Sunnyvale jargon as ‘clusters’) typically consisted of two police offender managers, two probation staff members, a prison officer and a criminal justice team intervention worker. This situational determinant apparently prevented officers from forming the shift-​like relationships found within studies of uniformed officers (Loftus, 2010; Waddington, 1998; Hoyle, 1998; Skinns, 2011; Bacon, 2016). This was further

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compounded by the fact that police offender managers were split between two separate offices. The importance of these causal dynamics was articulated by one police offender manager in the following terms: FRED:  Do

you feel a sense of solidarity within [Sunnyvale] with other police offender managers—​in the same way perhaps that you might have done when you were [on a] ‘response’ [team]? BARRY:  It’s difficult because obviously we’re split in half. So, obviously, more solidarity to police offender managers here than I would to police offender managers at Eastside because I don’t work with them. So, but yeah, I mean I think for a team to work there should be some solidarity, I think, but yeah. BARRY:  In the last team there was a lot of solidarity, and we would socialize together sort of thing whereas now, I think because we tend to work in pairs. I think me and Karen, probably we’re closer than any of the others at all. I mean I don’t think the others go out together as such, they tend to go out on their own. I think people just tend to just do what they want, whereas we tend to go out together. Then at least once we’re done with the appointment, we can maximise our downtime looking at other people. Despite signs of cohesion among police offender managers, demonstrated during various easing activities, there appeared to be a lack of solidarity among police offender managers. A comment made by Karen during interview perhaps offers a good summation of this point when she observed that, ‘We’re not like a team of police offender managers’. Working arrangements also contributed towards the lack of police offender manager cohesion within the IOM unit. The discretionary ability to work alone or with staff from the other partnership agencies means that offender managers were frequently able to determine who they did or did not work closely with. Whilst there were no overt signs of disharmony within the ranks of police offender managers, fractures were nevertheless discernible. Many officers spoke of an atmosphere of competitiveness precipitated by an organisational emphasis on performance. As one police offender manager remarked: GINA: 

I’ll be really honest here—​I’ve noticed the general competitiveness tends to rise to around the time—​the week that the [Tactical Tasking and Co-​ ordination Group] meeting is on as well as the police offender manager meetings. It’s almost like a competition to know what’s going on and be on the ball. I’m not saying it’s wrong but I’m not saying it’s right either. FRED:  Do you mean between officers? GINA:  Including anyone really, including officers from other [police teams] Competitive, often target-​ orientated police environments are reflective of the broader rise of managerialism (Garland, 2001: 188) within the criminal justice surround (Hawkins, 2002). Within the organisational field local police

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authorities are required by law to formulate localised priorities and implement strategic objectives. As we have already seen in Chapters 1 and 2, such mandates are facilitated by legislation in the form of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 (ss.5 and 6). How successful police forces are in achieving these objectives is in turn directly linked to the levels of funding received. Performance targets and measurements, therefore, are a way of the police demonstrating that these objectives are being achieved. It might be expected then that a ‘managerialist agenda’ (Skinns, 2011: 13) creates a pressurised environment for police offender managers. Gina’s comments above strengthen this argument. But the pressure also would likely impinge upon the way police offender managers frame events. Indeed, the police offender manager role requires disciplined analysis of information, with a key focus on managing any risk posed by the Sunnyvale offenders on their caseload, but also responding to the enquires of partner agencies and other police units. These methods are, of course, a reflection of broader trends emanating from the wider political and legal surround. Once understood and identified as relevant, contemporary intelligence can shape interventions aimed at preventing and reducing crime. As Cope (2008: 404) explains, the dissemination of real-​time information by police officers is central to supporting the delivery of policing services, inter-​agency cooperation and risk-​mitigation. However, its importance, as part of this process also places pressure on the analyst, in this case the police offender manager. Yet, while officers were aware of the existence of official performance indicators, a mainstay of the rise of managerialist agendas within police organisations, all those spoken to argued that they were under no internal pressure to meet such ‘targets’. A premium is placed upon officers maintaining detailed up-​to-​ date intelligence on the offenders they are managing. However, rather than in response to an intense performance-​orientated regime focused on ‘detections’, the pressure is driven by intelligence requests from other police teams within the force area. These units regularly require information on the current status of Sunnyvale offenders. For example, an increase in the number of reported burglaries in a particular area may well prompt the ‘burglary squad’ to seek information on any Sunnyvale offender thought to be responsible for the break-​ins. Police offender managers, therefore, must be able to provide current, risk-​ orientated intelligence, on the offender in question. This does not mean, however, that they felt a sense of solidarity with colleagues across the force. Consider the following fieldnote: Monday morning, and the office was quiet. Most police offender managers and the few probation staff who were in were busy in front of their computers. I asked Mark, what he was doing. ‘Just updating [the IOM intelligence database]. It’s the first thing I usually do on a Monday morning, check the emails that have come in from the uniformed side of things and check to see if anyone has been arrested or are still in the cells and then

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update the system. After all, we wouldn’t want the district team picking up on offences committed by “our” guys before we did’. Observation suggested that this was a commonly shared view. In other words, what most officers seemed concerned about was not so much that force-​ wide intelligence on Sunnyvale offenders remained contemporaneous; rather, officers appeared anxious that other police teams might acquire information on the risk status of these offenders before the IOM unit did. The spirit was one of competition rather than cooperation. Sunnyvale DET officers: authoritarian attitudes and conservative ideologies Conservatism is a central aspect of police culture (Bowling et al., 2019; Cockcroft, 2013). Recent empirical research has found that police officers continue to routinely express ‘simplistic decontextualized’ authoritarian ideologies (Loftus, 2009: 108).The nature of the job, the historical position of the police as a bulwark against the organised left and the disciplined and hierarchical nature of the police as an organisation means, according to Reiner (2000: 96), that ‘the police officer with a conservative outlook is more likely to fit in’. In this view, conservatism is a cultural response to the job at hand. Observations of Sunnyvale unformed DET officers uncovered evidence of authoritarian conservatism. It was often asserted, for instance, that some of the ‘worst’ Sunnyvale offenders ‘should be given the death penalty as a deterrent to others’ [Fieldnote]. These ideas of a possible response to persistent criminality underpinned a traditionally conservative tough-​minded stance on issues of morality and law and order. Indeed, the DET officers I encountered heavily frowned upon those they considered to be living outside of conventional morality, such as homeless people, drug users and alcoholics. They also viewed the societal ‘machine’, particularly the criminal justice system, as ‘broken’ or at least much in need of overhaul: Richard [uniformed response officer] explained in a frustrated manner that he needed to sort out an interpreter for one of the offenders arrested earlier. ‘She speaks English fine, but when she gets to court, it’s like, “Oh I need an interpreter” (raises eyes). You know who has to pay for it? We do’. Whilst Richard made some telephone calls, to source an interpreter, David and another uniformed IOM officer came down to the front office and Richard filled them in about the job. David responded, saying ‘I feel like punching someone in the face; I don’t know why, and this lot are shit bags’ (the two female offenders). He turned to me and complained that ‘the criminal justice system [was] fucked up’. David explained that a suspect had been caught ‘red-​handed’ with a large amount of cash during a routine police operation to apprehend a wanted

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prostitute.The offender could not explain the origin of the cash and therefore was charged with some form of money laundering offence. Despite being caught ‘bang to rights’, when the case came to court, the suspect had apparently changed his plea to not guilty, thus requiring David to give evidence. This had meant David had had to change four shifts in order to attend court to give evidence in a case where the suspect was clearly guilty. David’s solution to this type of affront was fairly straightforward: ‘Just pick 12 “scroats” and kill them—​that would make them [the others presumably] think twice’. (Fieldnote) Conservatism among police offender managers Some commentators (e.g. Maguire and Norris, 1994: 20) have suggested that police officers engaged in work that involves a higher level of autonomy and discretion (e.g. detectives) may subscribe less to conservative values. Other writers argue that successive governments, taking a market-​orientated approach to policing and public services more broadly, have precipitated left-​leaning sympathies amongst police officers (Reiner, 2000; Rose, 1996). Where then do police offender managers ‘fit in’? The officers I encountered were largely drawn directly from the uniformed ranks; yet the role of police offender manager naturally involves a substantial amount of autonomy and discretion. Moreover, if conservative values represent a cultural response to frontline police work, then it might be expected that police offender managers, largely office-​based, in a more welfarist role and working alongside people from agencies with a different organisational culture (i.e. more support-​orientated) might retain or gravitate towards a more liberal world outlook. Observations, nonetheless, suggested otherwise. Police offender managers routinely expressed conservative-​ orientated concerns over various social welfare issues, particularly the current ‘benefits culture’, as one officer put it. The following observation note illustrates this point: Karen and Barry were waiting for a probation officer, Ron, to finish a telephone call when the conversation turned to the state welfare system. Karen appeared to have some particularly strong views on the matter. ‘I wish the Conservatives would hurry up and do away with the benefits system. I think they should get vouchers, no cash, just food vouchers, perhaps just five pounds in their hand’. I replied,‘What about things like travel, bus fares etc.?’ Karen, ‘A luxury, think of all the money they spend on fags’ (cigarettes). Another probation officer who entered the office added to the conversation asking, ‘What about baby clothes?’ No response from Karen. In any case, Ron had finished the phone call and we all left to visit a Sunnyvale offender.

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While the world outlook of most police offender managers largely appeared socially and morally conservative, three offender managers out of nine I encountered were more relaxed in their approach both to social issues and the way in which offenders should be treated. At first glance this suggested that a conservative outlook was not universal within the police ranks of Sunnyvale. Adrian was explaining how a different approach to dealing with offenders was necessary. ‘Things are tough for these people. I mean, I grew up in the East End of London. I know what it is like. I joined this team as a support officer, not as a police offender manager. My job is to try and support offenders, through pathways support. I’m the carrot and the stick, not just the stick. Some IOM police offender managers would probably disagree, but my job is to support offenders and the police—​offenders via pathways support—​the police via intelligence updates.We need to support the community, which includes these individuals. The ultimate goal is to support these people to get free of their addictions and get back to society. In this way the community as a whole is supported’. (Fieldnote) It is tempting to suggest that Adrian’s views reflect the general decrease in police conservatism witnessed over recent years (Morgan and Newburn, 1997; Loader and Mulcahy, 2003; Bacon, 2022). However, Adrian’s ideas were very much in the minority amongst Sunnyvale police officers. Whilst most offender managers were prepared to recognise that a new ‘common sense’ approach to dealing with persistent offenders was certainly needed, many offender managers, unlike Adrian, did not view themselves as support officers. In fact, interview responses from officers confirm that the overwhelming majority felt that prioritising support over intelligence gathering would be incongruous with the role of police offender manager. For the majority, the job was simply one of intelligence-​led, risk-​management policing: As I see it, my primary role as a police officer and [police offender manager] is to glean intelligence, you know, see what their MOs are in relation to when they offend, what drug issues they’ve got, what clothing they’ve got on—​new clothes, new trainers anything like that really—​it’s a broad spectrum. (Claude—​Interview) This type of police offender manager thinking was further confirmed, by Barry: We’ve identified them, we’ve managed their risk when they’ve come out and we’ve sent them back to prison quicker. I don’t think it’s because we’ve helped them as such, which is a bit controversial.

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Broadly speaking, the world outlook of the police offender manager was found to be morally and socially conservative. Officers, like Adrian, did exhibit more ‘radical’ welfare-​leaning opinions, particular in relation to the shape of police–​ offender interactions within the context of Sunnyvale. Yet an overwhelming dissatisfaction with the criminal justice system coupled with authoritarian styled, right-​wing analyses of the social circumstances of offenders, confirms the continuance of moral conservatism throughout the ranks of Sunnyvale police offender managers.

Conclusions: the endurance of cop culture and the link between Sunnyvale police talk and action In order to bring together the findings reported above, we can begin by returning to the observation made at the outset of the chapter: the persistence of some key traits of police culture may inhibit the full subscription to the police offender management role, as envisaged by official IOM rhetoric. From the conversations I had with Sunnyvale police and my observations of these officers at work, it appears that more of a furtive approach to dealing with offenders, centred not just on surveillance and intelligence-​gathering but also forms of support, has replaced traditional action-​orientated frontline policing. Police offender managers are now more likely to be confronted by statistical data on computer screens than aggressive and/​or disrespectful suspects. The majority of interactions I observed were calm and generally took place at the homes of Sunnyvale offenders. Yet these events were framed by officers in different and novel terms. What may have once been considered mundane and trivial was reworked in the minds of these officers. The ‘buzz’, as one police offender manager put it, now arose from routine intelligence gathering visits. Nonetheless, it would be a mistake to divorce this slower paced form of police work from the traditionally action-​ orientated crime control police goals. Sunnyvale police officers continued to relentlessly pursue known prolific offenders through the official channels open to them. For DET officers, we saw that this meant a continuation of traditional catch and convict policing methods, along with the attendant cultural attitudes and practices. Meanwhile, police offender managers sought to create and grasp intelligence-​gathering opportunities. Keep those on IOM under surveillance, rummage around their homes, dig into their private lives and exploit personal information shared by the partnership agencies. These goals, it seems, could be achieved whilst maintaining the guise of police offering pathway support. What I have just described appears to be the nature of IOM policing. But it is the core characteristics of police culture, present within the attitudes and behaviours displayed by police offender managers throughout the study, that are able to help us make sense of the crime control-​orientated policing taking place within IOM. It might be expected that this dominant culture would be disrupted by attempts to redefine the role of police officer within the framework of IOM;

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that requiring officers to provide rehabilitative support to Sunnyvale offenders would reduce the impact of police cultural norms and values on the attitudes and behaviours of Sunnyvale police offender managers. However, the widely articulated core aspects of police culture encountered during the fieldwork suggest an alternative thesis. Cop culture remains embedded within the world outlook of the officers I encountered. With few exceptions, the attitudes of police offender managers bear a striking resemblance to those generally exhibited by frontline police officers. Suspicion, cynicism, pessimism, conservatism and dimensions of prejudice (e.g. misogyny) were found to persist within the context of Sunnyvale IOM. However, the discourses and interactions documented throughout this chapter also point to subtle variations in the dominant culture. Despite feeling socially isolated from broader society, police offender managers displayed few of the traits of defensive solidarity typically exhibited by their uniformed counterparts. Rather, divisions appeared to exist amongst police offender managers within the team, particularly around workload. Further, we have seen, police talk, stimulated by cultural values and beliefs, has often been found by police researchers to be at variance with what officers actually do on the streets. Waddington (1998) argues that we must distinguish between what officers say in the canteen and what they do on the streets; the ‘oral tradition’ of policing, he insists, should be ‘appreciated’, rather than condemned. Waddington’s point is an important one. In the present study, routine encounters were conducted far more respectfully than one might have anticipated given the scornful epithets used to refer to offenders as part of canteen talk. Yet whilst, in my experience, the rhetoric of the canteen did not appear to overtly translate into action, a subtle link between the two could be identified. Police offender managers cultivated friendly relationships and built rapports with Sunnyvale offenders in the same way that an officer from the criminal investigation department does with a potential informant. This provides a possible explanation for the friendly and respectful interactions I witnessed. Action of this nature also facilitated the goals espoused during canteen ‘talk’—​gathering useful intelligence so as to lock up ‘vile scroats’ and ‘smack-​heads’. The endurance of police cultural themes, persisting around a preference for action and excitement (albeit nuanced constructions of the concepts), precipitated a preference amongst police offender managers, for restrictive/​ enforcement approaches, rather than meaningful rehabilitative work. Interactions with offenders that are centred on enforcement, risk-​management and surveillance are an important part of IOM, but they also have the potential to threaten offender perceptions of police legitimacy. This is because the basis for the interactions (i.e. risk-​criteria) is unlikely to be easily discernible by offenders, and thus the activities may be viewed as forms of police harassment. With this in mind, I turn now to examine Sunnyvale offenders’ self-​described experiences of Sunnyvale policing, attending specifically to the question of

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whether the strategies adopted by the scheme had negative implications for Sunnyvale police legitimacy and efforts to promote offender desistance.

Notes 1 There is a huge amount of literature associated with the concept of ‘cop culture’. For an excellent reviews of the field, see Cockcroft (2013, 2020). 2 It is plausible that such laws are deliberately and inevitably designed as ‘permissive’ laws so as to provide a toolbox for officers to help address these broader aims. 3 But these works also—​and perhaps more pragmatically reflect—​the fact that society requires that the police to do much more than mechanically enforce the legal code. Indeed, the ‘omnibus mandate’ (Loader, 2020: 2) of the police (in which order maintenance and emergency response, alongside general service functions, occupy the majority of police efforts) necessitates this. 4 Notions of ‘field’ and ‘frame’ were introduced and discussed at length in Chapter 3. 5 For recent evidence of the persistence of misogynist police culture, see, for example, the IOPC report into allegations of bullying and harassment amongst a team of officers working at Charing Cross Police Station, available at www.police​cond​uct. gov.uk/​inv​esti​gati​ons/​inappr​opri​ate-​cond​uct-​char​ing-​cross-​pol​ice-​stat​ion-​metro​ poli​tan-​pol​ice (last accessed 10/​6/​2022). 6 Police offender managers were white, male and between 30 and 40 years of age.Two of nine were female. 7 See further, for example, The Macpherson, Report: Twenty-​two years on, available at https://​publi​cati​ons.par​liam​ent.uk/​pa/​cm5​802/​cmsel​ect/​cmh​aff/​139/​13902. htm (last accessed, 13/​12/​2021). 8 There has been considerable change in the landscape of policing in England and Wales, both generally, and in relation to policing domestic violence specifically (for a review, see, e.g., Myhill, 2019). It is therefore possible that a shift in police cultural attitudes has occurred since the current observational research was carried out. 9 See Chapter 2. 10 Brendon later explained this as an ostensible tactic of the suspects asking the question, so they can take a mental note of the response and thus avoid doing things that might get them stopped in the future. 11 Whilst the law in this area is amorphous, it should be noted that in DPP v Orum [1989] 1 WLR 88 it was held that for s.5 it is insufficient for police officer victims of the offence to say that it was likely they would suffer ‘alarm harassment or distress’, they actually have to experience one of these emotions (in order to establish the likelihood). The courts take the view that the police must be ‘wearily familiar’ with abuse, so are unlikely to be alarmed by it. For more recent guidance from the courts see particularly Harvey v Director of Public Prosecutions [2011] All ER (D) 143 (Nov). 12 The slightly ironic twist to this episode was that the comments were recorded during an extended lunch break, which in this instance Barry and Karen decided to take at the local MacDonald’s restaurant. 13 A game which involved police offender managers kicking a paper football, around the office, whilst seated, a past-​time which was routinely ignored by both the sergeant and other more senior officers.

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References Allen, G., and Harding, M. (2021). Police Service Strength. House of Commons Library. Available here: https://​resear​chbr​iefi​ngs.files.par​liam​ent.uk/​docume​nts/​SN00​634/​ SN00​634.pdf (accessed 10/​7/​2022). Atkinson, C. (2016). ‘Patriarchy, gender, infantilisation: A cultural account of police intelligence work in Scotland’, Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology, 50(2): 1–​18. Bacon, M. (2016). Taking Care of Business: Police Detectives, Drug Law Enforcement and Proactive Investigation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bacon, M. (2022). ‘Desistance from criminalisation: Police culture and new directions in drugs policing’, Policing and Society, 32(4): 522–​539. Banton, M. (1964). The Policeman in the Community. London: Tavistock. Barrett, G.A., Fletcher, S.M., and Patel, T.G. (2014). ‘Black minority ethnic communities and levels of satisfaction with policing: Findings from a study in the north of England’, Criminology and Criminal Justice, 14(2):196–​215. Bayley, D.H. (1979). ‘Police function, structure, and control in western Europe and North America: Comparative and historical studies’, Crime and Justice, 1, 109–​143. Bell, J. (2018). ‘Dead canaries in the coal mines:The symbolic assailant revisited’, Georgia State University Law Review, 34(3): 514–​579. Bland, E. (2022). ‘Lurking’ and “loitering”: The genealogy of languages of police suspicion in Britain’, Policing and Society, 32(5): 664–​679. Bloch, P.B., and Anderson, D. (1974). Policewomen on Patrol: Final Report. Washington, DC: The Police Foundation. Bowling, B., and Phillips, C. (2007). ‘Disproportionate and discriminatory: Reviewing the evidence on police stop and search’, Modern Law Review, 70(6): 936–​961. Bowling, B., Reiner, R., and Sheptycki, J. (2019). The Politics of the Police (5th ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Brown, J. (2007). ‘From cult of masculinity to smart macho: Gender perspectives on police occupational culture’, in M. O’Neill, M. Marks, and A.-​M. Singh (eds.), Police Occupational Culture. Bingley: Emerald, 205–​226. Brown, J., Belur, J.,Tompson, L., McDowall,A., Hunter, G., May,T. (2018).‘Extending the remit of evidence-​based policing’, International Journal of Police Science & Management, 20(1): 38–​51. Bull, R., and Horncastle, P. (1989). ‘An evaluation of human awareness training’, in R. Morgan and D. Smith (eds.), Coming to Terms with Policing. London: Routledge, 97–​117. Cain, M. (1973). Society and the Policeman’s Role. London: Routledge. Cashmore, E. (2002). ‘Behind the window dressing: Minority ethnic police perspectives on cultural diversity’, Journal of Ethnic Migration Studies, 28(2): 327–​341. Chan, J. (1997). Changing Police Culture: Policing in a Multicultural Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Choongh, S. (1998). ‘Policing the dross: A social disciplinary model of policing’, British Journal of Criminology, 38: 623–​634. Cockcroft, T. (2013). Police Culture:Themes and Concepts. Abingdon: Routledge. Cockcroft,T. (2020). Police Occupational Culture, Research and Practice. Bristol: Policy Press. Cope, N. (2008). ‘Interpretation for action: Definitions and potential of crime analysis for policing’, in T. Newburn (ed.), Handbook of Policing (2nd ed.). Cullompton:Willan, 404–​429.

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Cram, F. (2016). ‘Perceptions of me, conceptions of you: Refining ideas of access to, and “acceptance” within, the police organisational field’, Policing and Society, 28: 360–​374. Cram, F. (2018).‘The “carrot” and “stick” of integrated offender management: Implications for police culture’, Policing and Society, 30(4): 378–​395. Crank, J.P. (1998). Understanding Police Culture. Cincinnati, OH: Anderson. Crewe, B., Liebling, A., and Hulley, S. (2011). ‘Staff culture, use of authority and prisoner quality of life in public and private sector prisons’, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology, 44(1): 94–​115. Dixon,D.(1997).Law in Policing:Legal Regulation and Police Practices.Oxford:Clarendon Press. Dolman, F. (2008). ‘Community support officers, their occupational culture and the development of reassurance policing’, European Society of Criminology Conference Paper. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University. Fielding, N. (1994). ‘Cop canteen culture’, in T. Newburn and B. Stenko (eds.), Just Boys Doing Business. London: Routledge, 46–​63. Foster, J. (1989). ‘Two stations: An ethnographic study of policing in the inner-​city’, in D. Downes (ed.), Crime and the City: Essays in Memory of John Barrow Mays. London: Macmillan, 128–​154. Foster, J. (2003). ‘Police cultures’ in T. Newburn (eds.), Handbook of Policing. Cullompton: Willan, 196–​227. Foster J., Souhami, A., and Newburn,T. (2005). Assessing the Impact of the Stephen Lawrence Enquiry: HORS: 294. Garland, D. (2001). The Culture of Control: Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Gaston, S. (2019). ‘Producing race disparities: A study of drug arrests across place and race’, Criminology, 57(3): 424–​451. Gibbons, J. (1995). ‘What got lost? The place of electronic recording and interpreters in police interviews’, in D. Eades (ed.), Language in Evidence: Issues Confronting Aboriginal and Multicultural. Sydney: UNSW Press, 175–​186. Hargreaves, J. (2018). ‘Police Stop and Search within British Muslim Communities: Evidence From the Crime Survey 2006–​ 11’, The British Journal of Criminology, 58(6): 1281–​1302. Hawkins, K. (2002). Law as last resort: prosecution decision-​making in a regulatory setting. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Holdaway, S. (1983). Inside the British Police: A Force at Work. Oxford: Blackwell. Holdaway, S., and Barron, A.M. (1997). Understanding Resignation: The Racialisation of Routine Policing. In: Resigners?. Migration Minorities and Citizenship. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Holdaway, S., and O’Neill, M. (2007). ‘Where has all the racism gone? Views of racism within constabularies after Macpherson’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 30(3): 397–​415. Hoyle, C. (1998). Negotiating Domestic Violence. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hucklesby, A. (2011). ‘The working life of electronic monitoring officers’, Criminology and Criminal Justice, 11(1): 59−76. IOPC report into allegations of bullying and harassment amongst a team of officers working at Charing Cross Police Station. Available here: www.police​cond​uct.gov.uk/​ inv​esti​gati​ons/​inappr​opri​ate-​cond​uct-​char​ing-​cross-​pol​ice-​stat​ion-​metro​poli​tan-​pol​ ice (accessed 10/​6/​2022). Johnson, S.D., Chye Koh, H., and Killough, L.N. (2009). ‘Organizational and occupational culture and the perception of managerial accounting terms: An exploratory

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study using perceptual mapping techniques’, Contemporary Management Research, 5(4): 317−342. Lambert, J.R. (1970). Crime, Police, and Race Relations: A Study in Birmingham. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lee, J.A. (1981). ‘Some structural aspects of police deviance in relations with minority groups’, in C. Shearing (ed.), Organisational Police Deviance.Toronto: Butterworth, 49–​82. Loader I. (2020). Revisiting the Police Mission. London: Police Foundation. Available here: https://​pol​icin​grev​iew.org.uk/​wp-​cont​ent/​uplo​ads/​insi​ght_​pape​r_​2.pdf (accessed 26/​01/​2023). Loader, I., and Mulcahy, A. (2003). Policing and the Condition of England: Memory, Politics, and Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Loftus, B. (2009). Police Culture in a Changing World. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Loftus, B. (2010). ‘Police occupational culture: Classic themes, altered times’, Policing and Society, 20(1): 1–​20. Loftus, B., Goold, B., and Mac Giollabhui, S. (2016).‘From a visible spectacle to an invisible presence: The working culture of covert policing’, British Journal of Criminology, 56(4): 629–​645. Macpherson, W. (1999). Report of the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry. London: HMSO. Maguire, M., and Norris, C. (1994). ‘Police investigations: Practice and malpractice’, Journal of Law and Society, 21(1): 72–​84. Manning, P.K. (1977). Police Work: The Social Organisation of Policing. Cambridge and London: MIT Press. Marks, M. (2004). ‘Researching police transformation: The ethnographic imperative’, British Journal of Criminology, 44: 866–​888. McConville, M., and Shepherd, D. (1992). Watching Police, Watching Communities. London: Routledge. McConville, M., Sanders, A., and Leng, R. (1991). The Case for the Prosecution; Police Suspects and the Construction of Criminality. London: Routledge. McLaughlin, E., and Murji, K. (1999). ‘After the Stephen Lawrence Report’, Critical Social Policy, 19(3): 371–​385. Morgan, G. (2006). Images of Organization. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Morgan, G., and Newburn, T. (1997). The Future of Policing. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Myhill, A. (2019). ‘Renegotiating domestic violence: Police attitudes and decisions concerning arrest’, Policing and Society, 29(1): 52–​68. Newburn, T. (1999). Understanding and Preventing Police Corruption: Lessons from the Literature. Police Research Series. (110). London: Home Office, Research, Development and Statistics Directorate. Noaks, L., and Christopher, S. (1990). ‘Why are police assaulted?’, Policing, 6(4): 625–​638. Ofshe, R., and Leo, R. (1998). ‘Consequences of false confessions: Deprivations of liberty and miscarriages of justice in the Age of psychological interrogation’, Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, 88(2): 429–​496. Pearson, G., Sampson, A., Blagg, H., Stubbs, P., and Smith, D. (1989). ‘Policing racism’, in R. Morgan and D.J. Smith (eds.), Coming to Terms with Policing. London: Routledge, 134–​172. Punch, M. (1979). Policing the Inner City: A Study of Amsterdam’s Warmoesstraat. London: Macmillan Press.

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Punch, M. (1983). ‘Officers and men: Occupational culture, inter-​rank antagonism, and the investigation of corruption’, in M. Punch (ed.), Control in the Police Organisation. Cambridge: MIT Press, 227–​250. Reiner, R. (1978). The Blue-​ Coated Worker: A Sociological Study of Police Unionism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Reiner, R. (2000). The Politics of the Police (3rd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Reiner, R. (2010). The Politics of the Police (4th ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Reuss-​Ianni, E. (1983). The Two Cultures of Policing: Street Cops and Management Cops. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books. Rose, N. (1996). ‘Psychology as a political science: Advanced liberalism and the administration of risk’, History of the Human Sciences, 9(2): 1–​23. Shearing, C. (1981). ‘Subterranean processes in the maintenance of power’, Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology, 18(3): 283–​298. Sherman, L.W. (1975). ‘Middle management and police democratization: A reply to John E. Angell’, Criminology, 12(4): 363–​378. Silvestri, M. (2017). ‘Police culture and gender: Revisiting the “cult of masculinity” ’, Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice, 11(3): 289–​300. Skinns, L. (2011). Police Custody: Governance, Legitimacy and Reform in the Criminal Justice Process. Abingdon: Willan. Skolnick, J. (1966). Justice Without Trial: Law Enforcement in Democratic Society. New York: Macmillan. Skolnick, J., and Fyfe, J.J. (1993). Above the Law: Police and the Excessive Use of Force. New York: Free Press. Smith, D., and Gray, J. (1983). Police and people in London.Vol 4, Policy Studies Institute. Aldershot: Gower. Smith, D.J., and Gray, J. (1985). Police and People in London. London: Gower. The Guardian. (2014). Muhammad:The truth about Britain’s most misunderstood name. Available here: www.theg​uard​ian.com/​uk-​news/​2014/​dec/​01/​muham​mad-​truth-​ about-​brita​ins-​most-​misund​erst​ood-​baby-​name (accessed April 2021). Van Maanen, J. (1978).‘The asshole’, in J.Van Maanen and P.K. Manning (eds.), Policing:A View from the Street. Santa Monica. California: Goodyear Publishing Co, 221–​237. Waddington, P.A.J. (1994). Liberty and Order: Public Order Policing in a Capital City. London: UCL Press Ltd. Waddington, P.A.J. (1998). Policing Citizens. London: UCL Press. Waddington, P.A.J. (1999). ‘Police (canteen) sub-​culture: An appreciation’, British Journal of Criminology, 39(2): 287–​309. Waddington, P.A.J., Stenson, K., and Don, D. (2004). ‘In proportion: Race, and police stop and search’, British Journal of Criminology, 44(6): 889–​914. Westmarland, L. (2008). ‘Police cultures’, in T. Newburn (ed.), Handbook of Policing (2nd ed.). Cullompton: Willan, 253–​280. Worrall, A., and Mawby, R.C. (2013). ‘Probation worker responses to turbulent conditions: Constructing identity in a tainted occupation’, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology, 46(1): 101–​118. Young, M. (1991). An Inside Job. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Young, R. (2016). ‘Police accountability’, in S. Lister and M. Rowe (eds.), Accountability of Policing. London: Routledge, 18–​49.

Chapter 6

Offender perceptions of Sunnyvale policing

Introduction The analysis presented in Chapter 5 demonstrated that despite a shift in operational policing terrain there had been little cultural change among police officers tasked with providing support to offenders. There was evidence that most police offender managers continued to emulate familiar aspects of police sentiment and practice, rather than embracing the welfare aims emphasised in official IOM rhetoric. Rehabilitative activity carried out by police offender managers not only failed to displace orthodox police cultural attitudes, for many it also acted as a cover for the pursuit of core policing goals. At the same time, Sunnyvale’s uniformed police engaged with offenders in an aggressive and confrontational fashion. The work had changed, but deterrence, enforcement and control still dominate the focus and actions of police offender managers and District Enforcement Team (DET) officers. In this chapter the discussion turns to the effect this form of policing might have had on the legitimacy Sunnyvale offenders might have granted to Sunnyvale police. Despite the pervasiveness of underlying police cultural practice, documented in the preceding chapter, Sunnyvale IOM remained a policing setting in which police/​citizen/​suspect interactions were framed very differently to those of traditional policing. Sunnyvale police (both offender managers and uniformed DET officers) proactively targeted known offenders and dealt with them in a variety of ways that included, but also went beyond, traditional arrest and convict practices. How then might the content and antecedents of legitimacy, as well as the implications for the behaviour of the parties involved, have been shaped by factors specific to this particular setting? I believe the answer to this question is to be found in the content of both the basic legitimation expectations, justifiably expressed by Sunnyvale offenders, along with the justifiable Sunnyvale police responses to these expectations. There seems to be little doubt about the empirical importance of procedural justice in relation to police legitimacy, and we might therefore expect police–​offender legitimacy dialogues to emphasise aspects of procedural fairness. However, advancing ideas, I discussed in Chapter 2, it is also important to bear in mind the historical, DOI: 10.4324/9780429287664-6

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enduring and relational nature of IOM police–​offender interactions and the possible result that notions of procedural justice may operate quite differently in the context of IOM. This in turn may shape the content of police–​offender legitimacy dialogues. In this chapter, the Bottoms–​Tankebe model of police legitimacy (Bottoms and Tankebe, 2012, 2017, 2020) is used as a framework for exploring the implications for trust, legitimacy and compliance that arise from the experience of Sunnyvale policing. Data from in-​depth interviews with 20 people subject to Sunnyvale IOM are used to empirically explore this argument.These in-​depth interviews, along with broader observational work, shed light on the context and circumstances of police–​offender interactions and their meaning for offenders. A number of participants were interviewed in prisons, others in cafes. In some cases, I spoke with people waiting outside police stations and/​or probation buildings for supervision appointments. Offenders were interviewed about aspects of Sunnyvale policing. The regularity of police attention, nature and quality of treatment and the fairness of police action were found to be emerging themes. They volunteered rich personal accounts of their experiences and interactions with Sunnyvale uniformed DET officers and plain-​clothed police offender managers.These conversations, along with words and actions of police officers recorded during the field work, provide a basis on which to examine offender experiences of Sunnyvale police actions and their perceptions of its legitimacy. The chapter proceeds from here in three main parts. Section one revisits the various enforcement options available to Sunnyvale police, positioning these as central to their claims to legitimate authority. Section two goes on to present some evidence, in the form of offender accounts of their interactions with both Sunnyvale DET officers and police offender managers, as to the way in which police legitimacy is negotiated on an individual level during these encounters. The final section concludes with an analysis of the content of Sunnyvale police–​offender legitimacy dialogues.

Surveillance and the management of risk: some preliminary matters Before starting the main discussion, it is important to revisit the context within which the activities of Sunnyvale IOM take place, the ‘social surround’ as Hawkins (2002: 49) puts it. The acquisition of knowledge and the sharing of this information is a key part of the policing mandate within the framework of IOM. It can also be located within the broader discourse of risk regulation and penal politics (Sparks, 2000: 130). Generally, this vocabulary refers to what Feeley and Simon (1994: 452) identified as the ‘new penology’. For Feeley and Simon, the new penology is concerned with the identification, classification and risk-​management of dangerous, deviant or threatening groups (Pratt, 2000; Garland, 2001; Koehler et al., 2018; Ackerman et al., 2014). The burglars,

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robbers and prolific thieves that Sunnyvale IOM actively targeted could certainly be found within these ‘risky’ groups. But actuarial justice is also a predictive and statistical conception of justice, a reflection of market disciplines and a preference to achieve value and drive forward efficiency (O’Malley, 2004). Managerial techniques within the context of IOM were evidenced in three primary ways. First, the adoption of a strategic business model for standardising the intelligence gathering process and subsequent use of the information, the ‘National Intelligence Model’. Second, by the use of performance indicators to measure the extent IOM objectives were achieved. Third, by legislation such as the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 aimed at securing interagency cooperation from bodies outside the criminal justice system, such as local health authorities and private sector organisations. These developments are, it appears, derived from a lack of faith in the traditional apparatuses of the criminal justice system, the courts and police, but also the traditional detect and sentence response to criminal behaviour.1 What we have now is a growing emphasis on the use of technologies to produce knowledge of risky populations that is in turn useful for their administration (Ericson and Haggerty, 1997: 41).Through the medium of monitoring and surveillance we are witnessing what Sparks (2000: 131) describes as a ‘significant extension of penal supervision and control’. Some criminologists Zedner (2009), Harcourt (2007) and Ashworth and Zedner (2008), for example, have questioned the appropriateness of transferring actuarial techniques from the civil to the criminal domain. Such an approach to criminal justice is reflective of an assault on the ideals of ‘penal-​welfarism’ (Garland, 2001: 53). Penal-​welfarism can best be defined as the adoption of criminal justice strategies which are reflective of the welfare state. These ideas posit that the cause of crime can be discovered and dealt with by means of socially orientated techniques, rather than solely by coercion. Within this framework, ‘reform, rehabilitation, treatment and training’ (Garland, 2001: 47) are the objectives of social regulation and social defence. Allen (1959: 226) describes this form of penal politics as the ‘rehabilitative ideal’.Yet as O’Malley (2004: 207) explains: Risk appears, explicitly or implicitly, as a negative turn that undermines the modest advances made towards a reconstructive, inclusive, and re-​ integrative criminal justice during the middle part of the 20th Century. By centring insecurity and threat, the government grid of risk is seen to work through negation: certain persons are defined primarily in terms of their purely negative and dangerous status as threats to others (victims) and accordingly are merely neutralized and segregated in new gulags of incapacitation. The supervision of offenders in the community has shifted in orientation. This is not unexpected since, as Hawkins (2002: 50) argues, change in the surround can prompt changes in practice within the organisational field.The old mantras

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of ‘advise, assist and befriend’ associated with the probation service (Healy, 2012) have been reshaped to fit more risk-​averse, deterrent-​based penal philosophies. Conforming instances include the introduction of Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures, ‘Sexual Offences Prevention Orders’, hybrid civil–​ criminal processes, Anti-​Social Behaviour Orders and the expansion of home detention curfews as a purely incapacitating measure (Ashworth and Zedner, 2008). It is this trend towards selective incapacitation which, according to Sparks (2000: 131–​132), seeks to confine sufficient number of prolific offenders (principally burglars, drug dealers and robbers) for a long enough portion of their criminal careers with the aim of producing appreciable decreases in the volume of crime. A common theme runs through the mechanisms of actuarial social control within the organisational field: surveillance. Surveillance technologies Monitoring of citizens is ubiquitous within our society. In its most basic sense surveillance can be taken to mean listening to, watching or recording people. As Goold (2009: 3) points out, ‘the last twenty years have seen a profound expansion in the apparatus of surveillance’. At times we are the architects of our own surveillance. Generally, however, the monitoring of people is conducted, both overtly and covertly by security services, private individuals and organisations. But surveillance technologies increasingly occupy a central role in police practice, including advances in predictive policing, enhanced online surveillance and portable digital police hardware (Fussey and Sandhu, 2020). This intrusion into our private lives is fuelled by a pervasive sense of anxiety about crime and disorder, one perpetuated, throughout the social surround by media-​driven ‘moral panics’ (Hope and Sparks, 2000; Hawkins, 2002: 49). Arising from this political discourse appears to be a sense of insecurity, which is in turn transformed into the pursuit of security (Goold and Lazarus, 2007). Ericson and Haggerty (1997: 55) broaden the definition of surveillance to include ‘the bureaucratic production of knowledge about, and risk-​management of, suspect populations’. The activities of Sunnyvale IOM police can be firmly located within Ericson and Haggerty’s concept of surveillance. A core part of the police offender manager role was to gather intelligence on whether an offender posed a risk of committing further acquisitive offences. The risk status of a given Sunnyvale offender was signalled by the Red Amber Green (RAG) system (as described in Chapter 2) and ostensibly informed decisions made by Sunnyvale police and others within IOM about whether (and when) support or enforcement tactical options were required. Yet, as we saw in Chapter 5, more than formal legal rules and/​or operational practices, it was working assumptions (Hoyle, 1998), rules (McConville et al., 1991) and frames (Hawkins, 2002) that shaped police decision-​making during interactions with offenders. These theoretical constructs distilled and transferred the values,

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norms, perspectives and craft rules (Reiner, 2010) associated with informal police culture into police action and behaviour on the streets. The transference of police culture into the day-​ to-​ day management of offenders had significant implications for IOM enforcement practice. First, as noted in Chapter 5, police offender managers exhibited to varying degrees core police cultural traits. Thus, their assessments of the current risk status of a given offender (made during and after contact, but also on receipt of new intelligence) were likely to be subject to police cultural influences. In practice, this meant that decisions made by these officers as to the use of the enforcement options could be guided by working rules, assumptions and frames, such as previous (being known to the police), suspiciousness (being incongruent with local surroundings, uncooperative or in keeping with the wrong or prohibited company) and workload (volume and quality of ‘jobs’) (McAra and McVie, 2005: 7; McConville et al., 1991; Fitzgerald, 1999). Knowledge sharing and distribution They’re after information and that’s what policing is all about. (Martin—​Sunnyvale participant) The efficient production and distribution of knowledge was paramount for risk-​profiling current and potential Sunnyvale offenders. Various technologies were used by the scheme to gather this information: computer databases, offender interviews, telephone monitoring, CCTV, covert surveillance, police ‘sting operations’2 and stops and searches. The surveillance of social media was a surprising addition to the numerous knowledge-​generating methods adopted by the scheme. The following fieldnote was recorded during my time at the Southside IOM office: Most police offender managers, but particularly Barry and Karen, were continuously engaged in updating their knowledge base on offenders. This meant that intelligence updates would take place at every opportunity. On several occasions I noticed Barry browsing Facebook, a social media platform. When I asked what might be gained from this, Barry replied, ‘Just recording anything interesting—​phone numbers, blackberry mobile telephone pins3 etc …, on our computer system. Or, if there’s anything relevant to any on-​going operations, I’ll pass it on to the enforcement team. You’d be surprised what offenders post on Facebook. Sometimes I read updates about a “good score” last night and so on … which is especially interesting to us if we know a burglary was committed that fits the modus operandi of that particular offender’. As a result of proximity, such information was shared between the partnership agencies on an informal, basis.The IOM offices I visited had desk space allocated

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for staff from the various partnership agencies. Police offender managers, therefore, were situated alongside probation staff, drug workers and prison officers. Opportunities to update workers from other agencies with recent intelligence were frequent. The police National Intelligence Model: structuring IOM information sharing The police National Intelligence Model is a law enforcement business model used by police forces across the UK. In this instance, it guided the structure of Sunnyvale IOM practice by promoting a cooperative approach to intelligence-​ led policing. The model provides the police with a framework for information sharing designed to inform staff of threats which present significant problems within the community. These dangers, it is claimed, can be addressed through an appropriate use of intelligence, risk-​management, the allocation of resources (including finance and technology), engagement with partner agencies and the continuous review of tactics (Home Office, 2004, 2005: 12). In short, use of the model should encourage IOM managers to prioritise strategic policing activities and appropriately direct resources. It should also directly inform the way police offender managers should gather intelligence and how that information should be fed back into the policing system. Adherence to the model required that Sunnyvale police held regular intelligence briefing meetings. From my own observations, within the framework of Sunnyvale IOM, five meetings were held on a biweekly basis. Firstly, what was described as the ‘Analyst Meeting’ was attended by police offender managers, civilian analysts and DET officers from Sunnyvale’s enforcement branch. Discussion in the meeting focused on current local crime hotspots and any Sunnyvale offenders that the police believed were responsible for criminal activity. Secondly, on a Wednesday, two police offender managers, two probation staff, one prison officer and one drugs worker from the criminal justice intervention team usually met as a ‘cluster’, in a meeting of the same name. Here the discussions focused on intelligence updates on Sunnyvale offenders within the area of responsibility between these agencies. Whilst technically the risk status of an offender could shift at any time, from my observations, it was during cluster meetings that such a change was most likely to occur. Thirdly, a biweekly ‘migration’ meeting, as it was referred to within police jargon,4 was attended by middle management Sunnyvale staff. It involved a process of making decisions on whether a given Sunnyvale offender was either selected or deselected from the IOM scheme. Fourthly, directly following the migration meeting on the same day, was the ‘Tactical Tasking and Coordination Group’ meeting, usually attended by police offender managers, priority crime team officers, police officers from the local burglary squad, a field intelligence officer responsible for exploring hybrid civil–​criminal tactical options and the district focus team inspector. Discussion here focused on the tactical options available

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to target the most problematic offenders, informally referred to by some police offender managers as ‘Red-​Red’ offenders. The final meeting of the week was the ‘District Performance and Tasking Meeting’. Here senior management from the local district, including the Chief Inspector with overall management responsibility for Sunnyvale IOM and the police inspector supervising Sunnyvale’s enforcement branch, discussed broader crime problems within the locality and subsequently allocated the available resources. This meeting structure constituted the underlying framework which guided Sunnyvale IOM information sharing and, to an extent, given its positioning within the organisational field (Hawkins, 2002), police offender manager framing behaviour. These meetings directly processed information on offenders provided by police offender managers.The information included, for example, an offender’s level of engagement with the scheme or perhaps whether some new piece of intelligence had been received about potential offences they may be committing. Whilst police offender managers could process information through the IOM system at any time, by the submission of intelligence reports or informally passing information to the relevant Sunnyvale worker, for example, the meetings provided a forum for efficient integrated intelligence sharing between the various partnership agencies. What was done with this information was plainly pertinent in the context of Sunnyvale police–​offender encounters and what it was that precipitated and framed these contacts. Before turning to self-​reported experiences of Sunnyvale offender contacts with Sunnyvale police, I consider just how the knowledge generated though the risk technologies discussed above was put to work by Sunnyvale police. Having a word: putting knowledge to work in Sunnyvale IOM For Sunnyvale police, integrated sharing of information resulted in what was described by police offender managers as the ‘tasking’ of uniformed DET officers to take enforcement actions against Sunnyvale offenders known to be offending. In practice, this meant a police offender manager would input intelligence (gathered by other police offender managers during the course of interactions with Sunnyvale participants and other agencies like probation) into the police computer system. This information would be picked up by Sunnyvale’s dedicated uniformed enforcement branch.The uniformed inspector supervising the team would then draw up a plan in order for Sunnyvale DET officers to target and disrupt the offending pattern of those in question. Thus, Sunnyvale DET officers played a key role in the daily management of those on the scheme and were regularly called upon to enforce licence conditions, curfew requirements or simply to monitor people. In the following interview extract, Martin, a police offender manager with specific responsibility for linking recently generated intelligence to the actions of Sunnyvale DET officers, unfolded the process further:

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I will normally know [an offender’s] status because I attend the meetings anyway, so I know what the situation is around individuals. So, if you’ve got say a curfew that is not being adhered then I can put a tasking out onto [the police computer system]. It will then go out to uniform police teams. If you specifically want something done and you need that person’s door to be knocked, then it would go out as a specific tasking. If it’s a general tasking like someone’s lost contact with one of our offender managers and they haven’t seen them, we can put a general tasking out on [the police computer system] which just publicises to say if you see this guy have a word with him and see if you can encourage him to reengage. As Ericson and Haggerty (1997: 58) observe, ‘computerised reporting formats for the presentation of police knowledge provide classifications that fundamentally influence how the police think and act’. Here, as Martin suggests, knowledge was funnelled through from the biweekly meetings onto the police computer system, which in turn structured whether a Sunnyvale offender received a visit from the DET police or perhaps was stopped in the street (either by DET police or offender managers) and encouraged to re-​engage with the scheme. During my time with DET officers5 from Sunnyvale’s dedicated enforcement branch, there were many occasions where those subject to the scheme were stopped in the street by these officers and asked questions. Sometimes such questions were aimed at understanding whether a person was engaging with Sunnyvale IOM or involved again in criminal activity. But most often the questions related to a suspicion held by officers that an offence had been, or was about to be, committed. At times the outcome of the questioning was that people were searched. Yet in over 50 hours of observations of uniformed DET officers, I only witnessed one stop and search that led to an arrest. For the most part, mirroring other policing studies (e.g. Allen et al., 2006; Moon et al., 2011; Loftus, 2009), these stops merely resulted only in questioning—​a practice referred to as ‘stop and account’. These Sunnyvale police–​offender interactions fell short of a search or arrest, but offenders were still required to account for their presence. One some occasions this was to obtain specific intelligence (of the nature and quality noted above). For Sunnyvale police any intelligence gained during the encounter could prove useful, either at the time, by increasing bargaining power, or later, in the sense that such encounters enabled officers to get a picture of what was happening in their area (also Lister et al., 2008). In the following fieldnote extract, a man was stopped by Roger—​a Sunnyvale DET officer—​for what appeared to be the aim of gathering intelligence: Roger recognised a [Sunnyvale] offender from a previous street stop about a potentially stolen bank card. Roger immediately pulled the car over. Roger, ‘Hello mate, I know you, don’t I? I stopped you the other week and I let you go, didn’t I?’ ‘Yeah, think so’, the man replied. Roger: ‘I did you a

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favour, maybe you can help me. We’re looking for [XXXX] do you know him?’ Roger showed the man a picture of the wanted [Sunnyvale] offender. Roger: ‘Have you seen him?’The man said that he had ‘seen him about but I don’t know him’. Roger continued his questions: ‘Where do you reckon, he might be?’ ‘I don’t know’, the man repeated, ‘I’ve seen him around, but I don’t know where he would be’. R: ‘What about this guy?’ Roger held up another picture from the folder of Sunnyvale ‘targets’. ‘Yeah, I’ve definitely seen him around’, the offender told Roger, for the fourth time, ‘but I don’t know where he would be’. Roger then sent the man on his way. In further instances, the aim of Sunnyvale DET officers was apparently to socially discipline6 (Choongh, 1998: 625–​626) those that were stopped. Here officers seemed to be primarily concerned with maintaining control over people by stopping known ‘scrotes’, as some officers referred to Sunnyvale offenders, and ‘bottom-​enders’ (Shiner, 2010: 945) in the streets and requiring them to account for what they were doing, where they were going and why. It was a way for Sunnyvale police to monitor these people. It also communicated an authoritative message: we are watching you. Take, for instance, the following fieldnote: A lot of time spent just driving about the streets, when Roger pulled over to speak to a Sunnyvale offender he recognised. ‘Let’s go talk to this fella eh?’ Roger stopped the car and asked the man if he was using drugs. The man said that he was not and that he had a methadone script. This was ignored by Roger, who instead asked the man where, if he ‘was going for a smoke, would he go?’ ‘I’d go home’, the man responded. ‘So, where’s the local crack-​house then?’, Roger asked. Again, the man responded by saying he did not know. Roger persevered, ‘You don’t know where any crack houses are? I know a few of them have been shut down, but they pop up again’. The man replied stating that he did not go to crack houses and would go home if he was going to smoke. Frustrated by the lack of forthcoming information, Roger informed the man that he would do a police national computer check on him, as, Roger claimed, ‘It doesn’t look like you’re just talking to me’. The man was not found to be wanted, by the police, and sent on his way. What I have described above illustrates that the purposes of Sunnyvale police stops were not always clear, either to the offender or the police officer. Whilst the actions of Roger seem to suggest an intention to communicate to the offender that the police were watching him, the man was also viewed as a potential source of information. Accordingly, both the intelligence gathering and social discipline frames were at play during the encounter. That the nature of an encounter might change throughout the interaction between police and suspect is unsurprising. As Lister et al. (2008: 18) point out, the aims of the

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police in stopping an individual on the street are far from mutually exclusive; police-​suspect encounters are ‘characterised by instability’, and thus are fluid. Most often, however, Sunnyvale police required offenders/​suspects to stop and account for the purpose of detecting crime. Here they typically questioned suspects with the intention of assessing whether or not they were committing, had just committed or were about to commit a crime. This type of stop and account was typically triggered by some form of behaviour on the part of the suspect that was deemed suspicious, for example, if they had made eye contact with the police, taken evasive action on seeing officers or were seen in possession of something believed by the police to be stolen: Most of the late shift was spent driving around the local neighbourhood with David and Roger. The apparent aim was to look for ‘working girls’. The aim was to gather information on the whereabouts of a currently ‘wanted’7 person subject to the scheme. As we were driving through a part of the area, notorious for drugs and crime, David noticed a man, probably in his early 30s riding a bicycle. The man seemed worthy of some police attention. ‘He looks like shit.Wonder where he’s got that bike from. Let’s see what he’s doing’, David said. We pulled up next to the man and Roger and David got out of the car. ‘Whoa there. Hold on a minute mate’, David said. ‘Where are you going? And whose bike is that?’ The man explained the bike belonged to him and that he was on the way to his girlfriend’s house. This explanation apparently did not dispel Roger and David’s suspicions. Roger had a closer look at the bike and took down a number written on its underside. He then checked in by radio to find out if it had been reported missing. The bike was ‘clean’. (Fieldnote) Other encounters involved the use of more formal police powers such as stop and search. Largely these were chance encounters, which began as informal ‘chats’ (effectively, stop and accounts) but where an officer’s suspicions were aroused for some reason, led to a search of the suspect. What follows is a continuation of the episode described above; only, rather than just being required to account, this suspect was searched: ‘Let’s have a quick look in your pockets, see if you’ve got anything’, David suggested. The suspect emptied his pockets without hesitation, producing a credit card. The name on the card was of a female. When asked about this, the man said the card was his girlfriend’s card. He then provided the telephone number of his girlfriend so this could be checked out by the officers. A telephone call was subsequently made, and the man’s girlfriend confirmed that the card belonged to her and that she had given it to her boyfriend so he could purchase electric and gas for her flat. Finally, the man was checked out on the police national computer to see if he had any

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outstanding warrants. When the check came back clear the man was sent on his way. (Fieldnote) The aims underpinning the police stops, whether to question, search or arrest, are often intrinsically linked to core police cultural values and working rules. For example, street stops for crime detection purposes are closely linked to the exaggerated sense of mission, because they tie loosely into ‘thief-​taking’ and proactive law enforcement. We saw in Chapter 5 that both are pervasive throughout rank-​and-​file police officers.The social discipline aim, on the other hand, can be associated with maintaining authority over those the police, and broadly speaking a large part of the rest of society, view as ‘police property’ (Lee, 1981: 53). The criminal intelligence form of stop and account supports both the sense of mission and maintenance of order aspects of police culture. Knowing more about ‘their offenders’ and ‘their patches’ enables the police to maintain order and catch criminals. Of course, working assumptions and rules, alongside police officer framing behaviour, also underpin the practical operation of stop and account, for it is those that are known to the police, have previous, who must be proactively kept in check and are mostly likely to provide good intelligence. General suspiciousness (a powerful working rule) certainly influenced the stop and search decisions made by the police officers I observed (McConville et al., 1991; Stroshine et al., 2008). Clearly numerous factors may influence a given street stop. However, by stopping people in the street, police officers are also making a claim about their right to make the stop, to ask questions or dictate certain behaviours (Jackson et al., 2015). Yet, within the dialogic legitimacy framework, a complete analysis recognises not only powerholder claims to authority and power, but also how their audiences receive, process and respond to these claims (and how any subsequent acceptance or indeed rejection of powerholder legitimacy shapes subsequent behaviour).

Experiences of people 8 subject to Sunnyvale policing I argued in Chapter 2 that a perception of procedural [in]justice arising from the operational methods of Sunnyvale police, that is, police officers applying legal rules inconsistently and using sanctions disproportionately, as well as engaging in disrespect and physically abusive conduct during encounters, may diminish the legitimacy of the scheme in the eyes of those subject to it (Sunshine and Tyler, 2003; Tyler, 1990). Such concerns may be further amplified if the basis for police intervention is devoid of clear motive. This point will be examined further, but for present purposes, I suggest that if police–​ offender encounters are perceived by offenders to be unfair this will make people less likely to comply with the dictates of Sunnyvale police (Hough et al., 2010).

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Tyler (2013: 11) argues that encounters with the police ‘should be treated as a socialising experience that builds or undermines legitimacy’. Reflecting on interactions with Sunnyvale police, offenders reported a range of personal experiences drawn from a variety of settings and contexts. From the enforcement practices of DET officers to home visits conducted by offender managers, their experiences covered the breadth of Sunnyvale’s police functions. Some Sunnyvale participants I interviewed expressed positive views of the police that were associated with social control and police effectiveness: FRED:  As a society, do we need the police? MATT: Yeah. FRED: Why? MATT:  Because I’ve lived on the other side

of the law and I think, if the police weren’t part of society there would be murders, people would be running riot, there would be—​it would just be terrible. I think the police kind of keep our streets safe.

Others, like Christine, pointed to specific occasions where they had received help and support from police officers: Before I was arrested, I was involved with some serious people and a whole big thing went down. … The police helped me. They got me out of a situation. They kept me in the police station until he was arrested. And when my ex-​partner was beating me up, the police always … they’ve been excellent. Most participants, however, characterised encounters with Sunnyvale police as unwanted, adversarial and intrusive. Whatever purpose the police had for initiating contact—​surveillance, gathering intelligence or arrest—​Sunnyvale offenders were often unwilling recipients of aggressive law enforcement tactics and the coercive use of police authority. Unfolding the personal experiences of offenders, it became obvious that the regularity, nature, quality and fairness of police contact was central in shaping their evaluations of Sunnyvale policing. These factors are, of course, interrelated but also, as we shall see, connected to offender perceptions of justification and purpose for the interactions. Consideration of these aspects of offender experiences provides insight into ways participants reacted to and processed their encounters with Sunnyvale police. The usual suspects: regularity of contact with Sunnyvale police Eighteen out of twenty offenders reported extensive personal experience with the police in stop, account, search and arrest-​type situations. Participants spoke of being targeted for police attention in the street, citing involuntary contacts

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with uniformed police that were of excessive frequency. As Mike explained, ‘I got stopped three times in a week by three coppers. They watch me, follow me and everything …’. Another man, Darren, provided the following example, during interview: I got stopped four or five times on my road. It might be a long road, but I’ve been stopped by one set of police officers and then walked down the road a bit and like another set of police officers pulled me over. I’ve said, ‘Look I’ve just been pulled over’. They’re like ‘Oh well’ and started laughing at me … like they think they’re funny. Participants also recalled instances of police offender managers arriving at their homes unannounced: I got out from the courthouse and went to my girlfriend’s house. They were waiting for me. I wasn’t expecting them.They just turned up and said, ‘we’re police, working with probation and we’re here to help you. But if you step out of line, we’ll send you back to prison before the courts will. Make sure you don’t step out of line. We’re keeping an eye on you’. On a further occasion, I recorded the following incident whilst observing police offender managers: Karen (police offender manager), Rod and Charlie (both probation workers) were visiting a man who had recently been placed on the scheme, following a short prison sentence, at his home address. This was a statutory probation visit that probation service is required to carry out when a licenced offender is released from prison. The purpose of visits of this nature is to discuss the offender’s future plans, any licence conditions and their future probation appointment schedule. If identified as a ‘red’ offender, then home visits form a staple part of IOM’s tactical enforcement arrangements available to manage offenders of this classification (see, Police Operations Guide, 2010). According to Karen, this particular man was deemed to be high risk, with a history of violence against the police, and therefore red. For this reason, Karen said that she needed to visit the offender ‘to tell him about the scheme and offer him a chance to work with us’. (Fieldnote) As documented in Chapter 5, offending history acted as the classificatory frame (Hawkins, 2002) that instructed the police officers (Karen, here) on how to understand the case. In this instance, it was likely that the frame was influenced by Karen’s occupational ideology.The man’s offending history suggested he was violent towards police officers. Consequently, the working assumption adopted

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by Karen was that he was unlikely to cooperate with the police. Accompanying the probation service on offender visits, therefore, served to reinforce the authority of the police, particularly given the man’s history of violence. But it was clear that while the man had been expecting a visit from the probation service, he was not expecting that the probation staff would be accompanied by a police officer. When Karen introduced herself, the man’s distrust and dislike of the police became clear, and the following exchange ensued: KAREN:  I am […] … a police officer from the [IOM unit]. MAN:  A police officer? KAREN: Yes, I’ve come to see … [interrupted] MAN: You didn’t say you were police when you came to the door. I can’t believe

I’ve got police officers sitting in my lounge [looks towards me]. Are you a police officer, then? FRED:  No, I’m an academic, researcher. MAN:  I can’t work with the police in any way. KAREN: Why not? MAN: Past experiences. I can’t believe you’re sat in my lounge right now. I would never have let you in. Police are the devil …[interrupted] (Fieldnote) Work by Gau and Brunson (2010), on inner-​city young men’s perceptions of police legitimacy, suggests that suspects are more likely to adopt an outwardly hostile demeanour when encountering what they perceived to be unfair treatment. Clearly the man was disturbed by the unexpected presence of a police officer, precipitating the outward display of suspicion and mistrust in the police. Further, his reactions suggested that he had not encountered a police offender manager previously or been informed that Sunnyvale IOM involved a police–​probation partnership.Yet, for field police offender managers, such visits present an opportunity to communicate to offenders that the police are watching, that they may appear on at your door, at any time, uninvited. As Karen pointed out towards the end of the exchange, ‘We’ll … be here in the background whether you work with us directly or not’. Nonetheless, both parties were left it seems with negative feelings about one another, which, as the following fieldnote captures, potentially undermined the chances of the man engaging with Sunnyvale in the future: Getting in the car, Amanda remarked: ‘Well he was vile–​vile, that’s what we have to face’. I enquired as to whether Amanda believed the man would work with Sunnyvale. ‘What do you think [laughter]? I’d say probably not’, she replied. (Fieldnote) Interactions with Sunnyvale police were thus not just unwelcome, because of their inordinate frequency, they were also experienced as intrusive by

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participants. Yet, whilst it was common for participants to express confusion, frustration and distrust as to why they were targeted, Sunnyvale DET officers and offender managers had significant capacity to explain their actions by reference to the mechanisms used by the scheme for the risk-​management of offenders. As noted above, the risk profiles of Sunnyvale offenders were measured according to their current risk of re-​offending and colour coded according to a dynamic RAG system. Offenders were designated ‘Red’ where current intelligence signalled that they posed the greatest risk of re-​offending, whereas ‘Amber’ denoted a lack of police knowledge about the degree of offending activity with which a person might be concerned, but where ‘professional judgement’ suggested that the offender was involved, or at risk of being involved, in crime. ‘Green’ offenders were those not believed by Sunnyvale police to be committing crime and who were engaging in rehabilitative efforts (Police Operations Guide, 2010). Interviews with DET officers confirmed the importance of offender risk-​profiles in generating Sunnyvale police action: FRED:  How do DAVID:  It’s not

you identify who to target when you’re out on patrol? so much identifying whom to target because their status puts a target on them. Do you see what I mean? So, briefings—​briefing packs. FRED: Yeah. DAVID:  We go through the briefings for the whole of Sunnyside. People that are highlighted, suspected of committing offences, we will specifically target areas where we are likely to see those people. If we see other people that we know that are red [IOM] offenders, then they get our interest. It’s literally as simple as that. Accordingly, high-​r isk offenders that routinely spent time in ‘hot spots’ known for criminality were likely to encounter Sunnyvale DET officers who were deliberately targeting places they believed risky people might be found. This type of police activity was in line with the ‘Stick’ aspect of IOM policy, intended to provide ‘an enhanced level of surveillance and control in relation to those offenders identified as at risk of reoffending’ (Criminal Justice Joint Inspection, 2014: 35). However, Red Sunnyvale offenders were also in something of a dilemma. They had ‘previous form’ and were considered by the police ‘more likely to be at it’ and therefore needed to have an ‘eye kept on them’, as one DET officer put it. Observations of Sunnyvale DET work captured this type of police activity: We had been driving around the local streets and areas where known offenders, particularly prostitutes, were said by Richard to frequent. The intention was to ‘find someone to talk to’, as Richard put it. As we drove around various areas people of potential interest to Sunnyvale police were known to frequent, Richard spotted Jim, ‘a well-​known IOM offender’, with a previous for committing burglaries and thefts from motor vehicles.

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‘Ah, there’s Jim’, Richard remarked. I asked Richard if he was going to stop Jim: ‘Yeah, better see what he’s doing’. Richard stopped the car next to Jim and asked, ‘Are you wanted or anything?’ ‘No, nothing I’m doing alright’, Jim responded. Richard then asked, ‘Are you using?’ to which Jim replied, ‘No I’m on [methadone] script at the moment’. Whilst the questioning of Jim continued, the Automatic Number Plate Recognition system chirped as a car passed by. The system identified the car as potentially stolen and Richard’s priorities changed: ‘Scratch that, let’s go’. We drive off at high speed, blue lights on, sirens blaring, in pursuit of the car. (Fieldnote) Such a policing approach also finds support within the political surround where successive governments have encouraged the police to proactively target those known to be prolific offenders (Home Office, 2004; Cohen, 1985: 67). Combined, these factors give rise to the working assumption that the offender was risky (due to a previous history of offending); the rule adopted in this case, therefore, was that risky individuals should receive high levels of police attention, both from DET officers (on the streets) and from offender managers (home visits and probation meetings). But increased attention also raised the profiles of the same offenders during police ‘briefings’ (where police offender managers funnelled intelligence through to DET officers), resulting in more police contact. As one man explained: Once they know who you are, they’re definitely more suspicious of you. Since I’ve been on this scheme, I’ve been told that my photo is on a wall in a police station. Each day or whatever the police talk with probation to see if there is any intelligence on whether people are thieving or using [drugs] and I worry about that. I could be walking around and [uniformed] police know I’m on this scheme. So, that puts me in a bracket with them. Comments made by another man,Terry, during an interview exchange, pointed to an acute awareness of police monitoring: I got stopped three times in a week by three different officers and the coppers. I’d never seen these [officers]. Take this example, I mean, you’re an officer, you’re in a motor, you pulled up and said, ‘I know you’. Now I’ve never seen you, I’ve never had contact with you, I’d never been in that police station. Obviously, he knows me. He’s got me on a photograph … so he knew me. The extent to which a person was known to police, and/​or risk-​management strategies were adopted by IOM, might explain variances in regularity of contact between uniformed Sunnyvale police and offenders. Moreover, almost all

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the Sunnyvale offenders I encountered were unemployed, impoverished and/​ or homeless. The result was they often felt compelled to occupy public spaces, increasing their availability to the police (Waddington et al., 2004). Nevertheless, those in receipt of the police practices did not make these connections. Rather, interviews captured a perception among most participants that they were victims of authoritarian policing, untethered to organisational rules and more closely tied to personal discretion. In some instances, they would have been correct in their assumptions. As one DET officer said, ‘[I]‌stop [and] search anybody that sets off [my] spider senses.You know, the policemen’s nose’. The ‘policeman’s nose’ can be interpreted as a subtle, but perhaps unknowing, reference to police cultural values, which, as I have argued in Chapter 3, can underpin police decision-​making. In other words, rather than going ‘by the book’ (e.g. interventions based on information generated through the intelligence briefings process) decisions made around whether or not to stop people are based on instinct and experience. But unsurprisingly perhaps, participants distrusted police motivations when subject to what they characterised as unwanted street stops. ‘They don’t like me. Every time they see me, they just pull me over’, one man, James, recalled; whilst Neil complained that uniformed police regularly stopped and questioned him for ‘no good reason’. The procedural rules justifying (or restricting) the pre-​emptive targeting of Sunnyvale offenders were based on wide-​ranging information on offenders’ conduct, and whilst the knowledge may not include clear evidence of offending, it should be rooted in intelligence (Police Operations Guide, 2010). For Sunnyvale police, therefore, the action that followed was not seen as arbitrary. ‘We go wherever the analysis, and the intelligence, tells us; we’re not after easy hits’, a uniformed DET manager explained. This perspective is a central aspect of the dialogic construction of legitimacy, wherein the police are continuously making claims to legitimacy; and, as Bradford (2017: 60) observes, ‘evidence-​based policing is nothing if not a claim to legitimate authority over the realm of crime control’. However, Neil’s complaint implies he experienced some police encounters as arbitrary because, from his perception, the intervention was not a response to evidence or suspicion of offending. This disjuncture between police and offender views on what is driving IOM police interventions is again captured in the following interview extract. Here, a Sunnyvale offender criticised the police for carrying out a series of street stops, initially understood to result from a form of risk-​based targeting. Later it becomes clear that the stops were influenced by evidence-​based suspicion and the man is more accepting of the interventions: PETER:  Whenever

I went out, I got stopped. Happened six times in one day and kept happening all through a period of time. All I can think is they’ve red-​ flagged me. Went on for about a week. FRED: What were the averages times between stops?

158  Offender perceptions of IOM policing PETER: Within

hours of each other. When the next police car went past or one would go past and the next one would stop me, or they would go around the block and stop me. One time they said they’d been told like by a member of the public that I was walking about with a charity box … another time [they said] ‘people having been ringing in say cars are being broken into’. I was like OK these are reasons to stop me.

Sunnyvale police officers used their powers of stop and account and stop and search for a variety of reasons. Indeed, these powers are an indispensable tool of frontline police work, as they enable the police to produce, distribute and subsequently use whatever knowledge is gained from police–​offender interactions to conduct efficient surveillance of IOM offenders (Ericson and Haggerty, 1997: 66).The ability of the police to fully use these powers is greatly enhanced by the low-​visibility discretion they enjoy. However, for Sunnyvale offenders, it seems that many informal encounters with the police represented a coercive intrusion into their private life. Actually, is hard to imagine a situation where such methods are not intrusive.Yet the interference seemed amplified where no recent intelligence suggested that the person had returned to crime. As the accounts discussed above reveal, perhaps most strikingly in Peter’s comments, risk-​ based targeting by DET officers (i.e. the RAG system, noted above, as the basis for stops and visits) was seen as less acceptable than interventions based on firm evidence of past offending. Procedural justice denotes a perception of objectivity and openness, as well as opportunities for representation and correction of mistakes made in respect of police decision-​ making (Tankebe, 2013: 111). However, in the first instance Peter described, the police decision-​making process underpinning the intervention was effectively concealed and not prone to challenge or accountability mechanisms. The activity was thus experienced by Peter (and other Sunnyvale offenders) as procedurally [un]just, a form of harassment rooted in subjective (police) discretion. Peter’s basic legitimation expectation was that the foundation of a given street stop was evidence, which from Peter’s perspective was not present, thus the legitimacy claim was rejected within the dialogue. In the second example, however, Peter seemed to accept the intervention, with his comments implying a measure of cooperation.The difference was that the police gave a reason for the stop. This basic legitimation response addressed several dimensions of procedural fairness—​openness (Peter was informed of the reason for police activity), motive-​based trust (the reason given—​suspicion/​ evidence—​was seen as a good one) and respect (Peter’s right to know the reason was respected by Sunnyvale officers), seemingly supporting Peter’s acceptance of the encounter as a legitimate use of police authority. This finding indicates a clear difference between police activity Sunnyvale offenders were prepared to accept and that which they were not. At the core of the distinction seemed to be the trustworthiness of Sunnyvale police motives.This dimension was further

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emphasised in offender comments concerning the nature and quality of their interactions with Sunnyvale police; but of particular importance was respect. Perceived nature and quality of participant encounters with Sunnyvale police It was not simply that Sunnyvale offenders objected to being stopped and questioned frequently; most felt demeaned and disrespected by DET officers during these unwanted encounters. Many referenced discourteous and provocative language used by DET officers. Spencer for instance said, “Some call me ‘sunshine’ and poke me in the chest for no reason. They can be very antagonistic. One refuse[d]‌to let me in his car when I was homeless. He radioed another [police] car, saying ‘my mate deals with the smelly ones’ ”. Matt, on the other hand, complained that police officers had referred to him as ‘scum and a fucking divvy’. Observations, discussed extensively in Chapter 5, confirmed this tendency among both sets of Sunnyvale police officers to describe offenders in disrespectful and disparaging terms rooted in stereotypes. But participants also pointed to incidents of disrespectful police talk coupled with disproportionate and/​or inappropriate police action. One man for instance said, ‘I’ve had a couple of hidings off them’, whereas a female participant recalled, ‘I haven’t literally been punched in the face, but once they thought I was a bloke and chucked me over the fence and on the floor and … you know, roughed me up when the handcuffs [went] on’. It was Jason, however, who perhaps provided the most revealing example: When I’ve been arrested sometimes, I’ve had police sat on top of me, slap me across the face put their fingers in my face, shout in my face. Been really, really, aggressive towards me and at that specific moment in time, I haven’t done anything wrong; I haven’t been charged with anything, whether I have or haven’t done anything wrong. Similar to the reactions of Neil and Peter (discussed above, in respect of the regularity of street stops), Jason appeared to distrust police motives—​even the legality of the conduct. For him, what seemed to be of primary importance was not so much the (apparently accepted) violent conduct of the police (although, few would suggest that this is unimportant), but that their actions lacked justification in terms of formal process. The conduct of the police appeared not to have been shaped by formal laws and rules, but rather by independently defined objectives that had little to do with law enforcement: imposing discipline, control and authority on offenders (also, Choongh, 1997).This is problematic as far as perceptions of police legitimacy (that might otherwise be anchored in quality of decision-​making dimension of procedural justice theory) are concerned, as

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again there was a lack of open, trustworthy and respectful behaviour on the part of the police. Negotiating power-​r elations: cost-​b enefit and prudential calculations Procedurally [un]just encounters (i.e. those involving disrespectful and physically abusive police behaviour) also seemed to result in deference and cooperation based on a sense of prudential and/​or instrumental obligation. Pósch et al. (2020: 7) suggest that such a reaction may result from the asymmetrical power relations that police officers have over citizens. Consider, for example, Aaron’s remarks made during interview: I was walking down the road and the police was pulling someone across the road and the copper shouted over: ‘You been found dead yet?’ to me, ‘You been found in a field?’ And I said, ‘Fuck off ’ and he ran straight over and grabbed me and said, ‘ “Say sorry”, bending my arm back. I’ll nick you in a minute’. So, ended up saying sorry, rather than getting nicked. But it made me look like a divvy in front of everyone down there. But rather than getting nicked. Aaron’s challenge to the officer’s authority provoked an aggressive, coercive response, aimed at maintaining police dominance in the face of perceived disrespect. The result appeared to be compliance predicated on the threat of punishment. On other occasions, informal procedures like the ‘attitude test’, were used by DET officers to reaffirm established police–​offender power dynamics. Again, in those instances, people who did not display the required deference were subject to a form of moral censure using low-​level police powers such as stop, question, search and/​or occasionally arrest under s.5 of the Public Order Act 1986 (also, Loftus, 2009). Participants showed deep understanding of the disciplinary and authoritative approach taken towards them by uniformed police officers: A lot of my experience with police is all depending on how I’ve reacted to them. If I’ve been good mannered towards them, rather than obstructing the arrest or anything like that, they’ve always been good to me. If I give them shit, they’ve reacted with shit type of thing, so it’s kind of a mutual sort of relationship. But, over the time to be honest, if I’ve, what’s the word I’m looking for … if I’ve complied with what they’ve wanted from me, then they’ve always been quite good. Negotiation of power balances within what were typically adversarial relationships between offenders and the police moved beyond the streets and

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into the homes of Sunnyvale offenders during visits from offender managers. Home visits provided an opportunity to ‘inform them about the scheme and see if they’re willing to engage’, but also to ‘glean information and intelligence’ from offenders, Brian, a police offender manager explained. In short, the work could be used as a cover for intelligence gathering (also, Sleath and Brown, 2017; Cram, 2018). Engaging in informal relational work with Sunnyvale offenders delivered openings to generate knowledge on their living arrangements, associations and levels of drug use. It also responds to a powerful aspect of police culture: ‘knowing your suspect’ (McConville et al., 1991: 59). The visits also reinforced the authority of Sunnyvale police by communicating to offenders that they were being monitored and the police might appear on their door at any time. For Mark, home visits often resulted in intrusive lines of questioning concerning private matters relating to home life: I don’t like that sometimes I’m expected to volunteer information and give information to certain people when they ask.Yet if I approached the same person with the same question I’d just be told to go away. But I’m expected to give that [information]. So that does annoy me. And what annoys me sometimes is how it is set up [….] I’m always the kind of person on the scheme.They’re always the person governing it.There’s always a natural imbalance. It’s never equal. I’m always taught that everybody’s equal. Everybody’s equal; we’re all people.Yet, these schemes always set the scales differently. One’s always down and one’s always up. I don’t like that. I’m supposed to see the person not as a police officer but as a person and yet he’s always seeing me as [an offender]. Whenever you try to bring in the room that we’re the same, he won’t answer. If I say, ‘Ah how’s your missus? What are you doing tonight?’ He won’t answer that, but if he’s saying to me, ‘Ah, how you are doing? What you up to tonight?’ I’ve got to answer that question. (Fieldnote) Given that intelligence gathering was a central part of the police offender manager role, perhaps such lines of questioning were inevitable. But the visits also reaffirmed unequal police–​offender power dynamics: police officers were to be treated with deference, whether in uniform or not. As remarks made by Pip during interview further illustrate: If [an offender manager] is asking questions, then you’re expected to answer them. They put that on the table from the off. It’s like if you’ve got nothing to hide then you’ve got nothing to worry about. So, if he’s asking questions, I’m expected to answer them. If I don’t, then I appear as if I’m being awkward. So, either way I’m going to do it. If I was awkward and difficult and said ‘Oh I ain’t talking to you’, that would have consequences.

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I can’t do that because he definitely governs whether I stay out of prison or not. If I’m difficult, he’s going to think, ‘Well he’s obviously not trying to help himself ’. The imbalance problematised by both Mark and Pip mirrors one found in more formal circumstances, where questioning might take place, such as the police station. Choongh (1997: 83), for example, during his study of the police function within the criminal justice system, was told by one suspect in police custody ‘… I’ve been treated good ‘cos I’ve never been any hassle to them … there’s no point yea? I just stand there and say, “Yes sir,Yes sir,Yes sir” ’.Yet what Pip describes took place within the comfort of his own home. Even in this private space, he reported a sense of powerlessness in the process and a resigned need to acquiesce (also, similar to Aaron, documented above). The reactions of Pip and Mark are broadly consistent with what Tankebe (2013) would describe as ‘dull compulsion’ (also, Carrabine, 2004, in the prisons context), which in this instance appeared to underpin their inclination to cooperate with police offender managers. Sunnyvale police talk and action and its effect on normative cooperation Physical and verbal abuse were not viewed by participants as a legitimate use of police authority, as evidenced by the resulting negative downstream effect on the willingness (of those on the receiving end) to work with the police, particularly offender managers. Spencer, for instance, complained: These schemes are supposed to help people, but how can a police officer help me? The only thing they’ve done for me over the last couple of years is kick my door off its hinges. I won’t speak to them … I don’t trust any of them—​across the board. Unwillingness, on the part of Spencer, to work with Sunnyvale police offender managers appeared to stem from a lack of trust in the motives of Sunnyvale police, but his comments also illustrated a concern over the transactional benefits (or lack thereof) of future encounters (i.e. what can Sunnyvale police offender managers do for me?). Echoing these sentiments, another man, Lee, also questioned the effectiveness of the Sunnyvale policing model: Who the fuck wants to chat to a police officer? Come on let’s have it right; do you honestly think? You know what they said to me? ‘Anything you say to me is confidential’You’re a fucking police officer. Do you honestly think you’re going to chat to me mate? Get fucking real. Stop wasting your time.

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Other Sunnyvale participants simply remained suspicious of police offender manager motives. Jerry, for example, remarked during an interview exchange, ‘It’s a feeling of like, it’s “old bill” in here. What have I done? Instantly my back is up and I’m suspicious …’. When I pressed Jerry further on this point, during interview, he said: I’m naturally suspicious of anyone police, just because he’s out of uniform. In my experience they’re never out of uniform. There never is a time when that uniform is off. They’re always on some imaginary clock, watching your behaviour. I’ve not met one yet who hasn’t treated me in that way. Therefore, that is my experience of it. They might be being friendly, friendly, but they’re always heading in a direction that they may not be being upfront around. They’re always watching, looking, you know for things, signs, whatever. I don’t like, I’m really uncomfortable with it to be honest; personally, I’m uncomfortable. Whilst a minority of police offender managers seemed to be taking a stealthier (or to some appearances ‘softer’) approach to policing those on IOM, uniformed DET officers were busy subjecting the same group of people to a markedly different policing experience. The latter involving a far more hostile and disciplinary approach centred on an order-​maintenance policing paradigm. The problem is, the behaviour of Sunnyvale DET officers may not only have been preventing Sunnyvale offenders working on finding a pathway out of criminal activity, it may also have been hampering the ability of police offender managers to generate useful information during encounters with those subject to IOM. The comments of Lee, quoted above, provide strong evidence of this point. What Lee was describing seems to be an attempt at rapport building on the part of the police offender manager. This is evidenced by the officer’s comments about confidentiality. However, these activities appeared to be perceived by Lee as duplicitous and a thinly veiled attempt at gathering criminal intelligence. Here the good cop was seen, at best, as a tainted cop with the result that Lee remains silent. The nature and quality of police–​o ffender relations and its implications for offender relations with other Sunnyvale workers There was some indication that the suspicion and cynicism exhibited towards Sunnyvale police by offenders had also drifted into offender relations with probation workers. Seven out of fourteen participants suggested that the probation service had changed in mission and purpose, as a direct result of their working more closely with the police. Many complained they now felt unable to speak as freely or frankly about their problems. The following interview exchange captures this type of thinking:

164  Offender perceptions of IOM policing JIM: 

Like I say I can’t go in there and sometimes talk about the things I need to talk about. I can’t go in there and say, ‘Well look I’m going off the rails a bit here’ or ‘I’m using a little bit here’ or ‘Whatever’s fucking happening here’. I can’t go and say that in that room, so where do I go and unload that stuff? Who do I tell that to, to get the real help? FRED:  Before the police were involved, would you have been able to talk to probation? JIM: Yeah, I’ve had probation [officers] where I’ve been able to go in and talk to probation about exactly what’s going on. So, I come out of there and at least I feel like I’m telling them exactly where I’m at, you know what I mean? When pressed on the importance of good relations with probation, Jim went on to suggest that a perceived change in his relationship with probation, from one which was relatively open and straightforward, to one more guarded, may have implications for his process of desistance. To continue the exchange: You can’t get the help without being, being genuine. I’m not going to get the genuine help, because I’m not giving the right information over. It doesn’t help because I feel the consequences of what might happen if I do. Before you’d have your probation officer.You could phone your probation officer.You could interact with your probation officer. he comes in your house sometimes or whatever but now it’s just changing. I’m not sure about it—​who’s in charge. It seems to me probation are just enforcers, just something completely different. Still, a small number of Sunnyvale participants characterised the close working relationship between the police and probation service as a supporting element in their process of moving away from a criminal lifestyle: In a few of my appointments my probation officer said to me that she’s been informed by the police that they are still watching me. She gave me a warning, ‘You’ve been nicked; you’ve been given a DRR; the police are still watching you’. And as far as they’re concerned, you’re still actively doing what you were doing, so you know it’s kind of like a final warning from the probation, that you’re gonna get nicked again, so I suppose in that respect it was kinda quite helpful. I knew then—​shit I better stop, otherwise I’m gonna get arrested. Alternatively, what Reece seemed to be describing was an increasingly enforcement-​ based relationship, where compliance/​ cooperation was more closely linked to cost-​benefit calculations than the perceived legitimacy of the actors involved. These narratives presented in this section reveal that disrespect (in the form of physical and verbal abuse) was firmly tied to the perceived illegitimacy

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of Sunnyvale police action. The result of such conduct, on the part of the police, was that some offenders were uncooperative with and/​or were hostile to uniformed police, whilst others (e.g. Aaron) cooperated/​complied out of a sense of pragmatism in the face of powerlessness. Past experiences of aggressive and disrespectful uniformed policing had harmed relations (or future relations) between Sunnyvale offenders and police offender managers. Dull compulsion also seemed to be evident at times in these relationships.The gloss of the police offender management approach had apparently done little to allay the posture of distrust many offenders typically felt towards the police, with some openly questioning the effectiveness of the approach. A further implication was that negative experiences of Sunnyvale policing appeared to have had a detrimental impact on offender relationships with probation workers who were working closely with some Sunnyvale police officers. In particular, concerns were raised about communication (or the potential for) between probation workers and police offender managers. These findings provide further support for previous work done on the consequences of procedural [un]fairness during traditional police encounters on perceptions of police legitimacy (e.g. Tyler, 2006; Reisig et al., 2007; Tyler and Fagan, 2008; Tyler, 2010). But just as offender notions of legitimacy were jeopardised by aggressive and disrespectful encounters with police (that from their perspective were unjustified), ‘fair’ or legitimate interventions were again premised on the perceived trustworthiness of police motives and respectful police behaviour. Other dimensions of legitimacy also came to the fore, as police–​offender relationships developed over time. Sunnyvale participant views on fairness of Sunnyvale police action Participants typically assessed police fairness according to how individual officers dealt with them, rather than grouping the police institution as a whole. Offender thinking about the fairness of Sunnyvale police activity focused on police officers ‘playing by the rules’. ‘Rules’, in this instance, were both formal (legal and administrative) and informal (subtle exercise of police discretion within the boundaries of what was mutually beneficial to the parties [McConville et al., 1991: 60–​61]). If police action was perceived by offenders to stay within these parameters, they tended to view it as fair. Some offender notions of fairness again emphasised the importance of evidence of criminality as the basis of police–​offender interactions, along with police officers following the associated procedural (legal) rules during encounters. Jim, for example, said during interview: I’ve met fairish ones over the time. If they haven’t got no evidence, they’ll be straight up about it and say … I can’t charge you, but I’m after you.

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In other reports, however, the focus was on the way Sunnyvale police used (or indeed did not use) their powers. Consider, for instance, the following interview exchange: FRED:  Are you treated fairly, by [Sunnyvale] police? EMMA: Yeah, they’re good, sometimes. FRED:  Can you give me an example? EMMA: We’d nicked something. Got home, sold it.

Police pulled up and said, ‘What you been doing today?’ I’m like, ‘Ah shit’. But they bailed me on the street [and] said, ‘Look, come on up [to the police station], we’ll sort it out’.

The decision made by uniformed police to bail Emma on the street was viewed as fair, because it meant postponing the formal exercise of police powers (detention at the police station) until a later date. For Emma, a heroin user, street bail also nullified the immediate threat of experiencing withdrawal symptoms whilst being detained in custody. As Emma continued to explain: When the copper pulled up, I’d just scored. I had it in my hand, and I thought, ‘Oh shit, what am I going to do about it?’ And he seen my behaviour change and he knew. He knew but didn’t search me. He bailed me on the street. I had to go back at 3 o’clock. [When I went to the police station] he said, ‘I knew you’d scored, but I wasn’t going to search you. I don’t condone it, but I know you needed it’. Whilst Tyler (2006) has argued that fair treatment is more important to people than the actual outcome of interactions with the police, in this instance the outcome (not being detained) was of paramount importance to Emma and thus, in part at least, determined her perception of fairness. But relational elements were also present, that is, flexibility (within clear boundaries), honesty, understanding and apparent concern for her well-​being on the part of the officer. For the DET officer the decision may respond to the implicit ‘carrot’ of the IOM approach: offenders known to be engaging with support offered by Sunnyvale will be treated less robustly by DET officers they encounter (also, Annison et al., 2015). Informal bargaining, in this instance, achieved objectives for both police officer and offender. An apparent overlap between instrumental concerns/​benefits and aspects of procedural fairness was also to be found in some offender accounts of relations with police offender managers. We saw in earlier chapters that Sunnyvale’s operational framework envisaged a certain amount of overlap in roles by the police and other criminal justice agencies, police officers delivering rehabilitative interventions and engaging positively with Sunnyvale offenders alongside traditional crime control activities.This (and close working with probation staff) resulted in a minority of police officers adopting attitudes and welfare-​ orientated operational practices more traditionally associated with probation.

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This finding reflects Nash’s (2008: 302) notion of the ‘polibation officer’, a merging of police and probation officer working practices, as a possible outcome of closer collaboration between police and probation. Nash’s original concern was that probation officers would ‘go the way of the police’. But we saw in Chapter 4, some offender managers had, to all appearances, ‘gone the way of probation’ (Mawby and Worrall, 2013). Those like Chris, who accepted that ‘a large part of the role is to engage with people and try and offer them as much support as we can’ and Martin, who recalled his efforts to involve Sunnyvale offenders in voluntary work, education and training programmes: I’ve tried to get a few of the people I work with into the Prince’s Trust. Nearly got there with one. Really close. Got all the way down there. Showed him all the schemes. He realised it would be good for him. Afterwards I took him for a coffee somewhere nice. I wasn’t trying to bribe him but just trying to open his eyes and show him that’s there’s a bit more than just your mates are out there and they’re going to get you to run off and do something stupid. I was close to getting him to sign up. Offender managers, like Charles, were also keen, however, to emphasise the parameters of the relationship: I tell them ‘Yes, I’m a police officer’ and then I have a conversation with them about class A drugs. The majority of my offenders are class A drug users. I tell them: ‘I would be within my rights to stop check and search you on every meeting, but clearly it ain’t (sic) going to work if I do that, so I won’t’. But that’s not a carte blanche allowance to carry and use class A drugs. Then obviously the [Sunnyvale] scheme is fully explained. They’re made fully aware that if they engage and do well there’s a load of benefits from it. If they don’t then there’s a stick—​an enforcement side. I make it clear that if they’re doing anything serious in front of me, they’ll get arrested. Use violence, threaten violence, I’ll deal with it, that’s not a problem. A minority of Sunnyvale participants were receptive to this sort of police contact. They valued the support (or indeed the possibility of it). Lisa, for instance, remarked during interview: Feels like I’ve got extra support and they’ve helped me a lot. If I’m struggling with things like, they’ll kind of step in and help me sort things out or open new doors for me like with my flat and stuff and college and that. But this understanding that police contact could generate benefits also framed unexpected police interventions. Take, for instance, comments made by Marc during interview:

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When I came out of prison, a plain clothed police officer come up to me at the gate and said, ‘What’s your plans?’ I told him I was going for a probation order. He said if you need help with anything give me a call. Said he’d be in contact with probation and keeping an eye on me. I found it helpful. Even though he’s a copper. If there’s help there for me, which there is with [Sunnyvale], then it’s all good. Similar to Emma’s account, it appears that Marc’s perception of the fairness of the intervention also stemmed from the way in which the authority was exercised. For him, what was valued was the straightforward, honest approach of the police officer, as well as instrumental returns (i.e. support). The latter was seemingly wrapped up in a sense of trust and confidence in the motives of the police officer: a belief that the offender manager cared genuinely about Marc’s welfare and improvement. But this sense of motive-​based trust, so pervasive throughout offender accounts, played an important part in Sunnyvale offender legitimacy judgements. Trust, legitimacy and participant perceptions of Sunnyvale policing The trustworthiness of police motives was especially central to participant accounts of Sunnyvale police fairness. This was perhaps most evident in one of the most striking and consistent findings in the research: offenders understood Sunnyvale police interventions through the lens of their criminal behaviour. Thus, many like Steven accepted, during interviews, the inevitability of intensive police action: My home and private life could get invaded at any time of the day. That’s how I just accepted how things were. Certain places I was going to, they were known houses anyway. At any time, the police could turn up and we’d just scatter or just sit there and see what would happen—​probably get searched. Other Sunnyvale participants more directly related their offending history to the amount and type of police attention they were likely to receive. It was this link between their offending record and police interventions that in their view justified some Sunnyvale police operational practice. As Matt put it, when asked, in interview, what, if anything, gave Sunnyvale the right to intervene in his life: I understand it. I’ve got 40 previous for burglary dwellings and I’ve had 6-​year sentences, 5-​year sentences, I’ve had this 4-​year sentence just gone, 3 and a half years before. I’ve had some big sentences; so, I can understand

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it. He’s just a flat-​out burglar. A lot of police are one track minded—​once a criminal always a criminal. Another man complained of ‘loads of stops, [Police National Computer] checks, searches, being pushed against the wall, slammed to the ground—​stuff like that’. However, when pressed on what, if anything, justified the coercive and invasive Sunnyvale police action, said: ‘My behaviour. The only way I can put it. I am a madman when I’m like that. I don’t know myself.You know what I mean? I can understand it fully’. Another participant, Paul, echoed this view, during the following interview exchange: FRED:  You said you’ve had a lot of experience of Sunnyvale police—​surveillance,

police offender managers turning up to probation appointments, being stopped, searched in the street and so on.What do you think justifies, or say, gives them the right to intervene in your life in that way? PAUL: Because I’m an offender, prolific. Police are worried when I get out, what am I going to be up to. If I wasn’t up to something, up to no good, then it would bother me. The vast majority of participants imposed this frame upon their treatment as a way of making sense of their experiences. This type of thinking can be located in literature which suggests that the police are seen as legitimate when people believe they represent a proper moral purpose (Beetham, 1991; Tyler and Wakslak, 2004; Sunshine and Tyler, 2003; Bradford et al., 2014). Thus, whilst the regularity, nature and quality of interactions with Sunnyvale police (particularly uniformed cops) was perceived by offenders to be unfair when aspects of police practice strayed beyond formal (legal) and informal (police discretion) rules that defined the boundaries of ongoing relations, the purpose driving police action (responding to offending) was accepted to a degree as justified.

Conclusions This chapter has examined offender reactions to Sunnyvale policing, in the form of street stops and home visits. Particular attention has been on the likely effect of these experiences on perceptions of the legitimacy of Sunnyvale police action. The primary conclusion is that the basic legitimacy expectations of those subject to this form of policing activity—​Sunnyvale offenders—​were structured around whether police acted unfairly (procedurally or distributively) and were effective in the performance of their duties. This finding is consistent with other police legitimacy studies, which emphasise these dimensions as central in shaping public evaluations of police legitimacy (i.e. as the primary content of legitimacy dialogues).

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Although a small number of participants recalled positive interactions with both sets of Sunnyvale officers, the majority complained of organised and repeated targeting by police.To an extent this is true of an IOM policing model that relies on a sharp focus on offenders deemed at most risk of committing crime. But participants resented uninitiated and unwanted encounters with Sunnyvale uniformed police, who questioned them on the street with regularity, but also unsolicited visits by police offender managers who turned up on their doorsteps uninvited. Taken together this ‘routine hassle’, a form of what Lister et al. (2008) have termed ‘communicative surveillance’ generated a sense among participants (regardless of age, gender and race) that they were continuously monitored. As one man observed, ‘I was thinking, fucking hell, they’re watching me’. Informal procedures (e.g. the ‘attitude test’) and disciplinary practices (e.g. the use of formal powers to extract deference from offenders [Choongh, 1997]) were also adopted by uniformed officers who were on occasions verbally and physically abusive. Despite the framework of IOM establishing a new set of tasks and functions for police officers, old patterns of police cultural talk and action underpinned many of the interventions. Another theme that emerged from the analysis was participants’ emphasis on their own criminal behaviour when considering the legitimacy of Sunnyvale policing. As one man explained, ‘You give them the right by doing what you done … I’m an offender, I’ve re-​offended, re-​offended, re-​offended’. Verbal and physical aggression, at the hands of some Sunnyvale police, was seen as an ‘occupational hazard’ which, alongside intensive police attention, needed to be negotiated as part of ongoing police–​offender relationships. It was also understood and accommodated as a predictable and to some extent accepted aspect of a prolific criminal lifestyle. It would be a mistake, however, to assume that participants felt that their history of criminality made all forms of Sunnyvale police action legitimate. Indeed, there was evidence that the basic legitimation expectations of offenders included fair and respectful treatment during interactions with police. But this also reveals a paradox in Sunnyvale policing and its relationship with the past. Participant accounts pointed to a tension within Sunnyvale police–​offender legitimacy dialogues. Sunnyvale police claims to legitimacy, in respect of the right to stop and question Sunnyvale offenders, were founded on intelligence-​ based risk-​ assessments. Yet this aspect of the claim was not accepted by participants like Peter (extracted above) whose basic legitimation expectation seemed to be that Sunnyvale police interventions must respond to evidence of recent offending. Yet when asked, ‘what gave Sunnyvale police the right to intervene in their lives to this extent?’, the same participants suggested that the ‘right’ (a degree of legitimacy) arose from their prior offending and the risk of reoffending it denotes. So, how was this tension managed during police–​offender interactions? What behaviour did prior offending justify in the eyes of offenders and what did it not justify? In answer, we might turn to offender perceptions of the fairness

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of Sunnyvale police action. These views were bound up with both the quality of decision-​making and the quality of treatment dimensions of procedural fairness. Aspects of police conduct, such as straightforwardness, honesty, the relaxation/​ suspension of formal powers and process and decision-​making driven by evidence, were strongly related to a sense of fairness, whilst repeated street stops, unannounced home visits, disrespectful language and disciplinary practices were closely tied to perceptions of unfairness. Yet it was motive-​based trust (i.e. a sense of trust in the perceived motivations of powerholders (Tyler, 2006; Tyler and Huo, 2002) that was the primary distinguishing dimension of procedural fairness, which shaped offender perceptions of the legitimacy of Sunnyvale police action—​or lack thereof. Participants questioned and distrusted police motivations when street stops, often infused with hostility and disrespect, were carried out without a perceived evidence base. Such encounters went further than what could be accepted and were thus viewed as unwarranted, personal attacks and outside of the scope of the legitimate use of police authority.These reactions mirrored previous research that found aggressive order maintenance policing, particularly where it leaves ‘citizens feeling humiliated, violated or even victimized’, can erode perceptions of procedural justice and legitimacy (Gau and Brunson, 2010: 256; Novich and Hunt, 2018: 64). The result tended to be compliance/​cooperation predicated on instrumental/​prudential concerns, but a history of these encounters was also found to place stress on future relations between participants and police offender managers, with the latter viewed as untrustworthy and the role ineffective. This finding supports the general argument advanced by Skogan (2006) that previous negative encounters with the police reduce perceptions of police trustworthiness. Alternatively, when stopped or visited at home, for what were accepted as justifiable reasons (e.g. suspicion of criminal activity and/​or the offer of support from offender managers) most participants understood better the context of the action and trusted the motivations of the police officers involved. For some offenders, this perception appeared to contribute to willing cooperation with Sunnyvale police, although, again, prudential and/​or instrumental cost/​benefit calculations were also operative. This positioning of motive-​based trust, as central to offender legitimacy judgements, may have been a result of the context in which these insights developed. There is a difference between routine (but often sporadic) police–​ citizen encounters (hitherto focused on by Tyler and his colleagues) and enduring Sunnyvale police–​offender relations. In the latter context, offenders had histories (prior offending), which framed the meaning and scope of police activity (enforcement and ongoing rehabilitative work) for both parties. Here, police legitimacy judgements were not easily anchored in Tyler’s quality of decision-​making dimension. This is because the concept depends on notions of neutrality and lack of bias, which involve the police treating those they encounter as merely another citizen. It seems that neither Sunnyvale police, nor

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those subject to Sunnyvale interventions, expected that to be true. Instead, both parties accept that offenders would be targeted on the basis of their criminal record and intelligence on their risk of re-​offending that fell short of reasonable cause to suspect them of criminality. The focus of offender evaluations of Sunnyvale policing, therefore, shifted towards Tyler’s quality of treatment, dimension. Relational aspects of procedural justice (i.e. trust, honesty, respect) were likely to have a greater effect on legitimacy judgements, within the context of Sunnyvale, because evaluations of procedural fairness could move beyond perceptions of whether police were following (or breaking) formal laws and rules, into the locus of long-​term Sunnyvale police–​offender relationships. This finding highlights the ‘audience response’ stage in the legitimacy dialogue, implicit in Bottoms and Tankebe’s (2012) ‘dialogic’ proposition of legitimacy (also, Tankebe, 2013). Tankebe’s argument was that legitimacy is best thought about as a continuing dialogue involving the claims by powerholders (Sunnyvale police officers) and responses by audiences (Sunnyvale offenders) in the form of deference to authority or following directives. The approach, he suggests, allows for flexibility and the contents of the dimensions of legitimacy to vary in different settings. Procedural justice, effectiveness, distributive fairness and lawfulness are put forward by Tankebe (2013: 107) as potential content of the dimensions of police legitimacy in a liberal democracy, but in the context of Sunnyvale we saw that it was the relational dimensions of procedural justice that were particularly amplified within police–​offender legitimacy dialogues. Fairness was an important part of this, but at the core of relational work between police and offenders was trust. This again returns us to the concept of procedural justice, which recognises the importance of public perceptions of police motives in the construction of police legitimacy (Tyler, 2006; Tyler and Wakslak, 2004). The argument is that if people believe the police are sincerely trying to do what is good for the people with whom they deal, this helps shape the belief the police are legitimate.When we extrapolate this from Tyler’s work, into the context of IOM, one can postulate that Sunnyvale policing, enforcement and/​or relational rehabilitative work was perceived by offenders as legitimate because of the trust associated with the motives underlying the action: a response to prolific offending. If all this is true, of course, then the question naturally arises as to whether or not we should be optimistic about the prospects of IOM policing for promoting compliance and cooperation, even desistance, among those subject to it.

Notes 1 See, for example, Martinson’s (1974) often cited ‘nothing works’ article. 2 This is a jargonistic term used within IOM and refers to the placing of ‘capture cars’ or ‘capture bicycles’ in crime ‘hot spots’, with a view to arresting known offenders that target particular items—​Satellite Navigation systems, laptops, mobile phones and expensive bicycles are often used.

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3 When manufactured, each BlackBerry device is assigned a unique personal identification number (PIN).This allows identification of each BlackBerry and ensures that mail destined for a particular individual is delivered correctly. 4 Migration meetings were not part of the National Intelligence Model but remained an integral part of the IOM process. 5 A total of 400 hours of observations were conducted over the course of 12 months. All but 50 hours of these observations were spent with nine police offender managers. Further observations were conducted with five DET officers from the dedicated unit of uniformed police officers.These officers, who acted as the enforcement branch of Sunnyvale IOM, were managed separately to police offender managers by a police inspector. 6 See Chapter 2 for a more detailed exploration of the concept of social discipline. 7 This was a term used by police officers to describe offenders who, at that the time, had a live warrant out for their arrest. 8 IOM participants ranged in age from 18 to 39, with a mean age of 28. Three were female, 17 were male. One self-​identified as Black British, whilst 19 self-​identified as white British. All offenders were unemployed at the time of the research. Participants had been selected onto the IOM scheme through an ‘Offender Group Reconviction Scale’ Version 3 (OGRS3) and an Offender System Scores (OASys), actuarial software, which estimates the probability that offenders will be reconvicted within two years of sentence, or release if sentenced to custody (Howard, 2009). Participation in the research, however, was voluntary and respondents were assured confidentiality.

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in One police force region’, Policing and Society, 29(5): 511–​ 529. doi:10.1080/​ 10439463.2017.1410148 Sparks, R. (2000). ‘Perspectives on risk and penal politics’, in T. Hope and R. Sparks (eds.), Crime, Risk and Security. London: Routledge, 129–​146. Stroshine, M., Alpert, G., and Dunham, R. (2008). ‘The influence of “working rules” on police suspicion and discretionary decision making’, Police Quarterly, 11(3): 315–​337. Sunshine, J., and Tyler,T. (2003).‘The role of procedural justice and legitimacy in shaping public support for policing’, Law and Society Review, 37(3): 513–​548. Tankebe, J. (2013). ‘Viewing things differently: The dimensions of public perceptions of police legitimacy’, Criminology, 51(1): 103–​135. Tyler, T. (1990). Why People Obey the Law. New Haven:Yale University Press. Tyler, T. (2006). ‘Psychological perspectives on legitimacy and legitimation’, Annual Review of Psychology, 57: 375–​400. Tyler, T. (2010). ‘Legitimacy in corrections: Policy implications’, Criminology and Public Policy, 9: 127–​134. Tyler, T. (2013). ‘Legitimacy and compliance: The virtues of self-​ regulation’, in A. Crawford and A. Hucklesby (eds.), Legitimacy and Compliance in Criminal Justice. Cullompton: Willan, 8–​28. Tyler, T., and Fagan, J. (2008). ‘Legitimacy and cooperation: Why do people help the police fight crime in their communities?’, Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law, 6: 231–​275. Tyler, T., and Wakslak, C. (2004). ‘Profiling and the legitimacy of the police: Procedural justice, attributions of motive, and the acceptance of social authority’, Criminology, 44(2): 253–​282. Tyler, T.R., and Huo, Y.J. (2002). Trust in the Law Encouraging Public Cooperation with the Police and Courts. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Waddington, P.A.J., Stenson, K., Don, D. (2004). ‘In proportion: Race, and police stop and search’, British Journal of Criminology, 44(6): 889–​914. Zedner, L. (2009). ‘Fixing the future? The pre-​emptive turn in criminal justice’, in S. Bronnit, B. McSherry, and A. Norrie (eds.), Regulating Deviance: The Redirection of Criminalisation and the Futures of Criminal Law. Oxford: Hart Publishing, 35–​58.

Chapter 7

Old habits die hard

Introduction I began this book by setting out the significant role played by IOM, as a model of multi-​agency criminal justice in responding to criminal activities and reoffending threats, faced by local communities, from individuals with a history of prolific offending. I have also demonstrated, in subsequent chapters, that IOM is a novel way in which the police exercise power. Alongside engaging the police in rehabilitative support, it can serve as a method for officers to assert control and/​or discipline. In Chapters 4 and 5 we saw that two linked theoretical paradigms—​a theory of criminal justice decision-​making, put forward by Keith Hawkins, and the concept of cop-​ culture—​can help us understand better two aspects of the IOM model of policing. Firstly, how far the relationships between the partner agencies are close, constructive and integrated, as suggested by IOM rhetoric; secondly, whether the changes this form of policing entails are reflected in changes in underlying police cultures. The data in most instances tend to suggest a business-​as-​usual approach to the policing of prolific offenders, but through the use of a broader range of crime control means now in the repertoire of the majority of IOM police officers. However, this book is not intended to be a pure study of police culture and practice. Applying the Bottoms–​Tankebe approach to criminal justice legitimacy, it has also offered an account of how people subject to Sunnyvale IOM have experienced and reacted to the collaborative practices of these criminal justice agencies, particularly the activities of the police. What was revealed was that whilst participants viewed aspects of Sunnyvale policing as unfair, they broadly accepted the legitimacy of it. This reaction appeared to be rooted in the presence of key dimensions of procedural justice (trust, honesty and respect) in ongoing relations with Sunnyvale police (both DET officers and offender managers). The aim of this chapter is to explore further the implications of these findings for police culture and the trajectory of IOM. First, let us revisit the findings of the empirical study. DOI: 10.4324/9780429287664-7

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The rhetoric of IOM and the realities of operational practice I want to begin the discussion by returning to the rhetoric of IOM. The government policy statement that introduced IOM, in June 2009, telegraphed two main objectives: (i) advance the quality of life in communities through the meaningful reduction of crime and harm caused to victims by prolific offenders; and (ii) improve the life chances of this group through support and rehabilitation (Ministry of Justice, 2010). Each police area was to develop and embed their own approach to the provision of positive and intensive cross-​ agency working within the broad framework of IOM. Early on in the course of the project, I asked a senior IOM manager: ‘What do you see as the IOM mandate and how can it be attained?’ The response is illuminating in its reflection of the stated aims of IOM: Our first call is to the local community and the public to reduce harm as much as we can. So that’s our intent. We want to do that in the most constructive ways. We want actual, real rehabilitation opportunities for service users who come to us.We don’t want to be purely monitoring and locking people up; we want this to be a real, better experience for them. But these aims, whilst simple to state, have been harder to achieve in practice. To begin with, advancing the above objectives required that the agencies work together, overcoming a well-​documented history of ideological conflicts and structural power struggles (e.g. Pycroft and Gough, 2019; Robinson, 2013; Worrall and Mawby 2014). Chapter 4 showed a complex set of relationships between probation, the police, prison service and drug workers. Improvements in the sharing of information and expertise and increased efficiency of management process were reported by some participants, along with a shift towards positive working relationships, particularly, between the probation and police service. This development was attributed to the co-​location of workers, said to enhance participant understandings of the operational practices of other agencies (see also, Sleath and Brown, 2017). It was also a reflection of an increasing drift of the probation service away from its traditionally welfare-​ orientated moorings towards a sharper focus on public protection. The shift was not, however, only in one direction. Both police and prison officers spoke of increasing levels of empathy and understanding in respect of Sunnyvale offenders. This, they suggested, had resulted from working within the IOM framework. Nonetheless, cultural tensions between Sunnyvale workers were still in evidence. Probation and drug workers pointed to police pessimism/​cynicism as an explanation for the approach of some officers to the management of Sunnyvale offenders, whom they viewed as unlikely to desist from criminal activities. This seemed to precipitate conflict between those officers who emphasised

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the traditional objectives of the police organisation and Sunnyvale staff (both non-​ police staff and some police officers) who were more committed to rehabilitative work with offenders. It was decisions on whether or not to arrest and/​or recall Sunnyvale offenders that appeared to place particular stress on probation-​police relationships. Police–​drug worker relationships, on the other hand, were often frayed by police attempts to co-​opt workers into the business of spying on offenders. Reticence on the part of some drug workers (and a small number of probation workers) tended to generate complaints from some police officers (both uniform officers from the District Enforcement Team [DET] and offender managers) about what they characterised as a problem of ‘one-​way traffic’ communication between agencies within the partnership.This argument found its footing in the intense focus offender managers had on the intelligence-​gathering aspect of their role. A steady flow of information from the partner agencies was an important part of the process. Good cop–​b ad cop: business as usual in Sunnyvale IOM Against the backdrop of police scepticism towards partnership working, the findings discussed directly above about the practical operation of partnership working within Sunnyvale are perhaps unsurprising. The difficulties faced by police officers in surrendering their own cultural values and perceptions of police work to a ‘softer’ set of tasks, functions and new ways of thinking associated with partnership working are well-​documented and understood (e.g. Souhami, 2019; Loftus, 2009; Bullock et al., 2006). In the current study I found that, despite the significant changes to operational policing IOM has introduced, police culture had proved resistant to change. In the arena of community policing, some aspects of cop culture, such as pragmatism, might facilitate multi-​agency working (O’Neill and McCarthy, 2014), but here in Sunnyvale IOM the endurance of its central characteristics may have been derailing the broader aims of the scheme. Data presented in Chapters 5 and 6, demonstrated that the actions of Sunnyvale police, both uniformed DET officers and police offender managers, reflected a marked confirmation of the continuance of many of the centralities of police culture: an exaggerated sense of mission, action-​orientated behaviour, cynicism and suspicion, isolation and solidarity, conservatism and prejudice. This finding might be expected to arise from observations of uniformed DET officers—​even those working with the altered structures of IOM. More surprising perhaps was interview and observational evidence that traditional patterns of police culture cut across the attitudes and behaviours of both DET officers and police offender managers. Thus, the hypothesis tabled in Chapter 1 that police offender managers might think, talk and act somewhat differently to their DET officer colleagues, given the welfare-​orientated dimension to the role, was not entirely borne out during the fieldwork. Slight fractures were, however, apparent in the classic culture as offender managers interacted with

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the novel operational landscape of IOM. Most police offender managers shared a sense of social isolation from ‘Them’ (the rest of society), but rarely reported a feeling of ‘Us’—​either togetherness with other police officers within the force who occupied more conventional policing roles, or cohesion within the IOM unit. A further finely grained distinction was the reinterpretation of the concepts of action, excitement and mission. Whereas DET officers placed a lot of value on getting into unpredictable and confrontational interactions with offenders and suspects, the ‘thrill’ for most police offender managers was out-​ smarting Sunnyvale offenders through the skilful detection of their criminal activities (see further below). Both DET officers and offender managers further condensed the ‘values, norms and craft rules’ commonly associated with police culture into several powerful working ‘assumptions’ (Hoyle, 1998), ‘rules’ (McConville et al., 1991) and ‘frames’ (Hawkins, 2002). We saw throughout the study the operation of powerful framing devices like suspiciousness, previous, information received and rapport building. These classificatory devices (Hawkins, 2002) were often adopted by the great majority of DET officers and many of the police offender managers to understand and ascribe meaning to interactions with Sunnyvale offenders on the streets and in their homes. There was considerable interplay between officer/​offender manager framing and broader aims of the police. Being known to the police was found to be a powerful master frame, which hugely influenced how those subject to IOM were managed.We saw, for example, that people framed by the police as known to have ‘previous’ were assumed to be suspicious. For Sunnyvale DET officers the working rule was to stop these people, most often requiring them to account for their presence, rather than arresting them. For many offender managers, however, the known frame precipitated a different working assumption: those with extensive ‘previous’ were incapable of change. Here the working rule was to monitor, arrest and return people to custody as quickly as possible, rather than actively pursue available social support mechanisms. Of course, there was a minority of offender managers who deviated from this approach, moving beyond a pure catch and convict policing mentality towards a more welfare-​ orientated style of offender management. But this way of working also provided an opportunity for officers to incorporate intelligence gathering into the provision of support, whilst also driving forward the crime control goals of the police organisation. Underlying this thinking was another powerful framing device that guided much interaction between police offender managers and those on IOM: known offenders are a good source of intelligence and thus deserve a considerable amount of police attention. Fundamental to this frame was the working assumption that building a rapport with offenders would enable further access to useful intelligence. In this way, the rapport-​building assumption, the known frame and the intelligence-​gathering rule are involved in a dynamic interactive process (Hawkins, 2002) underpinning police–​offender interactions within the organisational field of Sunnyvale IOM.

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It seems a reasonable hypothesis that building a rapport with Sunnyvale offenders should increase the likelihood of their engagement with pathway support. A body of work has identified that relationship building is a ‘prerequisite to influencing change’ (Burnet and McNeill, 2005: 222) amongst offenders (also, Tidmarsh, 2020; Rowe et al., 2018; Lewis, 2014; Rowe and Soppit, 2014). Relationships, the literature stresses, should be built on sensitivity, respect, compassion, trustworthiness and fairness—​all apparently pivotal to the process of supervising offenders and supporting them into pathways out of crime (Fernando, 2021; Ugwudike and Phillips, 2019; Knight, 2014; McNeill, 2006; Bottoms, 2001). However, it became obvious that there was something more at work, than merely building good relations with those subject to Sunnyvale IOM within the minds of those police offender managers focused on rapport building. The same officers are pursuing crime control goals through the crime control means institutionally open to them. Police officers value intelligence-​gathering opportunities as a means of capturing ‘good-​class villains’ (Reiner, 2000: 93). McConville and Shepherd (1992: 150), for example, found that officers enjoyed ‘getting out and getting amongst [criminals]’, watch them in other words. As one police offender manager put it, ‘We have a “cushy number” ’.These officers almost exclusively deal with ‘worthwhile criminals’ (Reiner, 2000: 93) and are given an organisational field mandate to monitor them by poking around their houses and delving into their private lives through various forms of inter-​ agency working and information-​sharing. Whilst arresting those who are subject to IOM is problematic, the emphasis on support creating cultural tensions, several of the police offender managers (see further below) appeared to relish out-​witting offenders and seeing them sent back to prison.1 The rehabilitative support mandate, distilled through a ‘rapport-​building’ frame, often provided a convenient cover for what appeared to be ‘business as usual’ for Sunnyvale police officers.2 Far from mundane and routine, the focus on intelligence gathering fitted nicely with the police officers’ innate desire for crime control-​orientated action. In their consciousness, police offender managers firmly remained part of the ‘thin blue line’ protecting society from the (exaggerated) ever-​threatening forces of evil, chaos and disorder (Reiner, 2010). The tenacious link between talk and action: implications for police culture Understanding the police offender manager role in this way suggests a subtle link between the canteen talk and actions of many of these officers. Take, for example, the words and deeds of offender managers like Barry, Karen and Gary, revealed in fieldwork data presented in Chapters 4 and 5. Here the ‘talk’ often espoused a desire to (short of summary execution) ‘bang up’ these ‘vile scrotes’ and ‘walking abortion cases’ as quickly as possible and, whilst the same

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officers treated offenders with a respectful and friendly manner, the ‘action’ was gathering information about the criminal activities of Sunnyvale offenders with a view to getting them back in prison quickly. It was still possible for these officers to carry out their Sunnyvale duties conscientiously, but their ‘canteen rhetoric’ was not, as Waddington (1999) might insist, completely distinct from their practices on the street. For police offender managers, the mission is gathering intelligence on IOM offenders. But, in Chapters 4 and 5, I also documented the cultural practices of Sunnyvale uniformed cops—​the enforcement branch of the scheme. The methods and practices of these officers centred on communicative surveillance, social discipline and the imposition of authority and control through highly patterned and structured police behaviour, motivated by the cultural objectives, rather than legal norms. But these officers acted primarily as sentence enforcers, surveillance operatives and general disrupters of crime—​all standard policing practices (Waddington 1998). It is not surprising therefore that their occupational culture was found to be broadly consistent with previous studies of frontline police work. Nonetheless, their conduct may have been destabilising the very police–​offender relationships that are crucial to rapport building. In other words, the actions of Sunnyvale’s uniformed enforcement branch, rather than solely disrupting the criminal enterprises of offenders, may have been disrupting the IOM police field mandate: intelligence gathering. At the same time, the police offender manager preoccupation with intelligence gathering appeared to reduce the likelihood of offenders accessing and engaging with the social support aspects of the scheme. In part, this was due to an indirect break down of trust between offenders and other IOM practitioners working closely with the police, who could be viewed as ‘getting too close to the coppers’. We saw, for example, in Chapter 5 that the intense police focus on intelligence gathering fuelled police engagement with the non-​ police organisations in the IOM partnership.This activity, explicitly encouraged by the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, provided the police with a steady and informal flow of personal data about Sunnyvale offenders, with little or no processes of accountability (Maguire, 2000: 323–​324). Moreover, as noted above, intelligence gathering was outsourced by the police to non-​police workers. This meant that sensitive information received by the police from the probation service was at times manipulated and used against those subject to IOM. The negative effects of closer proximity between the two organisations (from the perspective of offenders, at least) were further compounded by a predominantly one-​directional cultural transference from the police to the probation service. Although not on a large scale, sometimes the cultural change amongst non-​ police workers meant that those primarily responsible for supporting IOM offenders moved from a traditionally welfare-​orientated approach towards a more authoritarian one. This outcome was most evident amongst probation workers; drug workers, on the other hand, tended to resist cultural change.

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The empirical practice of Sunnyvale policing was found to be inconsistent with many of the claims made about the operation of IOM policing. Despite close proximity with other agencies and attempts to broaden the police mandate to encompass a focus on pathway support, police offender managers continued to adopt standard police cultural assumptions, frames and rules when dealing with offenders. The informal mandate was simple: relentlessly pursue known prolific offenders by creating and grasping intelligence-​gathering opportunities and implementing a form of social control rather than meaningfully assisting in the rehabilitative process of Sunnyvale offenders. Thus, whilst these officers appeared, overtly at least, to be providing support (largely in the form of logistics, advice and attending drug/​housing/​employment appointments) to those targeted by the scheme, simultaneously and more covertly they remained committed to the containment and/​or incapacitation of IOM offenders. But these findings also give rise to a further question: how did the people under this form of increased police supervision, experience frequent interactions with Sunnyvale police officers? This is an important question, the answer to which has implications for broader issues of offender compliance and desistence. How did Sunnyvale offenders perceive Sunnyvale police action? Our examination of the talk and actions of Sunnyvale police officers and their interactions with other IOM workers and Sunnyvale offenders has been shaped by an overarching concern as to the cultural and practical implications for frontline police officers engaged in this form of policing. In this section, I wish to focus on the perceptions and experiences of people subject to the scheme: Sunnyvale offenders. As noted in Chapter 2, Sunnyvale IOM was a novel policing setting, involving police–​offender interactions that could be distinguished from orthodox patrol-​style policing. Here, interventions were varied, rather than limited to traditional ‘catch and convict’ operational practice. But the fieldwork carried out for this book showed that these diverse forms of IOM police–​offender interactions were characterised by some practices that could well be seen as procedurally unfair. For instance, frequent street stops, intrusive home visits from police offender managers, as well as physical and verbal abuse carried out by uniformed police. These findings are important as they lay the foundations for the contention made in Chapter 2 that a sense, among IOM offenders, they had suffered procedural [in]justice at the hands of IOM police may have had negative consequences for their cooperation/​compliance with the scheme. This is because of the potential impact of procedural [in]justice on legitimacy evaluations.This would be the probable consequence, according to the work of Tyler and his colleagues. Yet a further, significant finding (documented in Chapter 6) was that offenders ascribed a degree of legitimacy to the actions of Sunnyvale police interventions, even though they considered that in many ways they had experienced unfair

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treatment by these officers. Although this data would seem to run directly counter to some of the main claims of procedural justice theory, the beginning of an explanation was found in the fact that Sunnyvale policing activities were consistently framed by offenders as part-​and-​parcel of a prolific offending lifestyle. Participants suggested that they were responsible for, even deserving of, some aspects of the treatment. The actions of Sunnyvale police were in many instances seen as morally appropriate (or at least understandable) on the basis of previous offending. Nonetheless, I make no argument here that there was a simple relationship between this framing of police treatment by offenders and how the legitimacy of Sunnyvale police action was negotiated at an individual level between police and offenders on the streets and in their homes. As the data illustrated, Sunnyvale offenders did not give Sunnyvale police carte blanche to behave and act as they wished. Rather, there were palpable limits defining what police talk and action Sunnyvale offenders were willing to accept; limits were shaped by broader concepts of fairness and legitimacy than those originally proposed by Tyler and his colleagues to explain the procedural justice/​injustice of traditional patrol interventions (see, e.g., Sunshine and Tyler, 2003: 514). Interpreted through the lens of Bottoms and Tankebe’s (2012, 2017, 2020) dialogic proposition of legitimacy, we saw that during encounters with offenders Sunnyvale police made legitimation claims about their right to enforce legal rules and, in the case of police offender managers, to dictate appropriate behaviours. The claims were rooted in the criminal histories of Sunnyvale offenders (i.e. risk-​profiling technologies, based on previous offending, alongside police cultural framing). The analysis in Chapter 6 shows that Sunnyvale offenders made judgements about Sunnyvale police practices and the right of these officers to use their authority. Sometimes legitimacy claims were accepted by Sunnyvale offenders, sometimes not, but it is possible to identify some basic legitimation expectations of Sunnyvale offenders that contributed to their perceptions of the legitimacy of Sunnyvale police action. Retaining the metaphor of discourse, implicit in the dialogic legitimacy framework, it is possible to point to several concerns of Sunnyvale offenders, congruent with Bottoms and Tankebe’s fourfold legitimacy structure,3 expressed during an interview that can be interpreted as basic legitimation expectations. It mattered to participants that Sunnyvale police interventions appealed to formal rules of evidence (lawfulness) were not of excessive frequency (distributive justice), were likely to achieve results (effectiveness) and were fair and respectful (procedural justice). But as observed in Chapter 2, the content of legitimacy dialogues is contingent on the context of the time and place in which the dialogues occur. Because of this, the specifics of legitimation and legitimacy are variable (Bottoms and Tankebe, 2017: 88). It is this important point that aids us in making more sense of the conundrum this section began with: why was it that participants viewed aspects of IOM policing as unfair (and there was evidence

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that it failed to deliver aspects of the four matters noted above) but broadly accepted the legitimacy of the treatment? Conversations with Sunnyvale offenders suggest the answer is grounded in the relational dimensions of procedural fairness, which interviewees emphasised in their evaluations of IOM police action. Perhaps the best way to illustrate this point is to return to the positioning of motive-​based trust in the context of police-​initiated interventions. Sunnyvale police claims to power and authority were contested by participants (e.g. Peter and Neil) where they distrusted the motives underlying this type of police activity. Take, for example, street stops. These, often adversarial, encounters were driven by elements of police intelligence and risk-​management criteria that were not disclosed to offenders and unlikely to resonate with them. Thus, these legitimations (justifiably offered by Sunnyvale police within the dialogue) were rejected by participants because they failed to address their basic legitimation demand that Sunnyvale police-​initiated encounters were based on discernible (communicated) evidence of recent offending and carried out in a respectful manner. Developing this further, it is precisely because the basis on which encounters were initiated appeared nebulous to Sunnyvale offenders, which made it difficult for legitimacy to be structured by dimensions relating to the breaking or following of rules (e.g. the quality of decision-​making dimension of procedural fairness). This was all the more so given that police–​offender relationships were framed by prior offending, which shaped expectations on both sides as to how offenders might be treated (i.e. differently to ordinary citizens). What we saw, as a result, was Sunnyvale offender legitimacy evaluations shifting towards aspects of legitimacy that are the more relational in nature (e.g. those found within the quality of treatment dimension of procedural fairness). Honesty, dignity and respectful treatment were important—​possibly even more so as relationships between Sunnyvale offenders and police developed over time. In Chapter 2, it was suggested that empirical research done on the foundations of legitimacy in the context of corrections and community sanctions provides support for such a proposition. In this setting, associative (or correlational) links between positive perceptions of offender–​staff relationships and affirmative judgements on the fairness of (probation/​prison) staff actions and the legitimacy of their authority are well known (see Liebling, 2004, 2011; Crew, 2011; Skins et al., 2017; Bottoms, 2001; Sparks et al., 1996; Bottoms and Rose, 1998; Liebling 2004; Rowe et al., 2018). This is relevant insight, with important implications for our understanding of Sunnyvale offender perceptions of fairness and legitimacy, as well as our thinking about the work of Sunnyvale staff. The activities of prison and probation workers are similar to those of Sunnyvale police officers, particularly offender managers. At the core is an attempt to bend what are likely to be cynical hearts and minds towards a different path away from criminality. This makes clear the relevance of relationships which, as McNeill and Robinson (2013) suggest, are a key site in which to build

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legitimacy. Fairness is an important part of this development, but relational work also requires trust. This returns us to the procedural justice literature which highlights the importance of public perceptions of police motives in the construction of police legitimacy (Tyler, 2006). The argument is that, if people believe the police are genuinely committed to doing what is good for the people with whom they interact with, this helps shape the belief the police are legitimate. When we extrapolate from this work, into the context of IOM, one can postulate that Sunnyvale policing, that is, enforcement and/​or relational rehabilitative work, was perceived by Sunnyvale offenders as legitimate because of the motives underlying the action: a response to prolific offending. Did a degree of perceived legitimacy lead to offender compliance/​c ooperation? Given that the procedural justice literature suggests that a perception of police legitimacy is a powerful driver of law-​abiding behaviour, the findings from the present study should be met with optimism. The men and women subject to frequent interactions with the police, under Sunnyvale IOM, did not appear to view the police action as fundamentally incompatible with notions of legitimacy. A history of offending meant that most participants did not seem to expect to be treated like other members of the public. They did, nevertheless, expect their relationships with the police to be conducted fairly and with a measure of respect.The concept of fairness was construed broadly by Sunnyvale offenders and where interactions with Sunnyvale police were perceived to be fair seemed to generate pockets of offender cooperation/​compliance. The risk of coercive treatment/​punishment and the promise of reward also influenced offender behaviour. It was clear, for example, that some participants complied/​cooperated with the directives of Sunnyvale police out of fear of the immediate consequences of non-​compliance. Dull compulsion (pragmatic acquiescence) also seemed to be operative, particularly on occasions where police offender managers visited offenders in their homes. Accompanying this was an acknowledgement from a minority of participants that tangible benefits might stem from engagement with the scheme (e.g. various pathways out of chaotic offending lifestyles and the subsequent advantages that related to lifestyle normalisation). This implies that the cooperation of some Sunnyvale offenders may have been through rational choice, that is, they cooperated when they saw the potential of gain, and did not when they believed there would be nothing achieved by cooperating. Yet, although a combination of factors could plausibly be linked to Sunnyvale offender cooperation/​compliance with Sunnyvale police, the dominant story within the research convincingly pointed back towards the relational aspects of procedural justice—​specifically motive-​ based trust—​underpinning compliance with Sunnyvale police action. This was the central paradigm that emerged from the analysis.

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Challenges for the rehabilitation of offenders and trajectory of IOM Another problem is perhaps thornier. The degree of perceived legitimacy afforded to Sunnyvale policing by those subject to the scheme did not result in desistence among much of Sunnyvale’s offender cohort. Fieldwork revealed a scheme perpetually managing the same offenders. This raises the possibility that whilst Sunnyvale policing retained a measure of legitimacy in the eyes of Sunnyvale offenders, it may have been disrupting the overarching objectives of IOM: steering prolific offenders away from crime and towards societal reintegration. Operational practices, which concentrated on the close monitoring and surveillance of Sunnyvale offenders, may further instrumental, law enforcement objectives (e.g. deterring offenders from committing offences and/​or expediting the process of catching and convicting those that do offend), but may also impinge on their sense of autonomy and freedom (core building blocks in the reconstruction of a positive identity required by offenders as part of the desistance process [Weaver and McNeill, 2010]). In the same way, the hostile and disciplinary policing complained of by offenders may reduce opportunities for rapport building between police offender managers and offenders, which is important for intelligence gathering, securing compliance with authority (Bradford et al., 2014) and influencing change (Burnet and McNeill, 2005: 222). The purpose of this research was not, however, to carry out a performance evaluation of Sunnyvale IOM. Rather it was concerned with examining the workings of the Sunnyvale IOM scheme, with a particular focus on the role of the police. The scheme was failing to ‘break the cycle’ of the proverbial ‘revolving door’—​ its original aim, as telegraphed by the literature which accompanied its rollout. Yet the success of IOM need not merely be an exercise in counting the number of people that stop offending for the long term. Returning to the narratives of crime, risk and social order (Schuilenburg and Peeters, 2018) explored at the outset of Chapter 1, notions of success might also be located within the context of broader changes in the nature of social control. Maguire (2000: 316), for example, points to: a strategic future-​ oriented and targeted approach to crime control, focusing on the identification, analysis, and ‘management’ of persistent and developing ‘problems’ or ‘risks’ (which may be particular people, activities or areas), rather than on the reactive investigation and detection of individual crimes. Within this actuarial framework, various investigative tools and surveillance technologies are put into action, so as to monitor, generate and analyse useful information about risky populations (Ericson and Haggerty, 1997: 55; Cope,

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2004: 190). The police, of course, are at the forefront of this methodology. In the context of Sunnyvale IOM, this ‘way of doing police business’, as Tilley (2008: 383) puts it, instinctively involved the development and maintenance of an intelligence-​gathering infrastructure and databases constructed about the stock-​in-​trade of prolific offenders.Yet it also meant the surveillance and control of IOM offenders. Police offender managers were operating under the guise of offering social support and assistance, but rather than support and rehabilitation, which are the less restrictive means available to the scheme, the driving force was containment and risk-​management. The police emphasis on this type of activity was to an extent mitigated by the role and influence of both probation staff and drug workers from the criminal justice intervention team. In a reflection of the ‘polibation’ concerns of Mike Nash (2008), many probation staff within Sunnyvale had been largely co-​opted by the police agenda (see Chapter 4). But these workers did provide statutory4 offenders with a ‘carrot’, in terms of better access to services and to opportunities to change. Similarly, drug workers, who were more resistant to police coercion than their probation colleagues, remained committed to offering rehabilitative support and encouragement to non-​statutory5 offenders. Broadly Sunnyvale IOM formed part of a crime control philosophy that is borne out by a policing practice that aims to create an environment of perceived constant surveillance. This entails furtively, penetrating and subsequently controlling a dangerous community of prolific offenders. At a theoretical level this development can be understood within the context of the ideas of Beck (1992) and Ericson and Haggerty (1997), who raise the spectre of the advent of a ‘risk society’ as a concerted response to powerful feelings of fear and insecurity, pervasive within modern communities (Maguire, 2000: 333; Hope and Sparks, 2000). For people targeted by Sunnyvale IOM, the implications of the methods and practices centred on intrusions into their personal space and private lives, which may have outweighed the risk posed by the person. For criminal justice, Sunnyvale IOM evidenced a further creep forward within the continuum of risk-​penology (Koehler et al., 2018; Ackerman et al., 2014; Feeley and Simon, 1994).

Futures of IOM research The research reported in this book has revealed what type of policing that is taking place under the canopy of integrated offender management. In particular, it has shed light on the cultural and attitudinal traits that underpin the activities of IOM police officers at one IOM site: Sunnyvale. Perhaps least surprising was the continuance of some well-​chronicled elements of traditional police culture found to be exhibited by those police officers tasked with the traditional police role of enforcement. If, as Skolnick (1966) suggests, police culture is a behavioural response to the routine challenges of police work, then as that work changes one should expect a cultural shift among the officers

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undertaking it.Yet, I discovered, during the fieldwork, that most police officers, adopting the novel role of police offender, displayed many of the worst aspects of police subculture, rather than embracing the rehabilitative aims emphasised in the framework of IOM. Rehabilitative activity, undertaken by these officers (e.g. encouraging offenders, through relational work and offering logistical support, to engage with local services), not only failed to soften orthodox police cultural attitudes, but it also acted as a cover for the pursuit of core policing goals.The work had changed, but the traditional crime control culture continued to dominate, inhibiting the mixing of control and support cultures within Sunnyvale IOM. Perhaps most significant were the implications of these findings for IOM offenders. Participants viewed increased police contact as legitimate given their prior history of offending, but in line with some prior procedural justice studies (e.g. Paternoster et al., 1997; Sunshine and Tyler, 2003; Reisig et al., 2007; Tyler and Fagan, 2008; Tyler, 2010) they also expressed a desire to be treated fairly and respectfully during these interactions. Fairness was a concept participants defined broadly and in many ways it was a concept captured by the quality of treatment dimension of procedural fairness. A further implication was that where offenders experienced this sort of fair treatment, it facilitated the negotiation of Sunnyvale police–​offender relations in mutually beneficial ways. But these relations were vulnerable to interruption and/​or souring, as a result of the tough enforcement and disciplinary practices uniformed Sunnyvale police often subjected offenders to. Although coercion is sometimes a necessary part of police practice, this activity had the effect of weakening the development of positive working relationships with police offender managers and perhaps other Sunnyvale workers. Simply put, there was an obvious disharmony in the approach of Sunnyvale policing that may have reduced the likelihood of normative, participant (longer-​term) compliance and engagement with the scheme. The data presented in this book is not intended to provide a conclusive snapshot of IOM police operational practice and culture, or offender perceptions of it. Rather it offers a rich and extensive case study of one IOM area. Earlier research done on IOM indicates that IOM activity differs across the UK. Some studies (e.g. Dawson and Stanko, 2011; Williams and Ariel, 2012) have cast doubt on the success of IOM in promoting desistance among recidivists, whilst other more recent works paint a more positive picture of IOM schemes where the police do not dominate and many of the officers are engaged in rehabilitative work, with more encouraging results (e.g. Annison et al., 2015; Hadfield et al., 2020). We need to know more about which scenario is most common across England and Wales, but in the latter instance, at least, the day-​to-​day reality of IOM policing seems to reflect the rhetoric surrounding the model more closely.This suggests that whilst what I found (a continuation of the traditional culture among IOM police) represents a significant challenge to much of the existing literature on IOM, it may be contingent on particular aspects

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of the IOM area I examined (e.g. recruitment methods, leadership structures, localised model of delivery). To date, however, there remains limited work specifically on whether such differences exist and, if so, what generates variations in the culture and practice of IOM police officers, across IOM sites. This book has also shown that Sunnyvale offender compliance with Sunnyvale police is not a simple matter of instrumental (cost-​benefit) and/​ or prudential calculations. It is a more complicated matter of Sunnyvale police adopting practices that were perceived by offenders to emphasise particular dimensions of procedural fairness (e.g. motive-​based trust and respect). Much of the procedural justice—​police legitimacy literature has so far been constructed around traditional DET interventions, but it is now plausible to suggest that the procedural justice arguments also relate to modern forms of policing, operating outside of this traditional policing context. However, within IOM the content and antecedents of legitimacy, as well as the implications for the behaviour of the parties involved, seem to be shaped by factors specific to this particular setting. This is another area worthy of further investigation. It is important to know, for example, whether the findings discussed above, particularly the apparent linkage between offender self-​reflections about their criminal lifestyles and their perceptions of IOM police legitimacy, are generalisable beyond the immediate experiences of study participants. Future empirical work, involving interviews with more subjects and more observations of police behaviours in different IOM units, would provide a wealth of further insight into emergence of IOM across England and Wales and the key factors that can increase the chances of it achieving its objectives.

Notes 1 2 3 4 5

Extensively documented in Chapters 4 and 5. See in particular Chapter 4. For more detailed discussion see Chapter 2. People on community sentences or subject to post-​prison release licence conditions. People not subject to formal statutory supervision by probation.

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Loftus, B. (2009). Police Culture in a Changing World. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Maguire, M. (2000). ‘Policing by risks and targets: Some dimensions and implications of intelligence-​led crime control’, Policing and Society, 9: 315–​336. McConville, M., and Shepherd, D. (1992). Watching Police, Watching Communities. London: Routledge. McConville, M., Sanders, A., and Leng, R. (1991). The Case for the Prosecution; Police Suspects and the Construction of Criminality. London: Routledge. McNeill, F. (2006). ‘A desistance paradigm for offender management’, Criminology & Criminal Justice, 6(1): 39–​62. McNeill, F., and Robinson, G. (2013). ‘Liquid legitimacy and community sanctions,’ in A. Crawford and H. Anthea (eds.), Legitimacy and Compliance in Criminal Justice. Cullompton: Willan, 116–​137. Ministry of Justice, Breaking the Cycle: Effective Punishment, Rehabilitation and Sentencing of Offenders, 2010, Ministry of Justice, available here: http://​web​arch​ive. natio​nala​rchi​ves.gov.uk/​201​2011​9200​607/​http:/​www.just​ice.gov.uk/​consul​tati​ons/​ docs/​break​ing-​the-​cycle.pdf (accessed 30/​12/​2021). Nash, M. (2008). ‘Exit the polibation officer? Decoupling police and probation’, International Journal of Police Science & Management, 10(3): 302–​312. O’Neill, M., and McCarthy, D. (2014). ‘(Re)negating police culture through partnership working: trust, compromise and the “new” pragmatism’, Criminology and Criminal Justice, 14(2): 143–​159. Paternoster, R., Bachman, R., Brame, R., and Sherman, L.W. (1997).‘Do fair procedures matter?: The effect of procedural justice on spouse assault’, Law and Society Review, 31(1): 163–​204. Pycroft, A., and Gough, D. (2019). Multi-​Agency Working in Criminal Justice. Bristol: Policy Press. Reiner, R. (2000). The Politics of the Police (3rd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Reiner, R. (2010). The Politics of the Police (4th ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Reisig, M.D., Bratton, J., Gertz, Marc, G. (2007). ‘The construct validity and refinement of process-​based policing measures’, Criminal Justice and Behaviour, 34(8): 1005–​1028. Robinson, G. (2013). ‘What is “quality” in probation practice? Findings from a study in 3 Probation Trusts’, paper presented at the Staffordshire and West Midlands Probation Trust Conference. Rowe, M., and Soppitt, S. (2014). ‘ “Who you gonna call?” The role of trust and relationships in desistance from crime’, Probation Journal, 61(4): 397–​412. Rowe, M., Irving, A., and Soppitt, S. (2018). ‘The legitimacy of offender management programmes in a post-​TR landscape’, Safer Communities, 17(2): 69–​80. Schuilenburg, M., and Peeters, R. (2018). ‘Smart cities and the architecture of security: Pastoral power and the scripted design of public space’, City, Territory and Architecture, 5(13): 1–​9. Skinns, L., Rice, L., Sprawson, A., and Wooff, A. (2017). ‘Police legitimacy in context: an exploration of “soft” power in police custody in England’, Policing: An International Journal, 40(3): 601–​613. Skolnick, J. (1966). Justice Without Trial: Law Enforcement in Democratic Society. New York: Macmillan. Sleath, E., and Brown, S. (2017). ‘Staff and offender perspectives of integrated offender management and the impact of its introduction on arrests and risk of reoffending

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in one police force region’, Policing and Society, 29(5): 511–​ 529. doi:10.1080/​ 10439463.2017.1410148 Souhami, A. (2019). ‘Multi-​agency practice and professional identity’, in M. Robb, H. Montgomery, and R. Thomson (eds.), Critical Practice with Children and Young People (2nd ed.). Bristol: Policy Press, 179–​197. Sparks, R., Bottoms, A.E., and Hay, W. (1996). Prisons and the Problem of Order. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Sunshine, J., and Tyler,T. (2003).‘The role of procedural justice and legitimacy in shaping public support for policing’, Law and Society Review, 37(3): 513–​548. Tidmarsh, M. (2020). ‘If the cap fits’? Probation staff and the changing nature of supervision in a Community Rehabilitation Company’, Probation Journal, 67(2): 98–​117. Tilley, N. (2008). ‘The development of community policing in England: networks, knowledge and neighbourhoods’, in T. Williamson (ed.), The Handbook of Knowledge Based Policing –​Current Conceptions and Future Directions. Chichester: John Wiley and Sons, Ltd, 95–​116. Tyler, T. (2006). ‘Psychological perspectives on legitimacy and legitimation’, Annual Review of Psychology, 57: 375–​400. Tyler, T. (2010). ‘Legitimacy in corrections: Policy implications’, Criminology and Public Policy, 9: 127–​134. Tyler, T., and Fagan, J. (2008). ‘Legitimacy and cooperation: Why do people help the police fight crime in their communities?’, Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law, 6: 231–​25. Ugwudike, P., and Phillips, J. (2019).‘Compliance during community-​based penal supervision’, in P. Ugwudike, H. Graham, F. McNeill, P. Raynor, F.S.Taxman, and C.Trotter C (eds.), Companion to Rehabilitative Work in Criminal Justice. Abingdon: Routledge, 869–​880. Waddington, P.A.J. (1998). Policing Citizens. London: UCL Press. Waddington, P.A.J. (1999). ‘Police (canteen) sub-​culture: An appreciation’, British Journal of Criminology, 39: 287–​309. Weaver, B., and McNeill, F. (2010). ‘Travelling hopefully: Desistance research and probation practice’, in J. Brayford, F. Cowe, and J. Deering (eds.), What Else Works? Creative Work with Participants. Cullompton: Willan, 504–​519. Williams, A., and Ariel, B. (2012). ‘The Bristol integrated offender management scheme: A pseudo-​experimental test of desistance theory’, Policing, 7(2), 123–​134. Worrall, A., and Mawby, R.C. (2014). ‘Probation worker cultures and relationships with offenders’, Probation Journal, 61(4): 346–​357.

Chapter 8

Reflexive ethnography Watching Sunnyvale police

The significant contribution of ethnography to police research This research was based primarily on direct observations of policing within a novel setting that sees officers and other workers engaged in a mix of rehabilitative and crime control activity. Navigating this process generated several methodological concerns which require discussion. The value of observational research or ethnography, as we might formally describe it, is well documented and understood. It is a technique that not only helps us understand police practice, but also one that aids us in revealing the assortment of informal values and cultural norms that are assumed to shape police decision-​making (variously referred to as ‘police culture’ [Smith and Gray, 1985;Young, 1991; Chan, 1997; Dixon, 1997; Waddington, 1998; Westmarland, 2001; Loftus, 2009; Reiner, 2010; Cockcroft, 2020]). Work based on other research methods, such as interviews with police officers, analysis of records, official statistics, organisational data and documents related to policing efforts provides useful insights into patterns of police behaviour. But the data generated from such methods stems from reports offered by the police themselves. This can fetter the ability of police researchers to scrutinise information that the same officers might prefer to remain shielded from view. It is thus its emphasis on observations that makes ethnography the most appropriate way of capturing the day-​to-​day experiences of frontline policing and the attendant ‘low visibility’ cultural practices that may otherwise function beneath what Manning (1997a: 21) describes as the ‘sacred canopy’ of police organisations (Cram, 2016; Loftus, 2009;Van Maanen, 1973; Bacon, 2016). Some police ethnographies have revealed the disparities between the talk and action of uniformed patrol officers (e.g. Westley, 1953, 1970; Banton, 1964; Skolnick, 1966; Cain, 1973; Van Maanen, 1973; Punch, 1979; Holdaway, 1983; Smith and Gray 1985; Heinsler et al., 1990; Chan, 1997; Brown 1996; Choongh, 1998; Loftus, 2009), whilst other observational research has revealed DOI: 10.4324/9780429287664-8

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the operational practices and cultures of specialist police, like detectives (e.g. Hobbs, 1988;Young, 1991; Bacon, 2016), firearms officers (Westmarland 2001), covert operatives (Loftus et al., 2016), police offender managers (Cram, 2016, 2018), private policing (Diphoorn, 2012) and non-​warranted police community support officers (e.g. Cosgrove, 2015; De Camargo, 2018; O’Neill, 2019). These observational studies provide valuable insights into police–​citizen encounters and interactions, along with significant theoretical knowledge of ‘the processes, structures and meanings that sustain and motivate this social group’ (Bacon et al., 2020: 2). Nonetheless, observational research is not bereft of its own methodological difficulties. Ethnographers have long emphasised the problems of access, trust and participant cooperation, broadly common in qualitative social research, but particularly acute in police research (Loftus, 2009). The job involves methods and practices that are bound up with a good measure of coercion and force (Reiner and Newburn, 2008). This can be controversial in and of itself and thus attracts the interest of those concerned with the uncovering of any police misuse of power. Indeed, as I write this chapter in the winter of 2020, it is uncontroversial to state that police deviance has been ubiquitous in the news across the world. Whether one thinks about events like the death of George Floyd, whilst in the custody of Minnesota police officers, or stretches back some years to the death of Christopher Alder in 1998, it is clear that the police, at times, engage in serious misconduct. The killing of George Floyd was not observed or discovered directly by police researchers; rather, the event was captured on video by astute bystanders. In this ‘one off ’ moment, the actions of the police officers in question were both highly visible and accessible but, as most experienced researchers of police would attest, revealing instances of police deviance is typically a less straightforward and more committed endeavour. To begin with, a sharp focus by both the academe and media on dubious (and/​ or, at times illegal) policing practices has heightened anxieties both amongst those who control access to the policing arena and those who are asked to participate in the research: police officers. Senior officers may be sceptical about the relevance and applicability of academic research, whilst those in overall operational command are likely to be concerned about how they (or the operations of which they are in charge) might be presented to non-​police audiences, for example, the media or perhaps even the Independent Police Complaints Commission (Reiner and Newburn, 2008; Loftus, 2009; Choongh, 1998). In addition, even once formal access has been granted, our presence, as observers, can change the normal behaviour of the police; most often this may be in the direction of suspicion and introversion among participants (Skolnick, 1966). After all, suspicion is the stock-​in-​trade of the police officer. But such an outcome may have broad implications for the quality and validity of the study (Reiner and Newburn, 2008). What is important, therefore, is that

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researchers not only successfully navigate the complications typically associated with gaining official approval from gatekeepers who control access to police research sites, but that they also become ‘accepted’ so as to secure genuine cooperation and trust from the participants once in the research site (Reiner and Newburn, 2008). Obstacles to accessing the police organisation can be overcome and trust built with officers through the development of rapport and the nurture of good field relations. However, there is also a need to reflect on the positionality of oneself within the research field after formal access to the police has been granted. Our own personal characteristics can colour ongoing field relations with the police and impact on the validity of the data generated (Daly, 2007). However, my time in the field provided striking evidence of the need for ethnographers to pay particular attention to an additional dimension of reflexivity when it comes to interpreting the behaviour of participants: the way in which police officers view their role within the police organisation. Numerous observational studies of police culture and practice have revealed the different ways in which police officers conceptualise their role (Reiner, 1978; Young, 1991; Marks, 2005; McConville et al., 1991). Reuss-​ Ianni (1983), for example, pointed to the internally built structural divides between ‘street cops’ and ‘management cops’, whilst Young (1991) highlights subtler distinctions linked to the standing of policing activities, such as between officers perceived as carrying out real police work (e.g. ‘thief takers’ [1991: 65]) and those operating within despised or avoided areas of operation (e.g. ‘scum cuddlers’ [Nash, 2016; Smith and Gray, 1985]). A prevalence of constructed divides within the police institution has implications for how police officers of different ranks and roles interact (Young, 1991: 64; Reiner 1978). Building on this point—​and returning to the problem of access and trust faced by ethnographers of the police—​it is plausible that this form of role conceptualisation may also shape police–​researcher interactions and help explain any uncooperative (or indeed cooperative) practices of police officers during our time in the field. In the pages that follow, I offer what Van Maanen (1978) might describe as a ‘confessional tale’ of my ethnographic experience with Sunnyvale police officers. It is reflexive discussion that unpicks the process of negotiating formal access to the Sunnyvale police organisation, along with considering how I came to be ‘accepted’ by the police officers I observed. The narrative then moves beyond these reconstructions to focus on the importance to the access and acceptance process of the way in which participants conceptualise their own role within the police organisation. Finally, I offer some reflections on recording and interpreting what I found in the research field. My aim in this chapter is to provide guidance, perhaps even answers, to the neophyte researcher wanting to observe and document police work, but at the same time wondering how to secure the requisite degree of trust and cooperation from a body of research participants whose job it is to be suspicious.

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Negotiating access to the Sunnyvale police organisational field Accounts of negotiating access to the police research field suggest that it is an enduring, fluid process, often involving many obstacles (Reiner and Newburn, 2008). In my case, the police force in question were not only open to academic research, but senior gatekeepers also exhibited a specific interest in an independent study on the culture and practice of police offender managers and the fairness and legitimacy of IOM policing as perceived by scheme participants. Formal access was also greatly facilitated by an existing collaborative relationship between the University and senior officers within Sunnyvale police. Nonetheless, given that Sunnyvale police were one (albeit senior) partner in a multi-​agency collaboration, it was necessary for me to become involved in various negotiations with other key Sunnyvale workers. I thus met with the senior police and probation managers who had joint, day-​to-​day operational responsibility for Sunnyvale. I was clear sighted about what I believed the practical aspects of the research should look like, but the point of this encounter was to discuss further, with senior gatekeepers, its overarching objectives and to provide an indication of the likely methods to be used and the level of frontline police/​probation cooperation that would be required. There were no explicit concerns about the study (e.g. how Sunnyvale IOM policing might be presented to non-​police audiences, like the media or perhaps even the Independent Police Complaints Commission) and I made it clear that it was my intention to report my emerging findings shortly after completing the fieldwork, with a fuller final written report to be made available once data analysis was completed.1 However, the senior officers required that prior to embarking on the research proper, I conducted an initial, informal pilot study of the scheme involving interviews and observations. I should then generate a detailed research proposal which could be presented to the local ‘Criminal Justice Board’.2 The Board, which had some operational oversight of IOM in this police area, would make the final decision in respect of allowing the research to proceed further. The pilot enabled me to develop/​cement my research design and ideas. But it was also a crucial part of the access process. It allowed me to allay any hitherto unspoken concerns of senior police that my idea for an ethnographic study of IOM was methodologically sound, logistically achievable and unlikely to take up significant amounts of police (and other IOM staff) time during the research period. One month after the pilot study, I presented a draft proposal to the senior police and probation gatekeepers. Both accepted the proposal, which was then submitted to the most senior gatekeeper, a senior police officer with whom initial contact about the study had been made. This precipitated a further face-​ to-​face meeting wherein the proposed research questions were discussed and an informal timetable for the research was agreed. The proposal was then submitted to the Local Criminal Justice Board for consideration as to whether the

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research could proceed on the basis outlined within the proposal. This was the final stage of the access negotiations process. Around two months later, after several delays caused by retirements, promotions and job transfers within IOM, I received word from the Chairperson of the Criminal Justice Board stating that my research proposal had been approved and that written permission to begin the fieldwork would be forthcoming in the next day or two. The following Monday morning, at 8 am, I arrived at Sunnyvale IOM to begin the study.

Becoming accepted It became clear during the initial stages of observations that, whilst central to the advancement of my study, formal access granted by senior gatekeepers was not enough to ensure the meaningful assistance of Sunnyvale police officers. On the contrary, broad suspicion was exhibited by some rank-​and-​file officers towards me and the project. It may, of course, have been that getting the ‘golden handshake’ from senior management, as one police officer described my access agreement, amplified the suspicions of junior staff (Rowe, 2007; Ericson, 1982), with some officers feeling as though they have been implicitly instructed to cooperate (Ericson, 1982). Some may have viewed me as a ‘management spy’ (Reiner, 1978).3 That was not how I saw my role, but there were instances where I had to be careful not to be pulled in that direction. For example, I was casually approached by senior managers who expressed an interest in ‘how the research was going’ or asked, ‘What are your thoughts about [Sunnyvale IOM] so far’. Generally, I rebuffed the questions by providing vague non-​committal responses such as, ‘Well it’s far too early to make any concrete assertions as this stage’ or ‘Results is such a complicated word in the context of research’. The problem of suspicion among the junior ranks is likely to be intensified further by the mind set within police culture, which can generate a sense of social isolation, alongside a heightened sense of solidarity with frontline police colleagues (Skolnick, 1996; Punch, 1983). These particular aspects of cop culture generate a propensity among officers to perceive the media as increasingly hostile and the public devoid of understanding when it comes to what officers face day-​to-​day on the frontline (Reiner, 2010; Loftus, 2009). The result is a cynical body of participants, hesitant to provide observers with access to ‘back-​ stage performances’ (Goffman, 1972) in case such access reveals misconduct or deviant activities. In the instances—​and there are many—​where researchers gain formal entry to the police organisation, the officers they observe may attempt to reduce the impact of their intrusion, exclude them from certain activities and/​or influence what they see (Cram, 2016; Van Maanen, 1988: 89; Punch, 1979; Smith and Gray, 1985: 299; Reiner, 2000). Although these sorts of behaviours present a significant challenge to those wishing to explore and gain rich information on police culture and practice, evidence does suggest that police reactions to observers can be mitigated through the development of a more informal relationship of trust between

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researcher and participant (see, e.g., Cain, 1973; Van Maanen, 1978; Smith and Gray, 1985; Ericson, 1982). Loftus (2009: 202) describes this as the transition from being ‘granted formal access [to] the accomplishment of social access on an everyday interpersonal level’. If this form of ‘acceptance’ or a significant measure of it is realised, participants are likely to begin to offer much more meaningful cooperation with the study. But how can this be achieved? Before entering the Sunnyvale organisational field, I sought answers to this important question in the reflexive accounts of other police ethnographers. These authors had diligently recorded the difficulties, uncertainties and barriers they faced as ‘outsider’ (Reiner, 2000; Brown, 1996) researchers negotiating with hesitant gatekeepers and engaging in policing activities in an attempt to become trusted and accepted by officers they encountered (e.g. Skolnick, 1966; Punch, 1979; Cain, 1973; Hoyle, 1998; Marks, 2005; Loftus, 2009; Souhami, 2020). Reading these narratives not only revealed the disorderliness of police ethnographic fieldwork but it was also helpful in defining my expectations of the ethical twists and turns I might need to traverse on entering the Sunnyvale police research site. It was clear however that gaining trust and acceptance of the officers I would encounter within the Sunnyvale organisational field would most likely require complex relational work and a reflexive awareness of how these officers may interpret and react to my characteristics in ‘culturally prescribed ways’ (Hunt, 1984: 283). Indeed, as the study progressed, I became aware that various dimensions of my personal biography seemed to be influencing the responses of Sunnyvale police to my presence as an observer.

Perceptions of me: understanding Sunnyvale officer reactions to my presence in the field It is now commonplace for ethnographers of the police to reflect upon how various aspects of their personal biography (e.g. class/​status, age, gender and ethnicity) may influence field relations and the information obtained from the police as a result (Smith and Gray, 1985: 305; Rowe, 2007; Marks, 2003). Most of the Sunnyvale police officers I encountered were aware that I was a PhD student attending a local university. Within Brown’s (1996) typology I was an ‘outsider’—​an academic, neither employed or commissioned by the police and with no official status dictating formal police cooperation. But, unlike Rowe (2007: 43), who suggested that the nickname of ‘University Mike’ assigned to him by the officers represented a ‘sure sign of acceptance’, my positioning as a putative member of the academe seemed to distance me from certain officers, who perceived me as someone who belonged to a privileged group. Informal conversations with some Sunnyvale police officers implicitly reinforced this idea during the fieldwork. For example, during an exchange with one police sergeant, I referred to a particular understanding of legal process, as ‘something I had learned in law school’, to which he responded dryly, ‘well not many of us here went

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to law school’. Of course, this may simply have been an attempt to insert humour into a fairly mundane conversation, reflecting the sort of researcher– participant joking that other police ethnographers (e.g. Souhami, 2020: 213; Loftus, 2009: 206) have reported as commonplace in field relations. Indeed, I was aware from the accounts of other police ethnographers before me that being seen as someone able to ‘take a joke’ could be important way in which I might reduce any perceived cultural distance between me and participants and thus edge closer towards ‘acceptance’.Thus, I was often quick to ‘laugh off ’ such ‘banter’. Yet on these occasions, the tone and the implication of the comment at least suggested that my status of PhD student had generated a perception among some officers of an ivory tower elitist; one who was perhaps ignorant of their lived experiences of the tough and exacting business of frontline policing (see also, Waddington, 1998; Lee and Punch, 2004; Tornquist and Kallsen, 1994; Susman et al., 1989). Despite this, some officers unfortunately remained unwilling to educate me into daily practicalities of their work (see further below). This led me to ponder whether other biographical dimensions, such as my age, gender and/​or race, were proving something of an obstacle in the day-​to-​day process of negotiating access. Similar to the experiences of other police researchers, particularly women (e.g. Westmarland, 2001; Souhami, 2020; Loftus, 2009; Marks, 2004), my age and gender did shape my experience in the field; in my case, smoothing the access process. The Sunnyvale police officers I observed were overwhelmingly male and in their mid to late 30s and, as an early-​30s male, I was largely well-​ positioned within the Sunnyvale organisational field. A penchant for sports and fitness also proved useful in creating positive relationships with some of the younger male officers who shared such interests. I regularly swapped ideas with officers on new and different approaches that might be taken to particular exercises.This certainly afforded me the respect of one officer in particular who put together a selection of exercise videos on a ‘data stick’ and suggested we become ‘friends’ on a well-​known social media platform to continue the information exchange after the conclusion of the research. Yet, whilst aspects of my biography seemed to help secure good field relations with some of the police I encountered, my ethnicity (Black British) was incongruent to the entirely white profile of Sunnyvale officers.Thus, as the fieldwork progressed, I could not help but reflect on whether my identity as a black male might be impacting on the fieldwork and the depth of the material I was able to obtain. Indeed, it is well-​recognised that research subjects interact differently with ethnographers whose ethnicities they share, compared to those with backgrounds distinctive from their own (see, e.g., Huggins and Glebbeek, 2003; Rowe, 2007; Marks 2004). Furthermore, consistent and recurrent themes of racism within both historical (e.g. Westley, 1953; Banton, 1964; Skolnick, 1966; Hunte, 1966; Smith and Gray, 1985; Foster, 1989) and contemporaneous (e.g. Barrett et al., 2014; Hargreaves, 2018; Bell, 2018; Gaston, 2019) criminological research (mainly) on interactions between the police and black men pressed home the importance of such an inquiry.

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In Chapter 5, I described two incidents where I observed Sunnyvale police unproblematically (as they saw it) applying deeply embedded prejudicial assumptions about race (Minhas and Walsh, 2021) to men of Black and minority ethnic backgrounds. First, an incident where a man of apparent Pakistani origin was referred to as ‘Mo’ (reflecting a racist and false notion that men of Pakistani origin are called Mohammad [The Guardian, 2014]), and second, an occasion when two Black men occupying a passing car were mocked by District Enforcement Team (DET) officers caricaturing accents and hand gestures stereotypically associated with Black Americans. However, as noted in my earlier, unabridged account of this episode, events of this type were not routine throughout the fieldwork, but these in particular are relevant here, as such incidents did raise the possibility that the police officers I observed also imposed certain personal characteristics onto me as a result of their broader (and exhibited) perceptions of Black men. Yet I found little evidence throughout my time with either police offender managers or uniformed DET police that these officers had transferred any of the traditional police constructions of race onto me. Moreover, the mere fact that I bore witness to episodes of racialised policing denotes either that Sunnyvale police paid little attention to my ethnicity or that this obstacle had in some way been overcome.The result was that it was likely I was viewed predominantly as a naïve researcher, rather than a suspicious Black man.This seems at odds with assumptions that can be drawn from the reflections on cross-​ racial research dynamics discussed above. My ethnicity should have significantly reduced, if not entirely prevented opportunities to witness the type of conduct documented above; it did not (see also, Cram, 2016). Procuring the trust and acceptance of Sunnyvale police officers was a process of continuous negotiation and never fully achieved. None of the participants were unfriendly towards me or hostile to my research, but as the fieldwork progressed it become clear to me that some of the Sunnyvale officers I had so far encountered were avoidant when it came to observations of their day-​to-​ day work (see below for more on this issue).Whilst these fieldwork experiences were informative, revealing to me the at times messy process of police ethnography, they also generated a further point of reflection: whether the obstructive and uncooperative response of some Sunnyvale police that I encountered could also be explained by the way these officers conceptualise their own role within the police organisation. Such a finding would have important implications for reflexivity in police ethnography and is thus taken up in the next section.

Conceptions of you: how Sunnyvale police officers viewed their role, within the police organisation, mattered to the trust and acceptance process Research has identified a police hierarchical order that contains individual cultures. Reuss-​Ianni (1983) distinguishes ‘street cops’ from ‘management cops’, whilst Reiner (1978, 1991, 2000) differentiates between ‘plain clothes’ detectives

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and their ‘uniformed’ colleagues (also, Horn, 1997; Hunt, 1984; Hendriks and van Hulst, 2016; Loftus et al., 2016). But the literature on police culture also unfolds a complex picture of differences in how police work is understood and experienced by officers themselves. A ‘cult of masculinity’ (Silvestri, 2017) within policing, one which celebrates (male) strength, stamina and physicality as cultural prescriptions of the ideal police officer, historically ‘legitimised’ a gendered arrangement of police work. Here, women, perceived (wrongly) as devoid of these characteristics, are shifted off to roles judged more suited to femininity (e.g. dealing with rape victims and child abuse [Atkinson, 2016; Westmarland, 2001]). Similarly, within the structures of the police organisation, there exist areas of work traditionally considered by officers as of ‘low’ or ‘high’ status. Police working within specialist squads (e.g. those focused on burglars or robbers) often view their particular ‘jobs’ as ‘quality work’ (McConville et al., 1991: 31) and in turn view other aspects of policing, like shoplifting, community outreach or domestic violence, as ‘rubbish’ and/​or ‘bullshit’ (Loftus, 2009: 95; Heidensohn, 1995; Hoyle, 1998). The value (as perceived by police officers themselves) of the policing activity carried out seems to be important in the construction of police identities, with the highest value ascribed to jobs that involve catching and convicting the most serious offenders. But it also became increasingly obvious, during the research, that the supposed value ascribed to policing roles within the arrangement of IOM police work was also relevant to the processes of access, negotiation and becoming ‘accepted’. Positioning the work of police offender managers We saw that the arrangement of IOM policing situates police offender managers in a role likely to be viewed by officers as of lower value (within police organisational structures) than other roles like, for instance, detectives (Young, 1991). Advising, assisting and encouraging Sunnyvale offenders to engage with support services/​agencies also located the work firmly on the edges of the traditional enforcement-​orientated model of policing and its attendant cultural characteristics. Rehabilitative activity required officers to form and subsequently nurture enduring relationships with Sunnyvale offenders (McNeill and Robinson, 2013; Bottoms, 2001). But such activity runs counter to some of the enduring themes of police culture, namely the desire among rank-​and-​file police officers for adrenaline-​fuelled, action-​focused policing (Caveney et al., 2020; Workman-​Stark, 2022; Reiner, 2010;Young, 1991). The problem of officers perceiving the role as one of lesser value is likely to be amplified by police cynicism and pessimism (Reiner, 2010). Both dimensions of cop culture tend to precipitate doubt among frontline officers about the likelihood of meaningful offender change (Schinkel et al., 2019). Working to rehabilitate offenders is difficult to reconcile with the police officer’s perception of self that is one of ‘crime fighter’ and ‘thief-​taker’ (Channel 4 Dispatches,

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2012) rather than one of ‘advisor’, ‘assistor’ and ‘befriender’ of offenders. Indeed, some police offender managers I encountered early on in the study were reticent about and even embarrassed by the support nature of their role: The police sergeant [supervising offender manager] Jim was discussing an impending trip to London with Mike, a police offender manager. The sergeant was putting the finishing touches to a presentation he was scheduled to give to some metropolitan police officers about the IOM scheme and its approach to managing prolific offenders. Jim complained that he was finding it difficult to ‘fit in’ the slide on Sunnyvale’s role in the ‘rehabilitation’ of prolific offenders. ‘Just take it out’, Mike suggested, whilst laughing. ‘I’d like to’ Jim replied, ‘I don’t think anyone up there will be interested, in any case.Yeah. I just think I’ll take it out’. Offender management is thus neither a typical construction of real police work, nor a comfortable fit within the traditional police cultural frame. Police officers working with these types of specialist units, perceived by some as inconsistent with the core values of the police organisation, may find their standing as ‘real police officers’ challenged, by other colleagues (Garcia, 2005: 77). ‘When are you coming back to the real [policing] world?’, police offender managers were sometimes asked (sardonically) by their DET colleagues. Questioning of this nature led some police offender managers to acknowledge that ‘the job is seen by some [police colleagues] as being a bit, well, fluffy let’s say’. The police offender manager role is thus cast both by ‘outsiders’ looking in and those ‘on the inside’ looking out, as existing beyond the circle of normal members of the group. Becker (1974: 15) describes this position as ‘deviant’. But this sort of ‘othering’ may also have significant practical implications for observers. This is because police officers who, by virtue of their role perceive themselves to be ‘outsiders’ (in the context of institutional norms), may lack the confidence to present their work to outsider researchers (as I was). Throughout the fieldwork it became apparent that many police offender managers viewed some Sunnyvale policing (rehabilitative work with offenders) as beyond that of typical enforcement-​focused police activity. In line with the discussion above, there was also a good measure of cynicism among police offender managers about offender chances of reform.‘Everybody’s going to slip up sometime [and] we’ll be there when they do’, one police offender manager observed bluntly.The result was that many of these officers were reluctant to put support measures in place for IOM offenders (or did so inadequately). These officers were therefore deviant in a double sense. Firstly, as noted above, their official role could be situated as deviant from traditional police culture and practice. Secondly, the way in which they carried out the role deviated from what they were officially required to do. The second form of deviance also indicated the unease of these officers at finding themselves in an unorthodox role to begin with. Police offender managers might, therefore, prove to be reticent research participants, as

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not only do they feel uncomfortable in their role, they would also be reluctant for an observer to document how they depart from it in practice. Even officers who are deviant in only the first sense would be unlikely to want an ‘outsider’ observing what they did in practice, as that practice (within official guidelines) exemplified something about which these officers felt uncomfortable. My aim in this chapter is to be of assistance to neophyte police researchers, and therefore in what follows I reveal some of the practical issues I encountered whilst observing ‘deviant’ police officers.

The practicalities of observing ‘deviant’ police officers Suspicion encountered among police offender managers was evident from the beginning of the study. As noted above, formal permission to ‘access all areas’ within Sunnyvale IOM had been agreed with senior management prior to the research. ‘Go anywhere, see anything; if you need formal confirmation of this then let me know’, a senior police manager explained. The situation on the ground, however, was far from straightforward. In the early days of the study, most time was spent observing police offender managers. As one might expect, these officers asked questions about the aims and objectives of the study, perhaps in an attempt to legitimise the project in their eyes (Lundman and Fox, 1978). Some, however, were highly suspicious of my presence in the unit and probed more deeply. Early on in the project, I was effectively ‘cross-​examined’ by one police offender manager. Several issues were on the officer’s mind beyond the mere aims and objectives of the research: Following a visit to the house of a Sunnyvale offender, Mike suggested ‘we find a café, get out of the sun and have a chat’.We took a seat at the back of the café. Mike began by asking about my relationship with senior officers. ‘How did you get access to [Sunnyvale], then Fred?’ I briefly explained elements of the formal access process. Mike, however, seemed more concerned about my relationship with Sunnyvale senior management. ‘So, would you come across [a senior police gatekeeper] if you weren’t doing this research? I mean, are you in the same social circles?’ ‘No, I’m not and it’s unlikely I would have come across [a senior police gatekeep] had it not been for the research’. ‘So, who’s [the research] for?’, Mike continued. ‘It’s for a PhD’, I explained, ‘although, I’m sure some of the agencies will be interested in the findings’. ‘And what do you want from us?’ he asked. I replied, ‘Just the chance to observe what’s happening here, whether the agencies are integrating and whether the scheme works in practice’. The purpose of the conversation seemed to be to assess whether or not I was a ‘tool of senior management’ (Reiner and Newburn, 2008), a suspicion likely to be amplified by the role of senior management in facilitating access to IOM.

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Of course, there was no way of ascertaining whether I had passed what was essentially a test, but this moment during the fieldwork brought into sharp focus my status as an ‘outsider’ (Reiner and Newburn, 2008) researcher. Whilst I continued to make significant efforts to explain the research and its objectives, many police offender managers remained cautious and, for the most part, reluctant participants in the study. Indeed, for some, there was a general aversion to research more broadly. During a visit by a British ‘centre-​r ight’ think-​tank, the ‘Policy Exchange’, one police offender manager sarcastically suggested that a sign stating ‘Please don’t feed us’ should be erected in the IOM office. It may have been that, like other ‘outsider’ police researchers before me (e.g. Reiner, 1992: 47; Loftus, 2009), I was seen by officers as ‘one of a growing band of at least potentially critical police watchers flourishing in academia and the media’. There was undoubtedly concern amongst some officers about how their opinions and behaviours might be represented to other audiences. For instance, one police offender manager initially refused to be interviewed in case a recording of our conversation ‘ended up on YouTube’, whilst another officer expressed concerns that findings from my study might be sold to a private security firm.Yet my sense was that these officers were particularly resistant to outside scrutiny because they felt uneasy in their role and often departed from it during interactions with offenders, thus leaving themselves open to criticism. It is my belief that such concerns resulted in several police offender managers adopting exclusionary practices during the fieldwork. Exclusionary practices Various formal and informal tactics may be employed by reluctant and/​or anxious research participants to prevent ethnographers from observing and documenting information (see, e.g., the accounts of Diphoorn (2012) and Loftus (2009)). Throughout the research, there were occasions when I was deliberately prevented from witnessing the very police activity I hoped to access and document. Early in the study, I would arrive at the beginning of a shift to find police offender managers preparing to meet with offenders in their homes. Yet, although I often requested to accompany officers on these visits, rarely was I able to. Sometimes officers would claim that I was ‘too late’ (despite my presence in the office and readiness). A further tactic adopted by officers was to delegate gatekeeping responsibilities to one of the IOM partnership agencies, usually the probation service. On these occasions the partnership workers almost always refused permission for me to attend the appointment. In other instances, officers suggested that my presence on offender visits would cause logistical problems or disrupt what it was the officers were aiming to achieve. At times, some offender managers questioned the value of me observing them, suggesting that I would merely find the planned activity ‘boring’. Take, for example, the following fieldnote:

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Arriving at the office at 8am, I asked the sergeant supervising police offender managers which team I could observe today. ‘Barry and Kim are around he replied; ask them what they’ve got on’. I turned to Kim, who, along with Barry, seemed to be heading for the exit. Before I had a chance to speak Kim said: ‘I’m visiting one of my offenders this morning, to debrief them of some information, that’s all; so probably a waste of your time’. Barry concurred, ‘Yeah you’ll just find it boring, I would think’. With that, and without waiting for a reply, Barry and Kim made what appeared to be a hasty exit. (Fieldnote—​Southside) It might be thought that police offender managers would be keen to show a researcher the more interesting aspects of their job (except, of course, for the problem of the dual dimensions of deviance discussed above). What these instances demonstrate, however, is that most of these particular officers seemed eager to avoid being observed precisely when observations could have been most revealing (away from the office).4 We should give pause to any assumption that the diversionary tactics of the majority of offender managers can simply be attributed to the typical concerns the police have about research, discussed above. Other groups of Sunnyvale police officers did not respond so adversely to the project. Whilst I can never be certain whether what I was told and shown was an accurate snapshot of the full range of the routine behaviour of police offender managers. Greater levels of trust and confidence were found among that minority of these officers who had adopted a more welfare-​orientated culture and practice. Informal remarks made by the sergeant (responsible for the supervision of police offender managers) during the fieldwork reinforced the apparently different outlook of these officers. Referring to a small group of police offender managers focused on ‘helping [offenders] find the right agency to recover’, the sergeant suggested that I ‘… might have a better time over at [the Central office]. They’re a bit more hands on … over there’. A different role conception, resulted in a different reaction to the research What I found amongst the police offender managers situated at the ‘Central office’ was a conceptualisation of the police role that was far removed from the dominant cultural (crime fighting) definitions of street-​level police work. These particular officers had drifted away from notions of police work congruent with the traditional enforcement-​orientation of the police institution, towards a rehabilitative approach historically associated with probation work (Mawby and Worrall, 2011, Padfield and Maruna, 2006: 339; Garland, 2001). So as to understand better how entrenched such changes in outlook were among these officers, I asked in interview, how they saw their role. Their

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responses were illuminating: ‘Helping [offenders] find the right agency to recover’. ‘The main side of the role that I enjoy is helping [offenders really’. ‘My role is kind of a police officer bolt on to what probation have always done I’d imagine … to try and offer as best I can the support that probation do to reduce offending’. Gaining access to groups engaged in deviant behaviour (or work) can be fraught with methodological difficulties (Hobbs, 2001; Maguire, 2007), but these ‘liberal’ minded police offender managers were much more receptive to observations than their ‘conservative’ colleagues, as the following fieldnote illustrates: Adrian [police offender manager], introduced himself and gave me a quick overview of his role, including (and in marked contrast to the [offender managers] I had encountered so far) high levels of engagement with Sunnyvale offenders. His focus was building a rapport with offenders, both those in the community and those in custody. In support of this aim,Adrian, along with an IOM prison officer, Nigel, held what he called a weekly ‘surgery’ within the prison walls. ‘This is about “continuity” between the prison and the community. Often, I’m the only link with the community that these offenders have. Most of them don’t get many visits. I act as the reactive arm for the probation service. I conduct visits they request and deliver letters to offenders, providing details of their appointments. The relationship I have with the probation service is very good’. I asked how much time Mike spent out of the office. ‘4 hours a day’. ‘Do you consider yourself as proactive?’ I asked. ‘I like to think so … I like to get out and see people in their own environment … You’ll have to come to the prison, to a surgery; we’re holding one on Thursday. Today, though, me and Nigel have to visit one of ours in the court cells. He was arrested last night. In fact, he was only released from prison two days ago. It would be a good case for you; come along’. Whilst it would be incorrect to infer that Adrian was enthusiastic about my presence at the ‘Central office’, here was a Sunnyvale police officer much more receptive to both my study and presence within Sunnyvale. The immediate invitation to accompany Scott and Nigel to visit the man in the court cells was in stark contrast to the suspicious, avoidant, even obstructive behaviour of some police offender managers I had encountered up until this point. This cooperation was refreshing and not an exceptional instance, as I found it easier to gain access within the ‘Central office’ more generally.The implication of this reception, however, is significant in that it suggests that where police officers are comfortable with their own organisational role, they are more willing to open up themselves to scrutiny. Further supporting evidence for this argument came from time observing officers within Sunnyvale’s uniformed, enforcement branch.

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Observations of Sunnyvale, uniformed DET police Work by Reiner (1978: 12) suggests that uniformed police officers may be resistant to talking to researchers. During his study of police unionism, he found that a substantial number of uniformed officers harboured suspicions about the study and outrightly refused to be interviewed when approached. Given the elevated levels of anxiety my presence in the Sunnyvale unit had thus far generated amongst the majority of police offender managers I had encountered, I expected a similar experience on beginning observations of Sunnyvale’s enforcement branch. I was surprised to find, however, that DET appeared to readily accept my presence within the office. Some were enthusiastic about participating in the study. Below is a partial extract taken from field notes I made following the first shift. As arranged with the team inspector, I arrived outside the Westside police station at 2.00pm. I felt slightly apprehensive. Although I had come across the district focus team inspector earlier in the observations, I had not encountered any police officers from this team. A plain clothes officer met me at the door and took me through to what I can only describe as a ‘situation room’. The inspector was in there, as were several other district focus team officers; all were men. Most of these guys were sat in front of computers or putting on various pieces of body armour getting ready for the shift ahead. The inspector proceeded, quite enthusiastically, to outline what it was the district focus team did for [IOM]: disrupt the criminal activities of priority offenders, those that were hurting the local community the most in terms of criminal activity. ‘We’ve got something on for you today’ he informed me. ‘We’re conducting a surveillance operation around a specific [Sunnyvale] offender. Intel suggests he’s looking really rough and we’re pretty sure he’s at it [i.e., offending]. He’s due to attend a probation appointment; probation will tell us then when he leaves the appointment. Our guys will pick up his trail and you’ll be with two response officers who will make the arrest’. Whilst this was being explained to me some of the other officers came to crowd round the table. It was noticeable that the research seemed to genuinely interest officers in this team. Some officers asked questions about the research. ‘What is it you’re looking at Fred? You trying to find out how these guys’ tick?’ Jokes were also made, ‘What, you’ve turned up on your first day with no cakes?’ The ethnographic records of other observational studies of policing also document enthusiastic cooperation on the part of some of the police officers encountered (e.g. Belur, 2014; Smith and Gray, 1985; Hoyle, 1998), alongside caution and hesitancy among others (e.g. Reiner, 1978; Lundman and Fox, 1978; Westmarland, 2001).Yet these fieldwork accounts reflect on the experiences of

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researchers encountering one type of police officer only (patrol officers) and inevitably they will have encountered different levels of cooperation across these different studies (or will have reached different evaluations of what may have been much the same level of cooperation across the research). What I am recording here is distinct in that I was observing two quite different groups of police officers, albeit all working in the same area of policing: IOM. Whilst I too also able to cultivate relaxed and friendly field relations with some police officers, working cooperation was more easily achieved with officers that were both comfortable with their role and kept within its parameters (or at least that is how they would have seen it). Similar to my experience with the more liberal-​minded, support-​focused police offender managers, the reception to my study and presence within the unit stood in marked contrast to the mixture of suspicion and indifference displayed by the majority of police offender managers. Sunnyvale DET officers needed little encouragement to ‘independently’ display their skill sets and tell their ‘stories’ to an ‘outsider’. Like other police researchers (e.g. Lundman and Fox, 1978; Marks, 2004; Rowe, 2007; Loftus, 2009), I was subjected to tours of local ‘hot-​spots’, provided with detailed narratives on the nature of policing and asked if there was anything I wanted to see or experience whilst in the field. On several occasions officers within the team suggested that I accompany them on operations that they believed would inform the study (or that I would find interesting, at least): As the shift was ending Richard asked when I would be back. I explained that as yet I was unsure that I would be, as I felt I had probably spent enough time in the research field. Richard then suggested that I hang on until the weekend as a particular operation involving ‘IOM working girls’ was coming up; this, he suggested, would make good data for the study. ‘Come for a night out’, he joked, at which point he radioed through to David, who was out on DET. ‘Fred wants to come for a night out on Sat; I’m not here but you are’, at which point the radio was passed to me. David came over and gave me some instructions of where to be and when in relation to the ‘night on the town’, as he put it. No matter how discrete, observers will always to a degree influence the activities of research participants during fieldwork. As Smith and Gray (1985: 302) observe, ‘Very often police officers [try] to think of something to do that will interest the observer’. For frontline police officers, interesting seems to amount to that which is action-​focused, although finding ‘real police work’ of this nature may prove difficult, given that danger, action and excitement are not typical of the realities of day-​today policing (Waddington, 1998; Loftus, 2009). Whether or not ‘action’ was out there (and often it was not), the uniformed response officers I observed were committed to, and self-​assured about, their work in ways not exhibited (visibly at least) by the majority of offender managers

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I encountered. It was this fact, I believe, that greatly enhanced both the levels of trust and acceptance I was afforded and thus this type and quality of data I was able to record during this part of the study. Alternative explanations for varying levels of trust and acceptance The reflexive discussion above shows that how police officers respond to observers in the field may be as much dependent on the officers’ view of their own role within the police organisation as the personal characteristics of observers. However, the sharp theoretical focus on the relevance of police role-​conception to trust and acceptance processes is not to suggest that alternative explanations for the differential experiences, outlined above, should not be considered. Indeed, meaningful reflexivity calls for such an inquiry. It is possible, for example, internal cultural differences between Sunnyvale DET officers and police offender managers resulted in one group displaying more hostility to research than the other. If so, levels of acceptance could be dependent on the subgroup of officers being observed. A further possibility might be that those Sunnyvale police officers that were more comfortable with being observed had become desensitised to researchers due to previous exposure to and experience of police researchers. As noted above, the Sunnyvale IOM unit had been the focus of much research, including television coverage prior to my arrival. Finally, it is conceivable that variations in access were the result of differences in supervisory tones and styles between the managers of police officers who willingly participated in the study and those that were resistant to being observed. Policing research, particularly that which involves observations, can be a disorderly process. The potential for additional field dynamics, like those noted immediately above, is high and (if present) should form part of any reflexive account of policing research. However, even if the importance of other factors needs to be considered, these arguments gain momentum only if a disparity in levels of acceptance between the two groups of participants can be identified. In this instance it was not apparent. Yet the account above reveals that police officers from both subgroups were open to participating in the study. It was a majority of officers (those that perceived their work as ‘deviant’), within the subgroup of police offender managers, who made concerted and determined attempts to prevent observation of most of their work.The police offender managers I encountered in the first Sunnyvale office were generally far less willing to cooperate with the research than the those situated in the ‘Central office’. This was despite both groups having been exposed to a series of researchers, being managed in similar ways, having the same assigned tasks to complete and both groups being aware that senior management was supportive of my study. The difference between the two boils down to the fact that the offender managers in ‘Central’ largely accepted and valued their assigned role, whilst

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those in the first office, largely did not. Role-​conception therefore offers both a plausible explanation for the varying levels of access and trust cultivated within Sunnyvale IOM. It is a useful way of making sense of participant–​researcher field relations that should be adopted used more systematically in the field, by those who wish to closely observe the police at work.

Recording and interpreting the field During the observations I took extensive fieldnotes which were written by hand and typed up after each shift. I attempted to collect field notes in a fairly inconspicuous yet contemporaneous manner during each shift, although for various reasons this was not always possible. For example, if officers made informal comments or I overheard spontaneous talk between colleagues, then often this was not immediately noted down. Instead, I would wait for more covert opportunities to record these events. This meant that notes were taken down in private settings such as toilets and sometimes my car following a shift. My decision to take notes in this discreet way was determined quite early on in the study when a probation officer turned to see me scribbling notes frantically only to ask, ‘What are you writing? I feel like I’m being assessed’. The foundation of these notes rested on flat descriptions of what I encountered within the field: people, places and events, for instance. Layered on top of these descriptive notes, however, were my own reflections on what exactly I was witnessing during the day-​to-​day business of Sunnyvale IOM. I also attempted to link the various ‘events’ and conversations I observed to relevant literatures as I went along. Much of the office ‘banter’ I witnessed might, for example, be situated within Waddington’s ideas about police ‘canteen culture’ (see Chapter 3).This type of theoretical reflection therefore enabled me to begin formulating my own ideas about what I was seeing within the IOM organisational field. A good example would be where I was able to link the discretionary decision-​making of police offender managers to structural accounts of police working rules (McConville et al., 1991). From this starting point, I was able to theorise that, even within the IOM setting, working rules were playing an active part in everyday police–​offender interactions. Keeping an accurate and detailed field diary was therefore of great importance (Parker, 1974), as the notes documented, amongst other things, the behaviour of officers and offenders as and when it occurred. However, like Hobbs (1988), my general aim was to let participants talk and later record those remarks, attitudes and behaviours which appeared to be important or representative of themes relevant to my research. During observations of police work, researchers can concentrate on gathering two primary types of data, usefully distinguished by Norris (1993: 126). Firstly, what Norris describes as ‘naturally occurring inter-​officer talk’. This type of ongoing background noise was present throughout the study. It typically included office gossip, informal conversations between me and police offender managers and/​or

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other Sunnyvale workers. The second type of data Norris identifies is ‘detailed descriptions of how officers handled live incidents’. Within the context of IOM, these types of incidents ranged from fairly routine police offender manager interactions during a probation appointment, right through to an incident where a police offender manager was involved in a hunt for a suspect or an arrest situation. Data of both types were recorded systematically from the outset of the fieldwork through to its conclusion. People often attempt to make sense of their own social worlds and will likely provide a greater sense of order and control when interviewed than may be evident when they are in action. None of us, I suggest, has perfect insight into our own behaviour or manifested attitudes. Consequently, direct comparisons were made between how officers behaved during interactions with offenders and other Sunnyvale workers and the informal and formal justifications they provided for their actions. In this way, discrepancies between what officers said (e.g., in response to formal interview questions) and what they actually did, on the street or back at the offices, could be uncovered. Attempting to understand better the way police offender managers understand their social world presents methodological difficulties in relation to timing of interviews. For example, interviewing officers during the early stages of the study may have provided a better insight into what was happening in the field, the likely outcome being richer observational notes. Hoyle (1998), for example, found that completing a substantial number of interviews before going out on patrol with officers meant that she became familiar with organisational practices but, perhaps more importantly, the legal and informal (‘working’) rules in which she was interested. But this approach is also problematic. Whilst Hoyle became familiar with accounts of police practices and rules, observation would also be needed to determine if the reality matched the account of the officers. Moreover, interviewing at an early stage might prevent officers from behaving differently in future from their self-​portrayals during interview. My own interviews with police offender managers were largely carried out following a period of direct observation. Officers were encouraged to reflect on what had taken place during the period of observations,5 but such an approach also made it possible to address any unresolved questions arising from the observation period. The intention was to gain a more in-​depth understanding of the attitudes, beliefs and perceptions of police offender managers and their relationship with any overarching cultural influences. However, one of the great challenges of qualitative research is a tendency of researchers to impose their own values and theoretical paradigms on the data. In other words, we should reflect on the extent to which the themes documented in this book were rooted in objectivity or shaped by our own values and preconceived conceptions and knowledge of police culture or procedural justice. This is an inevitable aspect of ethnography and I offer no simple solutions to this enduring problem (Loftus, 2009; Bottoms, 2001). But the effect may be that

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the argument presented becomes juggernaut in fashion, taking all before it as advancing a given paradigm. In observing and documenting the talk and action of Sunnyvale police officers, as well as the reactions of Sunnyvale offenders to their treatment at the hands of these officers, I was certainly influenced by the core literatures on both police culture and procedural justice. Both concepts provided useful interactionist starting (and departure) points when it came to interpreting what I found in the field. However, against the backdrop of the introduction of what was at the time a new philosophy of prolific offender management, I was primarily concerned to understand the implications of IOM for police culture, practice and the rehabilitation of offenders.

Notes 1 This has been described as ‘the research bargain’, see for example, Becker, 1970; Walters, 2003, and Loftus, 2010. 2 The Criminal Justice Board is the name given to the local area steering committee, responsible for managing and improving the criminal justice system locally. The board consisted of various partners, including the Crown Prosecution Service, the Probation Service, Her Majesty’s Prison Service, the Youth Offending Team and Her Majesty’s Courts Service. 3 It probably did not help matters that at one stage I was approached by a very senior police officer and asked, ‘how’s everything going?’ whilst we both happened to be having lunch in the same canteen. 4 Although see Rowe and Rowe (2021) on recognising that important data can be generated during long periods of relative inactivity that characterise routine operational policing. 5 Police offender managers were also asked to describe incidents that had happened outside of formal observations. Some writers, McConville et al. (1991) for example, have questioned the reliability of this form of data. The authors argue there is much evidence to suggest that ‘cases’ are open to ‘construction’ by police officers and therefore what happens in any given situation is ‘the subject of interpretation, addition, subtraction, selection and reformulation’ (1991: 12). Nonetheless, while such data is open to criticism if treated as an accurate description of the events in question, they are much less open to criticism if treated as revealing an implicit structure of justification or assumptions about how the world works.

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Index

acquisitive crime 7, 9, 10, 15, 16, 144 Active Risk Management System (ARMS) 9 actuarial justice 3, 16–​17; and the surround 48–​9, 142–​3, 144 Ahmad, S. 39 Alder, Christopher 195 Annison, H. 12 Anti-​Social Behaviour Orders (ASBO) 18, 144 Appleton, C. 66, 83, 88 Ariel, B. 12–​13 arrests 148, 152, 159, 160, 181; decision frames 46, 51; impact of IOM 13; working rules 113–​15, 151, 180 Ashworth, A. 3 Banton, Michael 104, 124 bargaining 51, 148, 166 Beck, U. 188 Becker, H. 16 Blair, Tony 2 Bottoms, A, 36–​7, 38, 39–​40, 41, 142, 172 Bourdieu, P. 55 Bradford, B. 40 Breaking the Cycle Green Paper (2010) 7 Briah, R.K. 72 Bristol IOM scheme 12–​13 Brown, S. 13–​14 Brunson, R.K. 154 Buckland, Robert 2 burglary 9, 10, 16, 71, 93, 117, 130, 142–​3, 144, 145, 155, 168–​9, 202 Burnett, R. 66, 83, 88 Cain, M. 128 cannabis possession 58 ‘canteen talk’ 54–​5, 56, 111–​12, 117, 119, 120, 125, 135, 181–​2, 211

‘carrot and stick’ approach 8, 17, 18, 30, 70–​1, 106, 133, 155, 166, 167, 188 Carter Review (2003) 4 catch and convict policing practices 19, 67, 76, 78, 81–​2, 134, 180, 183 Chan, Janet 55 Choongh, S. 53, 57 citizens, relationship with police 32, 33–​4, 35–​8, 42 Clarke, Kenneth 2 Cockcroft, T. 107 Community Safety Partnerships (CSP) 5, 9, 65 community sentences 9, 16, 31 compliance-​based law enforcement 48 conservatism 19, 54, 104, 131–​4, 135, 179 cop culture 19, 50, 52–​7, 59, 67, 81, 82, 96–​7, 98, 104–​6, 112, 121, 134–​5, 145, 179, 188–​9, 198, 202 Cope, N. 130 courts 17, 91, 124–​5, 143 Cram, F. 104 Crawford, A. 66 Crime and Disorder Act 1998 (CDA) 4–​5, 6, 48, 49, 64, 65, 130, 143, 182 Crime and Disorder Partnerships 5 crime hotspots 48, 146, 155, 209 crime prevention, focus on 48–​9 criminal justice: decision-​making 47; localised strategies 64–​5; policies 48–​9 Criminal Justice Act 2003 4 Criminal Justice and Court Services Act 2000 4 Criminal Justice Intervention Teams 15, 21, 65, 68, 78, 90, 146, 188 Criminal Justice Joint Inspection (2014) 6, 9, 13, 14, 155

Index 219 Criminal Justice Joint Thematic Inspection (2020) 9–​10, 14 cultural change 77–​9, 81–​2 cultural tensions 6, 74–​7, 178–​9, 181 curfews 113, 144, 147, 148 cynicism: of offenders 39, 163–​4, 185; of police 19, 39, 54, 75, 92, 96, 104, 121, 122–​3, 124–​5, 135, 178, 179, 198, 202–​3; of prison staff 67, 96 Dawson, P. 12 decision field 47, 49–​50, 57–​8, 66, 114 decision frames 47, 50–​3, 57–​8, 105, 114, 144, 153, 180 decision-​making 46–​54, 57–​8, 59, 171–​2 desistance 8, 18, 19, 89; effectiveness of IOM 13, 189; importance of legitimacy 32–​3, 36, 58–​9; police scepticism about 74–​5; relationship with probation 164; sense of autonomy 187 detect and sentence response 17, 143 deterrence 30, 34, 131, 144 Diamond Initiative 12, 13 Diphoorn, T. 205 discretion 46–​7, 51, 158 distributive justice 37–​8, 39, 184 District Enforcement Team (DET) police 17, 18, 31; actions in response to intelligence 147–​51; attitude to research 208–​10; bargaining, informal 51, 166; conservatism 131–​2; decision frames 46, 50, 149–​51, 180; hostile approach 41, 160, 162, 165, 170; information-​sharing 72, 97; isolation and solidarity 125–​7; relationship with drugs workers 91; relationship with probation service 87, 95; sense of mission 106–​10, 134, 180; suspicion and cynicism 121–​4; targeting of crime hotspots 155, 209; use of language 117, 120–​1, 159, 201 Dixon, D. 53 domestic violence 9, 11, 34, 54–​5, 107, 114–​15, 122–​3, 202 drug courts 65 drug dealing 70, 144 Drug Intervention Programmes (DIP) 5, 6, 11; see also Criminal Justice Intervention Teams Drug Rehabilitation Requirements 9, 31 drug treatments 13, 15, 18, 69 drug users 18, 70, 90, 131, 166, 167

drug workers 67; attitudes to offenders 76–​7, 78–​9, 90–​2; relationship with other agencies 68, 69, 72–​4, 90–​2, 178, 179, 182, 188 ‘dull compulsion’ 35, 36, 162, 165 effectiveness 34, 37, 38, 39, 184 employment, link to desistance 13, 18 Ericson, R.V. 144, 148, 188 ethnicity: and fieldwork 121, 200, 201; and police recruitment 55, 120; and unequal treatment 118–​21, 200–​1 ethnography: contribution to police research 194–​6; cooperation of DET officers: 208–​10; cooperation of support-​ focused officers: 206–​7, 209, 210–​11; effects of police hierarchy 201–​4; field relations 198–​201; negotiating access 197–​8; recording and interpretation 211–​13; reluctance to participate 203–​6, 210–​11 fairness 33–​4, 35, 38, 39–​41, 42, 151, 154, 158, 165–​9, 170–​1, 172, 183–​5, 186, 189, 190 Feeley, M. 3, 16, 142 fixed priority offenders 10 flex offenders 10 Floyd, George 195 Foster, J. 119 free offenders 10–​11 Garland, D. 2–​3 Gau, J. 154 Ghana 35 Gibbons, J. 118 Goold, B. 144 Gough, D. 4, 69 Gray J. 54, 108, 118, 119, 209 Haggerty, K.D. 144, 148, 188 Hallam Centre for Community Justice 11 Hawkins, Keith 46–​7, 49, 50, 51, 52, 58, 59, 105, 114, 142, 143 Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) 9–​10 Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) 9–​10 Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons (HMIP) 9–​10 Hobbs, D. 211 Home Office 47

220 Index homophobia 19, 104 Housden, P. 12 Howard, Michael 2 Hoyle, C. 51, 54–​5, 212 hybrid civil–​criminal processes 48, 144, 146 Independent Police Complaints Commission 195, 197 information: analysis 130; sharing 11, 15, 16, 17–​18, 65, 67, 72–​3, 134, 145–​7, 179, 181 insecurity, sense of 143, 144, 188 instinct 51, 157 integrated offender management (IOM): ‘carrot and stick’ approach 8, 17, 18, 30, 70–​1, 106, 133, 155, 166, 167, 188; ‘common sense’ approach 5–​6, 65–​6; effectiveness 12–​13, 14, 187; framework and guiding principles 7–​9, 50, 178; history 4–​5; multi-​agency approach 4, 64–​6; national refresh 8, 9–​11; perspectives of participants 13–​14, 20, 36, 38–​9, 59; problem of ‘dull compulsion’ 35, 36, 162, 165; research 5–​6, 11–​14; and risk-​management criminal justice 49, 188; service delivery 11–​12; targeting and selecting participants 9 intelligence gathering 3–​4, 15–​16, 49; bargaining 51; competitiveness 130–​1; custody process 53; focus on 69–​71, 74, 79–​80, 81, 96–​7, 130–​1, 134, 144, 161–​2, 180, 181, 182, 183; intrusive tactics 41; multi-​agency working 69–​74; reports 41, 70, 108, 147 IOM Cymru 9 Jones, M. 66 knowledge gathering see intelligence gathering lawfulness 37, 39, 184 Lawrence, Stephen 120 license conditions, enforcement of 92–​4 Liebling, A. 40, 67 Lister, S. 149–​50, 170 Local Criminal Justice Boards (LCJB) 9, 197–​8 Loftus, B. 53, 56, 113, 120, 122, 205 Lutze, F. 72, 75, 98 Macpherson Report (1999) 120 magistrates 87, 125

Maguire, M. 91 managerialism 48, 65, 69, 129–​30, 143 Manning, P.K. 121, 194 masculinity, cult of 116, 202 Mawby, R.C. 5, 68–​9, 88 McConville, M. 53, 55, 113, 118, 119, 121 McIntosh, J. 69, 89–​90 McNeill, F. 32–​3 mental health treatments 13, 112 Milwaukee Domestic Violence Experiment 34 Ministry of Justice 47 moral panics 69, 144 Morgan, G. 104 Morgan Report (1991) 4 multi-​agency public protection arrangements 65 Multi-​Agency Public Protection Arrangements (MAPPA) 5, 6, 67 multi-​agency working 4, 64–​6; blurring of professional roles 5–​6, 12, 87–​8, 97–​8, 166–​7, 188; cultural change 82–​90, 94, 96; cultural differences between agencies 66–​9, 90–​1, 95–​8, 178–​9, 182; intelligence gathering 69–​74 Murphy, D. 72, 75, 98 Nash, M. 5, 12, 67, 80, 82, 83, 87, 94, 96, 167, 188 National Intelligence Model 143, 146–​7 National Offender Management Service (NOMS) 4, 6–​7, 47 National Reducing Re-​Offending plans 6–​7 neighbourhood crime 10–​11 new penology 3, 142 NOMS Offender Management Model (2006) 6–​7 non-​statutory offenders 16, 17, 18, 31–​2, 188 Norris, C. 211–​12 obligation to obey 20, 32, 35–​6, 160 Offender Assessment System (OASys) 9, 16 Offender Group Reconviction Scale (OGRS) 9, 16 offender managers see police offender managers offenders: framed as suspicious 51, 52, 151; frequency of encounters with police 152–​8; IOM categories 10–​11; non-​statutory 16, 17, 18, 31–​2, 188;

Index 221 perceptions of encounters with police 151–​2, 158–​63, 164–​72, 183–​6; perspectives on IOM schemes 13–​14, 20, 36, 38–​9, 59, 183–​6; prolific 6, 12–​13, 15, 16, 21, 65, 75, 76–​7, 82, 134, 144, 156, 170, 177, 178, 183, 184, 186, 187, 188; reasons for compliance 36, 160–​2, 165, 186, 190; relations with probation workers 163–​4, 165; statutory 16, 17, 18, 31, 188 offending history 39, 153–​4, 158, 168–​9, 170, 171–​2, 180 openness 158, 160 parole board 16 Paternoster, R. 34 pathway support 8, 12–​13, 15, 94; role of police offender managers 18, 75, 78, 81, 106, 133, 134, 181, 183 performance indicators 130, 143 police: attitude of suspicion 19, 54, 68, 96, 104, 121–​4, 125, 135, 179, 195, 198; attitudes to offenders 57, 67, 74–​6, 77–​82, 83–​4, 91, 92–​4, 96–​7; ‘canteen talk’ 54–​5, 56, 111–​12, 117, 119, 120, 125, 135, 181–​2, 211; catch and convict practices 19, 67, 76, 78, 81–​2, 134, 180, 183; changes in UK policy 30–​1; conservatism 19, 54, 104, 131–​4, 135, 179; cop culture 19, 50, 52–​7, 59, 67, 81, 82, 96–​7, 98, 104–​6, 112, 121, 134–​5, 145, 179, 188–​9, 198, 202; cynicism and pessimism 19, 39, 54, 75, 92, 96, 104, 121, 122–​3, 124–​5, 135, 178, 179, 198, 202–​3; decision-​making process 46–​54, 57–​8, 59, 105, 144–​5, 158, 171; desire for action 19, 106–​16, 135; deviance 128, 195, 198, 203–​5, 206, 207, 210; ethnic minority officers 55, 120; female officers 55, 116–​17, 118; formal rules 20, 32, 38, 41, 46, 53, 151, 157, 165, 169, 172, 184, 185; hierarchy 201–​2; inconsistent application of rules 41, 151; informal rules 19, 50–​2, 54, 55, 104, 105, 145, 151, 165, 169, 180, 183, 211, 212; isolation and solidarity 19, 54, 57, 104, 111, 125–​131, 135, 179, 198; manipulation of rules 53, 58, 105; perceptions of fairness 33–​4, 38, 40–​41, 42, 151, 154, 158, 165–​9, 170–​1, 172, 183–​5, 186, 189, 190; perceptions of legitimacy 20, 31, 32–​41, 42, 58–​9, 135, 141–​2, 151–​2, 154, 157,

158–​60, 164–​5, 168–​72, 183–​6, 187, 189, 190; ‘policeman’s nose’ 157; power dynamics 35, 36–​8, 40, 160–​2, 171, 172; relationship with drug workers 68, 69, 72–​4, 90–​2, 178, 179, 188; relationship with prison service 67, 69, 70, 71; relationship with probation service 66, 67–​8, 71–​2, 73, 74, 82–​8, 94–​6, 97, 178, 179, 182, 188; violence 19, 159, 160, 162, 164–​5, 170; see also District Enforcement Team (DET) police; police offender managers Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (PACE) 46, 53 police custody 53, 66, 68, 91, 162, 166 police offender managers 17, 18, 19, 31–​2, 40; attitudes to offenders 57, 59, 74–​5, 76, 78–​82, 91, 92–​4, 96–​7, 145, 180–​1; attitude to research 204–​7, 209, 210–​11; competitiveness 129–​30; concept of action 108–​10, 135, 180; conservatism 132–​4; decision frames 50, 52, 58, 183; deviance from role 128, 203–​5, 206, 210–​11; divisions over workload 128, 135; ‘easing behaviours’ 128, 129; focus on intelligence gathering 69–​71, 74, 79–​80, 81, 96–​7, 130–​1, 134, 144, 161–​2, 180, 181, 182, 183; information analysis 130; isolation and solidarity 57, 111, 127–​131, 135, 179–​80; offenders’ attitudes to 162–​3, 164–​5, 167–​8; perceived value of role 202–​4; power dynamics 160–​2; resistance to cultural changes 50, 79, 82, 96–​7, 98, 110–​16, 179, 188–​9, 203–​4, 205; suspicion and cynicism 123, 124–​5, 135, 179, 180, 203; welfare-​oriented approach, adoption of 77–​9, 81–​2, 96–​7, 133, 134, 166–​8, 180–​1, 206–​7 police–​probation partnerships 65, 154 Pósch, K. 160 power dynamics 35, 36–​8, 40, 160–​2, 171, 172 ‘prisi-​prolibation officer,’ concept of 5 prison and probation services 4, 15, 65, 68, 97–​8, 185–​6 prison service: attitudes to drug users 68, 89–​90; attitudes to offenders 88–​90, 96; culture change 88–​90; intelligence gathering 70, 71; monitoring and surveillance 15; perceptions of fairness 39–​40; relationship with police 67,

222 Index 69, 70, 71; relationship with probation service 68–​9 probation service: attitudes to offenders 76, 77, 78–​9, 83–​4; cultural change 82, 83, 84; monitoring and surveillance 15, 16; offenders’ attitudes to 163–​4, 165; relationship with police 5–​6, 12, 66, 67–​8, 71–​2, 73, 74, 82–​8, 94–​6, 97, 178, 179, 182, 188; relationship with prison service 68–​9; welfare-​orientated approach 66–​7, 77–​9, 166–​7 procedural fairness 33, 34, 35, 41, 141, 158, 166, 171, 172, 185, 189, 190 procedural justice 20, 33–​4, 35, 37, 39, 40, 42; in the context of IOM 141–​2, 151, 158, 159–​60, 171, 172, 177, 184, 186, 189, 190 Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 (POCA) 48 ‘prolibation officer,’ concept of 5, 87, 167, 188 Prolific and other Priority Offender (PPO) schemes 5, 6–​7, 11 Public Order Act 1986 53, 126, 160 quality of decision-​making 34, 41, 171–​2 quality of treatment 33, 142, 171, 172, 185, 189 racism 19, 54–​5, 68, 104, 118–​21, 200–​1 reasonable suspicion 37, 50–​1, 126 recall process 93–​6 recidivism 6, 13, 17, 32–​3, 50, 65, 77, 189 Red Amber Green (RAG) system 17–​18, 41, 69, 144, 155, 158 rehabilitative interventions 18, 66–​7; police cynicism 67, 74–​6, 77, 135; and surveillance 81, 96–​7, 187–​8, 189 Reiner, R. 55, 57, 106, 123, 124, 125, 131, 208 respect 117, 119, 135, 151, 181, 186, 189, 190; importance to legitimacy 20, 32, 33, 39, 40, 41, 158, 159–​60, 164–​5, 170, 171, 184, 185 Reuss-​Ianni, E. 127, 196, 201 risk-​based prediction 3–​4, 9 risk-​management 3–​4, 9; and multi-​agency approach 69, 83; Red Amber Green (RAG) system 17–​18, 41; and the surround 48–​9 robbery 9, 10, 16, 73, 143, 144, 202 Rose, G. 39–​40 Rowe, M. 199

rules, police use of: formal 20, 32, 38, 41, 46, 53, 151, 157, 165, 169, 172, 184, 185; inconsistent application 41, 151; informal 19, 50–​2, 54, 55, 104, 105, 145, 151, 165, 169, 180, 183, 211, 212; manipulation 53, 58, 105 Sackmann, S.A. 55 Sanders, A. 48 Saville, E. 69, 89–​90 Senior, P. 11–​12, 13 sexism 19, 68, 104, 116–​18 Sex Offenders Act 1997 4 Sexual Offences Prevention Orders 144 sex workers 117 Shepherd, D. 118 shoplifting 10, 202 Simon, J. 3, 16, 142 Skinns, L. 53, 57, 90, 91, 130 Skolnick, Jerome 57, 104, 188 Sleath, E. 13–​14 Smith, D.J. 54, 108, 118, 119, 209 social discipline 53, 81, 105, 149, 151, 182 social media 145, 205 Sparks, R. 143, 144 Stanko, B. 12 statutory offenders 16, 17, 18, 31, 188 stop and account 51, 148–​50, 151, 157–​8, 180 stop and search 50–​1, 52–​3, 148, 150–​1, 158; ethnic minorities 118 Sunnyvale IOM unit: categories of offenders 16–​17; decision-​making 46–​7, 49, 50, 51, 52; establishment and aims 15–​16, 49–​50, 65–​6, 188; meetings 90, 129, 146–​7, 148; operationalising policing 17–​18, 31–​2, 41; use of RAG framework 41, 69, 144, 155, 158 Sunshine, J. 34 surround, the 47, 48–​9, 57–​8, 66, 142, 143 surveillance 3–​4, 6, 15, 18, 19, 30, 48, 49, 71, 142–​4, 187–​8; technologies 65, 72, 143, 144–​5 Tangen, J. 72 Tankebe, J. 35–​7, 38, 39, 41, 142, 162, 172 Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures 144 Thames Valley IOM 12 Transforming Rehabilitation policy (2013) 4 trust 6, 32, 39, 41, 114, 160, 162, 172; motive-​based 158, 168, 171, 185, 190;

Index 223 between researcher and participant 195, 196, 198–​9, 201, 206, 210–​11 Tyler, Tom 33–​4, 152, 166, 171–​2 Us/​Them divide 19, 54, 57, 67, 104, 123–​4, 125, 180 Van Maanen, J. 196 Vanstone, M. 66 Violence Predictor scores 9 Waddington, P.A.J. 54, 55, 107, 117, 119, 122, 127, 135, 211 Walker, L. 67, 80, 82, 94, 96 Walters, R. 66 welfare-​oriented approach 77–​9, 81–​2, 89–​90, 91, 96–​7, 133, 134, 166–​8, 180–​1, 206–​7

Williams, A. 12–​13 Williams, Bernard 37 Winsor, Thomas 48 women 116–​18; police officers 55, 116–​17, 118 Wong, K. 11 working assumptions 51, 75, 105, 113, 114, 144, 153–​4 workload: of offenders 19, 145; of police 14, 128, 135 Worrall, A. 5, 68–​9, 88 Young, M. 116, 123, 196 Young, R. 109 young adult offenders 10 Youth Offending Teams (YOT) 5, 6, 65 Zedner, L. 3, 4