An Attitudinal Study of Police Officers and Police Community Support
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POLICY CHANGE AND THE STREET LEVEL POLICING OF CHILDREN AND YOUNG PEOPLE IN A HOME COUNTIES POLICE FORCE by Judith Ann Mortimore A thesis submitted to the University of Bedfordshire for the Professional Doctorate in Youth Justice March 2011 POLICY CHANGE AND THE STREET LEVEL POLICING OF CHILDREN AND YOUNG PEOPLE IN A HOME COUNTIES POLICE FORCE J A MORTIMORE ABSTRACT New Labour‟s youth justice legislation and the „Every Child Matters‟ programme contained contradictory imperatives. This research examines how Police Officers and Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs) in a community policing setting operationalised those imperatives in order to reach decisions when dealing with children and young people. The review of literature focusses firstly on New Labour policy relating to children and young people, and secondly describes previous research into the practice of policing juveniles, the resilience of police culture and the key factors identified relating to police officer decision making. No recent British research in this area was located. Four overlapping hypotheses were identified, which were: officers will be more responsive to the „Every Child Matters‟ policy imperatives; officers will be more responsive to the criminal justice imperatives; managerialism will trump both sets of policy imperatives because it is in the officer‟s interests to respond to the demands of management; and both sets of policy imperatives and managerialism notwithstanding, officers will resort to „common sense‟ responses informed by their own lay criminologies, scales of values, police culture, and police „practice wisdom‟. ii These hypotheses were tested using quantitative and qualitative data from 198 self-reporting postal questionnaires and eight follow-up interviews. The research population comprised Police Officers and Police Community Support Officers engaged in Neighbourhood Policing. The research found that the majority of officers operated according to their own lay methodologies (hypothesis four) within the constraints of managerialism (hypothesis three), which led to officers and PCSOs taking actions which they did not always believe to be the most appropriate. Additionally, ambiguities in the legislation and lack of guidance led to the space for the exercise of officer discretion expanding when they were dealing with children and young people, whilst at the same time there was a lack of training on how they should best engage with this age group. iii DECLARATION I declare that this thesis is my own unaided work. It is being submitted for the degree of Professional Doctorate in Youth Justice at the University of Bedfordshire. It has not been submitted before for any degree or examination in any other University. Judith Ann Mortimore March 2011 iv Table of contents Abstract ......................................................................................... ii List of appendices ........................................................................ v List of charts .................................................................................. x List of tables ................................................................................... xi Acknowledgements ....................................................................... xii CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION 1 1.1 Introduction to the research problem ................................ 1 1.2 Justification for the research ............................................. 2 1.3 Methodology ..................................................................... 4 1.4 Outline of the thesis .......................................................... 5 1.5 Boundaries of the research ............................................... 6 1.6 Introducing the researcher ................................................ 6 1.7 Summary ........................................................................... 7 CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE RELATING TO POLICY 8 2.1 Introduction ....................................................................... 8 2.2 Conduct of the literature review ........................................ 8 2.3 New Labour and Youth Justice ......................................... 10 New Labour‟s early Youth Justice legislation New Labour‟s later Youth Justice legislation 2.4 Punitiveness in the media ................................................. 18 2.5 The erosion of discretion .................................................. 19 The Reprimand and Final Warning scheme v The Crime Recording Standards Narrowing the Justice Gap Early intervention 2.6 Punitiveness: summary ..................................................... 32 2.7 The „Every Child Matters‟ programme ............................... 33 Multi-agency working Early intervention – welfare approach Information sharing The welfare issue „Every Child Matters‟ and Youth Justice Children‟s Workforce reform 2.8 Every Child Matters: summary .......................................... 45 2.9 Guidance for police ........................................................... 47 CHAPTER THREE: LITERATURE RELATING TO PRACTICE 50 3.1 Introduction ....................................................................... 50 3.2 Social control .................................................................... 50 3.3 Officer discretion ............................................................... 56 3.4 Police culture .................................................................... 59 3.5 Decision-making ............................................................... 64 Officer characteristics Characteristics of the young person Severity of behaviour Conclusion 3.6 Gender .............................................................................. 69 3.7 Victims .............................................................................. 71 3.8 The potential impact of Neighbourhood Policing .............. 73 Neighbourhood Policing Neighbourhood Action Groups 3.9 Summary .......................................................................... 83 vi CHAPTER FOUR: METHODOLOGY 85 4.1 Introduction ......................................................................... 85 4.2 The research question and the hypotheses to be tested .... 85 4.3 Location where the research was conducted ...................... 87 4.4 With whom the research was conducted ............................. 87 4.5 Designing the research ....................................................... 90 4.6 Constraints on the scope of the research ........................... 93 4.7 The sampling strategy ......................................................... 93 4.8 Phase one: designing the data collection instrument .......... 94 4.9 Piloting the questionnaire ................................................... 99 4.10 Response to the questionnaire .......................................... 99 4.11 Data cleaning ................................................................... 101 4.12 Data analysis ..................................................................... 104 4.13 Deigning the interview questions ....................................... 105 4.14 Selection criteria ................................................................ 106 4.15 Introducing the interview candidates .................................. 107 4.16 Conducting the interviews .................................................. 109 4.17 Coding and analysing the interview data ........................... 112 4.18 Issues with the analysis ..................................................... 114 4.19 Ethical considerations ........................................................ 115 4.20 Limits of the research ....................................................... 119 CHAPTER FIVE: THE RESEARCH 121 5.1 Introduction ........................................................................ 121 5.2 Characteristics of the study population .............................. 122 Training 5.3 When, where and how officers encounter children and young people .......................................................... 131 Time of day of contact Location of contact vii How young people are encountered Groups of young people 5.4 Factors taken into consideration in decision making ........ 138 Grading of factors Seriousness of activity The public, the victim and the young person‟s best interest The age of the young person Attitude and co-operativeness Number of young people involved Sanction detections National Crime Recording Standard Gender Decision-making factors summary 5.5 PC and PCSO opinions about young people .................... 168 Victims and offenders Referrals Young people who offend Punitive or system-related responses Risk-related responses: parenting Other risk-related responses Behaviour-related responses Environmental factors Summary of issues raised Who should address the issues Young people as citizens Summary 5.6 Conclusions ...................................................................... 203 CHAPTER SIX: DISCUSSION 209 6.1 Introduction ....................................................................... 209 viii 6.2 Policy developments subsequent to research period ........ 209 6.3 Policing and government policy in relation to children and young people ................................................... 211 6.4 Managerialism and the use of discretion ........................... 215 6.5 The impact of police culture ............................................... 217 6.6 Reflections on the introduction of Neighbourhood Policing ..................................................................