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Gender, Policing and Social Control

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Gender, Policing and Social Control Gender, Policing and Social Control: Examining Police Officers’ Perceptions of and Responses to Young Women Depicted as Violent. Suzanne Young Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy School of Applied Social Science University of Stirling 2011 Declaration I declare that none of the work contained within this thesis has been submitted for any other degree at any other university. The contents found herein have been composed by the candidate, Suzanne Young. i Acknowledgements I wish to express my gratitude to all those people who supported and believed in me, without which this PhD thesis would not have been achievable. Thank you to the Economic and Social Research Council for funding this research. Sincere thanks go to my supervisors Dr Margaret Malloch and Dr Samantha Punch, who provided me with ongoing advice and encouragement. Margaret’s knowledge and passion in the field inspired me to push through the challenging obstacles I faced throughout the production of this thesis. I am grateful to Sam for her continued support and enthusiasm to see me succeed. Thank you for believing in me, I will endeavour to learn from all you have taught me in my future ventures. I would like to thank my friends, family and colleagues for their support and encouragement throughout the four years. I owe special thanks to Sandy for his reassurance and belief in my abilities. His support throughout the PhD was invaluable, especially his endurance during latter stages of writing. I am grateful to all my PhD colleagues who kept me grounded in laughter, being able to share my PhD experiences with all of you is much appreciated. Special thanks go to the organisations that made this research possible. I would like to thank SIPR for their access facilitation and ACPOS for allowing me to carry out this study with their police officers. This thesis would not have been possible without the participation of the thirty three male and female police officers, to whom I am entirely grateful. Thank you for sharing your experiences with me. ii Abstract In Britain, there have been growing concerns over the increasing female prison population and treatment of girls and women by the criminal justice system (see Carlen and Worrall, 2004; Hedderman, 2004; Batchelor, 2005; Hutson and Myers, 2006; Sharpe, 2009). In particular, there has been a rising female prison population in Scotland which has been associated with greater punitive controls over the behaviour of women (McIvor and Burman, 2011). The British press have depicted a social problem of certain young women becoming more violent and have attributed this to women’s liberation, particularly in the night time economy (MacAskill and Goodwin, 2004; Gray, 2006; Evening News, 2008). These concerns have attracted widespread media and political attention leading to a steady growth in academic research exploring the apparent rise of violent young women (Burman et al., 2003; Burman, 2004b; Batchelor, 2005). Despite this, there are relatively few studies that examine responses to young women with an emphasis on violent offences. Furthermore, there is a lack of research that has examined the role police officers have played in the control and depiction of young women’s violence. This research investigates the perceptions of and responses to young women depicted as violent from police officers in Scotland. Thirty three qualitative interviews were carried out with front line police officers in 2008 to investigate social control mechanisms employed to regulate the behaviour of young women. The research utilised feminist perspectives to develop an understanding of how young women deemed as violent face formal and informal mechanisms of social control from police officers. iii The study challenges the apparent increase in violence among young women and instead argues that institutional controls have contributed to young women being labelled as violent. Changes in police practices and zero tolerance approaches towards violence have resulted in a net widening effect that has impacted on the number of young women (and men) being brought to the attention of the police for violent offences. It is argued that this mechanism of institutional control could be a contributing factor towards the rise in the number of young women being charged for violent offences. Police discretion on the basis of gender did have an influence on arrest practices for some of the officers, but there was insufficient evidence to suggest the police officers responded any harsher or more lenient towards women. However, what was apparent was that police officers believed women needed to be ‘controlled’; they perceived them as more unmanageable than men and this defiance towards authority resulted in women being arrested. Women depicted as violent remain to be categorised on the basis of socially constructed gender norms and it is argued that this mechanism of discursive control continues to locate violence within the realm of masculinity. In conclusion, women who are depicted as violent are portrayed as unfeminine and in need of greater social control which is exercised through both formal and informal measures by police officers. iv Table of Contents Declaration ............................................................................................................... i Acknowledgements .................................................................................................. ii Abstract .................................................................................................................. iii Table of Contents ..................................................................................................... v List of Tables .......................................................................................................... vii Chapter 1 - Introduction ........................................................................................... 1 Background and rationale ............................................................................................... 1 The study ...................................................................................................................... 10 Layout of thesis ............................................................................................................ 13 Chapter 2 - Gender, Justice and Social Control ........................................................ 15 Identifying a feminist approach ..................................................................................... 15 Women, deviance and social control ............................................................................. 25 Controlling femininities: Dichotomies of female offending ............................................. 31 Assessing the evidence .................................................................................................. 56 Summary ...................................................................................................................... 65 Chapter 3 - Police, Power and Patriarchy ................................................................ 67 The role of policing ....................................................................................................... 68 Policing: A gendered institution ..................................................................................... 81 Powers of discretion ..................................................................................................... 90 Summary .................................................................................................................... 103 Chapter 4 - Researching the Police: Processes and Reflections ............................... 105 A feminist approach to a masculine research site ......................................................... 105 Accessing the field ...................................................................................................... 112 Data collection ............................................................................................................ 118 Ethical considerations ................................................................................................. 129 The analytical process ................................................................................................. 133 v Reflecting on the fieldwork ......................................................................................... 136 Chapter 5 - Introduction to Findings ..................................................................... 138 Development of the theoretical framework ................................................................. 138 Defining violence ........................................................................................................ 141 Chapter 6 - Policing and Institutional Control ........................................................ 146 Advances in policing.................................................................................................... 147 Perceived prevalence of female violence ..................................................................... 151 The net widening effect .............................................................................................. 156 Summary .................................................................................................................... 172 Chapter 7 - Discursive Stereotypes ........................................................................ 174 The masculinisation of violence
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