Police Research

Epistemic Authority (EA) refers to the recognition of the credibility of expertise that someone possesses in a particular subject area. It is important in the police as police officers have to make informed decisions every day which can affect the lives of citizens and is important in fostering trust within and without the service.
Self-Legitimacy (SL) within the police is the sense that that officers’ powers and the way they exercise said powers are right and proper. This is essential for officers as it can positively affect the way in which officers conduct themselves and develop trust and confidence within the community.
This thesis is derived from a mixed methods study of frontline emergency response officers in a county police force in England. Initially this thesis examines the history of the concepts of EA and SL through the lens of the police professionalisation agenda (making particular reference to the Police Education Qualifications Framework). Following this is the detail of the empirical study itself which measured the levels of personal Epistemic Authority and Self-Legitimacy of those officers and if there is a possibility of a relationship between the two through a combination of a survey of frontline police officers in a mid-sized county police force in England, and subsequent semi-structured interviews. Finally, there is a discussion of future developments that came about during the study and makes further recommendations to the police service and scope for further research.
In summary the study found that levels of EA and SL are high, certainly averaging above median and modal measures, and that there is a moderate correlation between the two, but a causal relationship cannot be established at this time. That the development of professional knowledge through education and training is important, but SL can be affected by lack of support especially from the public.

Cet article est consacré aux enjeux analytiques et méthodologiques des recherches portant sur les questions policières, plus précisément sur les polices de sécurité publique. Pour entrer dans un monde traditionnellement rétif au regard extérieur et éviter de se trouver devant un discours convenu, il défend la pertinence de la démarche ethnographique et la combinaison, variable en fonction des objets de recherche, des observations et des entretiens. En s’appuyant sur l’expérience de deux projets de recherches antérieurs, l’article revient sur les difficultés posées par l’accès au terrain, de l’obtention de l’autorisation à la conduite de l’enquête. Pour répondre à ces obstacles, il discute trois dimensions centrales d’un travail de recherche : l’affinement des questions de recherches (ou le processus inductif de redéfinition des questions tout au long de l’enquête), l’utilisation combinée des entretiens et observations, et les liens entre niveaux micro, meso et macro.

Vorbeugung von Radikalisierung innerhalb der Sicherheitsbehörden ist zunehmend Gegenstand der internationalen Forschung. Wie die Polizeiorganisationen die Problematik selber einordnen und handhaben ist jedoch weiterhin schlecht erschlossen. Basierend auf einer qualitativen Befragung von Leitungspersonen aus dem Schweizer Polizeiwesen gibt der Beitrag empirische Einblicke in dieses Praxiswissen. Er ergänzt den Forschungsstand mit der institutionellen Handhabung von Radikalisierungsphänomenen im Polizeibereich und formuliert daraus weiterführende Forschungsfragen.

The detection, handling and prevention of radicalisation within security services is increasingly the subject of international research. However, how police organisations themselves classify and handle the issue remains poorly understood. Based on a qualitative survey of executives from the Swiss police forces, this article provides empirical insights into this practical knowledge. It supplements the current state of research with the institutional handling of radicalisation phenomena in the police sector and formulates further research questions based on this.

La détection, la gestion et la prévention de la radicalisation au sein des services de sécurité font de plus en plus l’objet de recherches internationales. Cependant, la manière dont les organisations policières classent et traitent elles-mêmes cette problématique reste mal appréhendée. Basé sur une enquête qualitative menée auprès de cadres supérieurs des forces de police suisses, cet article fournit des aperçus empiriques de ces connaissances pratiques. Il complète l’état actuel de la recherche par l’approche institutionnelle des phénomènes de radicalisation dans le domaine policier et en tire des questions de recherche supplémentaires.

The police sector is primarily a cantonal policy area. Also because of this, political debates surrounding policing in Switzerland are still largely under-researched. A recent snapshot analysis sheds light on how members of the cantonal parliaments engage with policing matters. The findings reveal varying degrees of parliamentary activity and a wide thematic range in their dealings with police issues — coupled with a notable reluctance to employ the most powerful parliamentary tools.

Le domaine policier relève en grande partie de la politique cantonale. C’est aussi pour cette raison que les débats politiques autour des questions policières sont toujours peu explorés. Une nouvelle analyse empirique met en lumière la manière dont les parlementaires cantonaux abordent ce domaine. Les résultats révèlent une variabilité tant quantitative que thématique dans le traitement de ces questions – ainsi qu’une réticence marquée à recourir aux instruments parlementaires les plus puissants.

Radikalisierung in Sicherheitsbehörden wie der Polizei birgt grosses Schadenspotential, sowohl nach innen, was die Organisation und die Angestellten anbelangt, wie auch nach aussen, die Gesellschaft betreffend. Einer breiten Öffentlichkeit wurde das Thema zugänglich, als 2018 in Deutschland Chatgruppen mit rechtsextremistischem Hinter-grund in der Polizei aufgedeckt wurden. In der Folge wurden Studien und Forschungsprojekte in Auftrag gegeben. Für die Schweiz ist bis anhin wenig bekannt über das Ausmass von Radikalisierung in Sicherheitsbehörden. Mit dem angewandten Forschungsprojekt „Einordnung, Erkennung und Vorbeugung von Radikalisierung innerhalb des Schweizer Polizeiwesens“ wurde zur Schliessung dieser Lücke beige-tragen. Erkenntnisse wurden durch eine Literaturstudie, Interviews mit Expertinnen und Experten und mit Kommandantinnen und Kommandanten, sowie einer Medienanalyse erschlossen. Dieser Beitrag präsentiert die Ergebnisse der Medienanalyse, in welcher für den Zeitraum 2010-2024 nach Berichterstattungen rund um das Thema Radikalisierung in der Polizei gesucht wurde.

Der Polizeibereich ist ein kantonales Politikfeld. Gerade auch deshalb sind politische Debatten rund um das Polizeiwesen in der Schweiz noch immer wenig erforscht. Eine neue Snapshot-Analyse zeigt, wie sich die kantonalen Parlamentarierinnen und Parlamentarier mit dem Polizeiwesen befassen. Die Resultate offenbaren eine unterschiedlich rege und thematisch breite Auseinandersetzung mit der Polizei – und eine beachtliche Zurückhaltung bei der Verwendung der griffigsten parlamentarischen Instrumente.

This article highlights a number of issues related to the witnessing of 'illegal' police violence by researchers. Empirical evidence is drawn from fieldwork conducted for a larger study of police culture, which is the first examination of gender relations in the British police. This extensive ethnographic study is used to highlight the way fieldwork can lead to a number of ethically ambiguous situations. Whether to 'blow the whistle', to express disapproval, report to senior officers or some other authority on viewing violence or ' excessive force' is analysed. A number of scenarios are described which are used to reflect upon the personal ethical stance that often has to be used to resolve such issues. It might be asked whether there is any point in spending long hours conducting a police ethnography for any reason other than to blow the whistle on their indiscretions. As this type of research may involve encounters with violence, however, it raises certain ethical, practical and theoretical problems. In this article the dilemmas faced by field workers when they witness deviance in the form of violent acts are discussed. Indeed, although being present when something 'illegal' occurs is a fairly universal problem for participant observation studies, at the beginning of a project ethnographers rarely have an instruction manual which goes further than the general methodological issues such as those raised by Ferrell and Hamm (1998), King and Wincup (2000) or . In texts such as these, numerous aspects of observational research are described, the ethical ambiguities of fieldwork are raised, but few practical resolutions are suggested. In this article two categories of dilemma facing ethnographers who may encounter violent acts will be examined. First, the difficulty of actually identifying the phenomenon, so that during observations in the field, violence can be differentiated from legitimate force. In 'real life' research situations this is more problematic than it might seem, as Gilligan argues (2000: 91), 'there is a consensus that we lack a theory of violence adequate to enable us to explain, predict and prevent violent behaviour.' A second difficulty discussed in this article is what the fieldworker might do when violence is identified as having happened. In effect, how difficult decisions can be made despite the 'physical and bodily, as well as intellectual and methodological' immersion in the research site (Coffey 1999: 70). These two points will be discussed here within a framework which acknowledges the effects of police occupational culture, the nature of group solidarity it fosters and the 'hazards faced by whistleblowers' such as the 'cold shoulder treatment' (Chan 1996: 121).

Depuis 2022, le service Sciences policières du canton de Bâle-Ville pratique un type de recherche translationnelle mettant directement en lien des sujets issus de la pratique et de la riche expérience de terrain des policiers avec
les avancées de la recherche. Convoquant l’expertise des sciences politiques, de la criminologie, de la sociologie, de l’ethnologie et de la
pratique policière, le service travaille en étroite collaboration avec les praticiennes et praticiens du corps de police et avec l’administration, dans le cadre de projets.

As an initial point of comparison, Northern Ireland possesses almost identical stop and search powers and Codes of Practice to those of England and Wales in terms of the Police and Crime Evidence (Northern Ireland) Order 1989 (PACE) and the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 (MDA) (c.f. Dickson, 2013). In turn, the volume, proportionality and arrest rates related to stop and search are therefore legitimate points of analysis (Scotland is of course governed by yet another legal framework, rendering such comparisons slightly more difficult). However, while in England and Wales almost all (currently over 99%) stops/searches are conducted under 'normal', PACE-type powers, in Northern Ireland only 70% of stops are carried out under such everyday powers (Hargreaves et al., 2017; PSNI, 2017b). The remaining 30% are conducted under the Terrorism Act 2000 and the Northern Ireland-only Justice and Security (Northern Ireland) Act 2007 (JSA). While the use of terrorist-related powers comprises a stark contrast with England and Wales (Hargreaves et al., 2017), it is not the intention to meld the analysis of terrorist and 'normal' (PACE-type) stop and search powers into a single and potentially muddled profile. Rather, this policy brief focuses deliberately upon 'ordinary' stop and search powers used by PSNI precisely because it is those powers which have (arguably) failed to come under the purview of the police (or public) oversight in the country. In stark contrast to the voluminous research dedicated to counter-terrorist powers utilised during the conflict and post-conflict periods of the jurisdiction (c.f. Hillyard, 1988; 1994; McGovern and Tobin, 2010; McVeigh, 1994; Seymour, 2017), it is precisely the absence of policy or academic attention directed at PACE-type stop and search which merits further investigation. This relative invisibility has, in a way both like and unlike the situation in Scotland before the groundbreaking research of Murray (2014b), persisted in the face of evidence of a recurrent problem with the use of stop and search in Northern Ireland. Not once has the power been referenced in the past decade of policing plans set forth by the Northern Ireland Policing Board (NIPB). But over the same period (2004/5-2015/16) use of stop and search in Northern Ireland increased by 74%, and it is now used here at a significantly higher rate than in England and Wales or Scotland (Bradford, 2017; Hargreaves, Husband and Linehan, 2017; PSNI, 2017b; Murray and Harkin, 2017). Consideration of such 'ordinary' stop and search powers by PSNI can usefully start with the 'importation' of PACE into Northern Ireland. While the political, civil and cultural context in the country in 1989 bore little resemblance to that in England and Wales, the underpinning police organisational 'currency' of stop and search in terms of its efficacy has remained as a remarkable constant over the years (Bradford & Loader, 2016). The PSNI still adhere to the inherently 'deterrent' notion of PACE-type powers to stop and search citizens (in spite of its technically investigative basis), where the power is construed as a multipurpose tool to respond to almost any 'street-level' criminogenic circumstance (Bradford, 2017). Further tying notions of stop and search to general purpose, PSNI also link the power to their indeterminate duties and police powers set out in section 32 of the Police (Northern Ireland) Act 2000 centred on protecting life and property; preserving order; and

As an initial point of comparison, Northern Ireland possesses almost identical stop and search powers and Codes of Practice to those of England and Wales in terms of the Police and Crime Evidence (Northern Ireland) Order 1989 (PACE) and the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 (MDA) (c.f. Dickson, 2013). In turn, the volume, proportionality and arrest rates related to stop and search are therefore legitimate points of analysis (Scotland is of course governed by yet another legal framework, rendering such comparisons slightly more difficult). However, while in England and Wales almost all (currently over 99%) stops/searches are conducted under 'normal', PACE-type powers, in Northern Ireland only 70% of stops are carried out under such everyday powers (Hargreaves et al., 2017; PSNI, 2017b). The remaining 30% are conducted under the Terrorism Act 2000 and the Northern Ireland-only Justice and Security (Northern Ireland) Act 2007 (JSA). While the use of terrorist-related powers comprises a stark contrast with England and Wales (Hargreaves et al., 2017), it is not the intention to meld the analysis of terrorist and 'normal' (PACE-type) stop and search powers into a single and potentially muddled profile. Rather, this policy brief focuses deliberately upon 'ordinary' stop and search powers used by PSNI precisely because it is those powers which have (arguably) failed to come under the purview of the police (or public) oversight in the country. In stark contrast to the voluminous research dedicated to counter-terrorist powers utilised during the conflict and post-conflict periods of the jurisdiction (c.f. Hillyard, 1988; 1994; McGovern and Tobin, 2010; McVeigh, 1994; Seymour, 2017), it is precisely the absence of policy or academic attention directed at PACE-type stop and search which merits further investigation. This relative invisibility has, in a way both like and unlike the situation in Scotland before the groundbreaking research of Murray (2014b), persisted in the face of evidence of a recurrent problem with the use of stop and search in Northern Ireland. Not once has the power been referenced in the past decade of policing plans set forth by the Northern Ireland Policing Board (NIPB). But over the same period (2004/5-2015/16) use of stop and search in Northern Ireland increased by 74%, and it is now used here at a significantly higher rate than in England and Wales or Scotland (Bradford, 2017; Hargreaves, Husband and Linehan, 2017; PSNI, 2017b; Murray and Harkin, 2017). Consideration of such 'ordinary' stop and search powers by PSNI can usefully start with the 'importation' of PACE into Northern Ireland. While the political, civil and cultural context in the country in 1989 bore little resemblance to that in England and Wales, the underpinning police organisational 'currency' of stop and search in terms of its efficacy has remained as a remarkable constant over the years (Bradford & Loader, 2016). The PSNI still adhere to the inherently 'deterrent' notion of PACE-type powers to stop and search citizens (in spite of its technically investigative basis), where the power is construed as a multipurpose tool to respond to almost any 'street-level' criminogenic circumstance (Bradford, 2017). Further tying notions of stop and search to general purpose, PSNI also link the power to their indeterminate duties and police powers set out in section 32 of the Police (Northern Ireland) Act 2000 centred on protecting life and property; preserving order; and

La police suisse est fortement marquée par la pratique. Tout de même, une collaboration plus étroite entre la police et la science se développe aujourd'hui. Un recensement systématique des publications scientifiques met en lumière le développement de cette recherche policière naissante. Quelles sont les disciplines qui participent à la recherche policière ? Avec quelles méthodes la recherche est-elle menée ? Et comment la qualité de ces dernières est-elle assurée ? On constate que les contributions en sciences sociales sont actuellement peu nombreuses.

Swiss police work is strongly geared to practical knowledge, yet collaborations with academia are finally becoming more frequent. A new monitoring of scientific publications tracks the contours of this emergent subfield of Swiss police research. What academic disciplines contribute to it, and what research methods and types of quality control are employed? First results point to a surprisingly modest presence of social science research focussing on police in Switzerland.

Ce rapport n'aurait jamais vu le jour sans l'intérêt et l'implication des nombreuses personnes qui l'ont nourri. Nous tenons à formuler nos plus vifs remerciements à Madame Magaly Hanselmann, cheffe du Bureau de l'égalité entre les femmes et les hommes du canton de Vaud (BEFH), ainsi qu'à Monsieur Nils Kapferer, juriste et chef de projet audit Bureau. Nous remercions également les membres du comité de pilotage de la recherche (COPIL), Madame Françoise Dessaux, Juge cantonale, Monsieur Eric Cottier, Procureur général du canton de Vaud, à Monsieur le Lieutenant-colonel Alain Gorka, Commandant de la Gendarmerie ainsi que le Capitaine Patrick Magnanelli, adjoint du Commandant de la Gendarmerie. Nous souhaitons par ailleurs remercier les personnes qui, en participant à la recherche, ont rendu possible sa réalisation. Nous pensons au commissaire Stéphane Birrer qui a mis à notre disposition les données policières et à Madame Cosette Raposo-Plaza, secrétaire de direction au Ministère public central, qui nous a fourni les données judiciaires dans un temps record et nous a mis en relation avec les différents Ministères publics du canton de Vaud. Nous sommes reconnaissants également envers tout le personnel des ministères publics et des tribunaux qui nous ont reçus. Sans les citer afin de préserver leur anonymat, nous souhaitons remercier les intervenant•e•s que nous avons interviewé•e•s et qui se sont prêté•e•s à l'exercice avec un grand professionnalisme. Enfin, nous adressons nos remerciements à Monsieur Matteo Solcà, assistant-diplômé en criminologie pour sa relecture affutée. Table des illustrations Schéma 1 : Les rôles de lésé, victime et partie plaignante dans la procédure pénale……..7 Schéma : La procédure pénale et civile pour les affaires de violence conjugale……..….11 Graphique 1 : Distribution (en %) des affaires de violence conjugale selon le nombre d'infractions par affaire (N=592) (

Mumford constructed a family of abelian fourfolds with special stucture not characterized by endomorphism ring. Galluzzi showed that the weight 2 Hodge structure of such a variety decomposes into Hodge substructures via the action of Mumford-Tate group, one of which is of K3 type with Hodge number (1, 7, 1). We will compute the intersection form of such a Hodge structure and provide a canonical Z-Hodge structure on this subspace. Furthermore, we shall show two applications of this invariant. Firstly, using the above formula we shall show that every K3 surface obtained in this way will admit an elliptic fibration. Comparing them with the list by Shimada, we will show that the Mordell-Weil group of all elliptic fibrations have either 2-torsion or trivial torsion group, and the conditions of the occurance of 2-torsions can be specified. Secondly, we shall use it to determine the quaternion that gives a special CM abelian fourfold that is derived equivalent to the jacobian of y 2 = x 9 − 1.

PurposeThis paper aims to build on and contribute to earlier studies on use of force by the police, and examines both officer and suspect force levels during altercations.Design/methodology/approachPrior attempts to study non‐lethal force have only recently begun to examine the multiple levels of force that may be used within a single encounter, advocating the use of a “force factor” approach. This study examines 4,303 “use of force” reports from the two agencies in Florida for a five‐year period.FindingsSimilar to prior studies which utilized data gathered by observation, this current study finds that law enforcement officers are operating at a force deficit; officer levels of force are consistently less than suspect resistance levels.Research limitations/implicationsData examined through police reports have certain inherent limitations, including the bias of the reporting officer. Analyses of these reports make it impossible for researchers to determine the length of each portion ...

The country has been gripped by the events that have unfolded in the wake of the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. In response to these new examples of longstanding police violence, there have been calls to substantially reimage policing to reduce the number of violent incidents that occur between officers and the public and to combat officers’ disproportionate use of force with Black Americans. In this article, we call on industrial-organizational (I-O) psychologists to leverage their expertise to help actuate meaningful change within law enforcement. To help guide our collective efforts as a field, we provide a review of the current state of affairs as they relate to recruitment, selection, training, performance management, occupational stress, and organizational culture in law enforcement, and then offer recommendations for ways to change current practices to encourage more equitable and responsible policing. We also highlight areas in which further investigatio...

The police, in particular the riot police, can be a rather inaccessible object of investigation, whose reservations towards research are analysed with reference to five barriers: 1) police control of access to the field, 2) the doubly asymmetric research relationship, 3) attempts by the police to steer the process, 4) the sceptical attitude of (potential) interviewees, and 5) the restrained discussion behaviour. However, what appears as a hurdle from a researcher’s perspective allows structures of the object itself to be reconstructed. These include a prevalence of narratives of police “innocence” and “powerlessness” with which resistance against external aspirations for control is buttressed. The police view themselves as constantly being under public scrutiny and being unjustly publicly criticised. In this manner the predominant attitude towards research is reserved if not hostile. The police definitional power in its fields of action is thus partially transferred to research on t...

The Police Officer Wellness Evaluation Response™ Survey was designed to take a broader look at police officer wellness from an officer standpoint. The survey collected data and measured individual “holistic wellness” of 1,000 commissioned/sworn law enforcement officers nationwide. This confidential, multi-dimensional survey instrument was designed to address four specific areas of wellness: physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual and to report broad data concerning basic officer demographics. No names, departments, or other personally identifying information was collected, used, or distributed. The survey sample was not significant enough to make generalizations regarding a larger police officer population or police officer wellness on a larger scale. However, it is the hope of the survey developer that the information collected provide insight into areas that police officers believe should be more readily addressed in first responder wellness training (i.e., academy, post...

As a result of the critical nature of police officers' work, it is of utmost importance that they have direct access to support. The efficacy of the present trauma intervention programmes in the South African Police Service (SAPS) is questioned, because despite the implementation of trauma intervention programmes, police officials still present high levels of acute and behavioural problems. A literature overview of proposed international trauma intervention approaches concentrating on both the psychological, behavioural and social factors affecting police officers exposed to trauma, as well as those models implemented by SAPS are discussed. The objective of this article is to critically appraise existing trauma intervention approaches to better understand, compare and extrapolate key elements of these approaches, and to reconfigure them into a comprehensive holistic psychosocial therapeutic trauma intervention programme for use among the police in South Africa. It was found that...