a b s t r a c tRural policing, with a few notable exceptions, has been largely absent from the geographic and criminology literature. Yet, examining rural policing is important for revealing details about rural society, and the role that the police play in controlling rural space. Using participant observation and interview data collected as part of a wider study exploring anti-social behaviour (ASB) in rural Scotland, this paper calls for a more nuanced understanding of rural policing. In order to fully conceptualise the response of the police to ASB in these rural locations, the role of discretion, negotiated order maintenance and police ecommunity interactions need to be considered. These dimensions are considered to lie at the core of the response of the police to ASB in rural Scotland. Existing urban-based policing typologies are helpful for beginning to understand the multiple ways that the police control territory. Yet they are of limited relevance to some of the challenges identified with policing rural contexts, namely the scale of the environment, the lack of back-up and the forms of ASB that are common in rural locations. This paper concludes by arguing that the rural needs to be (re)conceptualised as a distinct, challenging and variable policing environment, with particular contextual factors that need to be considered.
Soft' policing is a strategy which borrows from concepts laid out by Nye (2004), who argues that nation states should adopt 'soft power' over 'hard power' in response to a range of geopolitical challenges. Soft policing as a concept sits under the reassurance and neighbourhood policing banners, where 'police power is based less upon the direct enactment of coercion and rests instead upon a persuasive mode of social control' (Innes, 2005: 157). Soft policing therefore focuses on the non-coercive elements of policing, where community engagement, situated knowledge and negotiated order maintenance play important roles in shaping the police response (Innes, 2005; McCarthy, 2014). Although critiqued for 'obscuring the 'hard' realities of the 'coercive state'' (Loader & Walker, 2007: 76), soft policing styles are often synonymously linked to rural policing, with the common perception being that negotiated order maintenance tends to take precedence over enforcement policing styles in these environments (Donnermeyer & DeKeseredy, 2014; Wooff, 2015; Yarwood & Wooff, 2016). Rural environments, however, by their very nature tend to be isolated, complex and multifaceted, requiring a nuanced and context dependent policing response. Given that rural policing remains at the margins of the policing literature (Mawby & Yarwood, 2011) and with the recent (re)emergence of discussions around 'soft' policing (see McCarthy, 2014), this paper provides a timely examination of the extent to which the concept is relevant in rural policing discussions. While cautious not to create a false dichotomy between 'hard' and 'soft' policing, in a practical sense the police routinely slip between tactics described as 'soft' and 'hard', philosophically it is useful to focus on the soft policing responses of officers in rural Scotland. The early 2000s witnessed the introduction of the National Reassurance
Police custody is a complex environment, where police officers, detainees and other staff interact in a number of different emotional, spatial and transformative ways. Utilising ethnographic and interview data collected as part of a five-year study which aims to rigorously examine ‘good’ police custody, this paper analyses the ways that liminality and temporality impact on emotion in police custody. Architecture has previously been noted as an important consideration in relation to social control, with literature linking the built environment with people’s emotional ‘readings’ of space. No work, however, has examined the links between temporality, liminality and emotional performativity in a police custody context. In this environment, power dynamics are linked to past experiences of the police, with emotions being intrinsically embodied, relational, liminal and temporal. Emotion management is therefore an important way of conceptualising the dynamic relationships in custody. The paper concludes by arguing that emotional aftershocks symbolise the liminal experience of detainees’ understanding of the police custody process once released, noting that it is important to understand the microscale, lived experience of police custody in order to develop broader understanding of broader social and policing policy in a police custody context.
Background Historically, police departments focused solely on criminal justice issues. Recently, there has been a dynamic shift in focus, with Law Enforcement professional groups assuming more responsibility for tackling mental health and distress-related issues (that may arise because of mental health related problems and learning disabilities) alongside Public Health departments. While Law Enforcement has become a ‘last line of support’ and an increasing partner in mental health support, there is partnership working between law enforcement, psychology, and health professions in training and mental health service delivery. The term vulnerability is frequently used across Law Enforcement and Public Health (LEPH) to identify those in need of these services. Effective vulnerability assessment is therefore expected to prevent unintentional harmful health and criminal justice consequences and manage the negative impact of such in cases where prevention is not possible. This scoping review aimed to identify how vulnerability is defined and assessed across LEPH organisations. Results Vulnerability is context-specific from a Law Enforcement perspective, and person-specific from a Public Health perspective. Definitions of vulnerability are at best fragmented, while models for assessing vulnerability lack uniformity across LEPH. The implications are two-fold. For “vulnerable groups”, the lack of an evidence-based definition and assessment model could prevent access to relevant LEPH services, exacerbating issues of multiple vulnerabilities, co-morbidity, and/or dual diagnosis. All could inadvertently enable social exclusion of vulnerable groups from political discourse and policy interventions. The lack of consistency regarding vulnerability may result in reactive crisis responses as opposed to proactive preventative measures. Conclusions This scoping review exposes the complexities associated with defining and assessing vulnerability from a LEPH perspective, which are perceived and prioritised differently across the organizations. Future research must bridge this gap. Building on the establishment of a definition of vulnerability within the empirical literature, researchers ought to engage with service users, LEPH staff, and those engaged in policy making to craft effective vulnerability definitions and assessment models. Only through evidence based, co-produced definitions and assessment models for vulnerability can we ensure that best-practice, but also meaningful and feasible practice, in vulnerability assessment can be achieved.
Purpose-The purpose of this paper is to examine how police authorityin its "soft" formis used and understood by staff and detainees in police custody in England, examining how these meanings are shaped by this unique police setting. It is argued that the nature of this setting, as fraught and uncertain, along with the large volume of citizens who come into contact with the police therein, makes police custody the ultimate "teachable moment". Design/methodology/approach-The present paper is based on in-depth qualitative data collected between March 2014 and May 2015 in four custody suites (in four forces). In each site, the researchers spent three to four weeks observing and then interviewed 10-15 staff (largely police officers, detention officers but also a few other criminal justice practitioners) and 10-15 detainees. In total, the paper is based on 532 hours of observing and 97 interviews (47 with staff and 50 with detainees). Findings-One way that the staff used their authority in the custody suites in the research was softly and innocuously; this entailed for example staff communicating in a respectful manner with detainees, such as by being deliberately polite. The authors conclude that this "soft" power was a dynamic, processual matter, shaped in particular by the physical conditions of the suite, the uncertain and insecure nature of detainees' circumstances, as well as by the sense of disempowerment they felt as a result of being deprived of their liberty and autonomy, all of which contributed to police custody being the ultimate "teachable moment". Originality/value-The paper draws on a range of qualitative data collected from both staff and detainees in four types of police custody suites as part the "good" police custody study. It therefore makes an original contribution to the field which has tended to rely on cross-sectional surveys of citizens not policed populations (Harkin, 2015; Worden and Mclean, 2017).
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