You are on page 1of 6

Australian & New Zealand Journal

of http://anj.sagepub.com/
Criminology

Change in Policing, Changing Police


David Dixon
Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology 1995 28: 62
DOI: 10.1177/00048658950280S108
The online version of this article can be found at:
http://anj.sagepub.com/content/28/1_suppl/62

Published by:
http://www.sagepublications.com

On behalf of:

Australian and New Zealand Society of Criminology

Additional services and information for Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology can be
found at:
Email Alerts: http://anj.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts
Subscriptions: http://anj.sagepub.com/subscriptions
Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav
Permissions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav

>> Version of Record - Dec 1, 1995


What is This?

Downloaded from anj.sagepub.com by alina ciabuca on October 20, 2013

Change in Policing, Changing Police


Da vid Dixon
Introduction
Clifford Shearings contribution to the study of policing has been outstanding.
In a series of areas, his work has introduced new ways of seeing and
understanding. The collection which he edited on Organizational Police
Deviance (1981) has become a standard point of reference for people trying
to move beyond the confines of standard analyses of official corruption and
misconduct. His work with Philip Stenning on private policing (1984, 1987)
criticised the orthodox identification of policing with the state in a way which,
in the light of subsequent developments (Johnston 1992; Shearing 1992),
seems remarkably prescient. With Richard Ericson (199 1), he challenged the
accepted normative conceptualization of police culture, and in its place
offered an account drawing on postmodernist theory which sees culture as
carried and transmitted by narratives and stories. With Mike Brogden (1993),
his study of policing in South Africa rejects the usual attempts simply to
import British and North American policing, and instead suggests that South
Africa offers much for us to learn. In each of these areas of study, Shearings
work demonstrates a concern for theory which so often has been lacking in
policing studies.

Private and public policing


In the paper above, Shearing draws from his work on police culture and
private policing in the South African context to propose ways of transforming
policing which are fresh and of direct relevance to those attempting to change
policing around the world. Not surprisingly, the analysis is controversial.
Popular policing is Janus-faced: one side is a communitarian ideal of policing
by and for a responsible civil society; the other is discrimination, vigilantism,
excessive punishments, and an absence of due process. Of course, the real
world is not dichotomized in this way. Despite their enthusiasm for communal
self-policing, Brogden and Shearing acknowledge the sometimes horrific
expressions of popular policing in black South African communities which
were allowed by the apartheid state to suffer appalling levels of serious crime.
Nevertheless, some critics have been harsh about the optimism in their
account (eg Guelke 1995:419).
Getting away from the state is problematic in at least two respects. First,
South Africa exemplifies the malevolent effects of the state on its subjects. The
civil society of black South Africa has an admirable vitality and strength, but
it also bears scars of the disorganization and ideological pollution inflicted by
the apartheid state. Second, there is the paradox that change requires action by
the state, and positive involvement by state institutions in their own

Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, University of New South Wales, Sydney, 2052,
Australia.

62

Crime, Criminology and Public Policy 63

transformation. South Africa provides an extreme case of a disgraced and


discredited police force. Yet there is no real possibility of its abolition:
Brogden and Shearing acknowledge that the South African Police (now,
conventionally, renamed Police Service) must be retained and changed.
Making do is often the political reality: compare the situation in New South
Wales, where the Royal Commission into the NSW Police Service has had to
consider an amnesty to officers guilty of misconduct or corruption as the cost
of retaining a viable police service. According to Shearings account, South
Africa has a remarkably positive resource of policing in civil society.
Elsewhere, the policing of civil society is characterized by vigilantism,
exploitation by commercial interests, and flaccid democratic cultures
(Johnston 1992). In such contexts, the state must play a positive role in the
regulation and direction of private policing.
A particular aspect of the focus on private policing which is of value in the
Australian and New Zealand context is its challenge to the hegemony of
public policing. Such professionalpolicing continues - despite the reform
movements of recent years - to be dominated by a belief that significant
knowledge about policing is held exclusively by police, a resistance to
external involvement in police policy, and, frequently, a belief that police are
solely qualified to decide what powers they need. This spills over into the
current enthusiasm for community policing and problem-oriented policing: in
both cases, a central characteristic is police hegemony which is expressed in
continuing police ownership of policing (Brogden & Shearing 1993:170)
and an insistence that they must have the leading and defining role in
organising community responses to crime. Perception that policing does not
belong to the police can only aid the dissipation of such attitudes.
Perhaps most important are the implications of Shearings work on private
policing for the broader field of police studies. The conventional focus has
been on empirical study of junior officers, informed (at best) by mid-level
theories about culture and organisation. Once the focus is shifted from police
to policing, the inadequacy of these theoretical resources becomes clear. Study
of the broad process of social ordering requires police studies to connect with
the mainstream of social and political theory. In particular, private policing
requires attention to be paid to ways of understanding the changing
articulation of state and society.

Police culture
References to police culture have become cliched in Australia, New Zealand
and elsewhere. In both academic and popular uses of the term, problems in
policing are said to be cultural products and reform is assumed to require
cultural alteration. Drawing on the extended argument in Shearing and Ericson
(1991), Shearing calls for a fundamental reconceptualization of police culture.
The standard accounts treat police culture as a set of informal rules. By
contrast, Shearing presents culture as a sensibility constructed through stories:
action is not rule-directed, but rather is the product of an instinct or common
sense which is a cultural construction.
Shearing and Ericsons reformulation of police culture has the mark of a
classic. They latch on to the stories which all police researchers have heard,
laughed at, been bored by, and repeated, but have regarded as essentially

64

(1995) The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology

trivial. Instead, Shearing and Ericson present these stories as the key to
understanding police culture. It is through telling and hearing them that
officers know how to act. Importantly, this account provides for agency:
officers are not cultural dopes, but make choices in performing police work.
Shearing makes clear the implications for police reform: in his view, most
efforts at bringing about cultural change have been ineffective because their
subject has been misunderstood. This account of culture is an excellent
example of the use (as opposed to mere recitation) of theory. Many
criminologists who have been intimidated or alienated by postmodernist
theory will see here the value of theorising in this way. However, some
qualifications may be raised.
Their account provides a convincing way of understanding police activity
on the street. The construction and deployment of suspicion, in particular, is
much better understood through this type of analysis than simplistic
assumptions about cultural norms. This has important implications for the
legal regulation of street policing, which has often failed because its nature
was misunderstood by rule-makers (Dixon et a1 1989). However, the rejection
of a normative conception of culture is taken too far. Contrary to Shearing and
Ericsons argument (1991:482), there are cultural rules for which the evidence
is not merely (and tautologically) the activity which they are supposed to
explain. In my experience of fieldwork in policing, there are informal rules
which are expressed and experienced as prohibitions and directives, and
which are not merely retrospectivejustifications for action. Obvious examples
are rules of collective solidarity (eg back up your colleagues and dont snitch
or dob) and rules of behaviour (eg dont let a challenge to your authority pass
without response). There may well be stories which convey the same message:
stories and norms may be complementary. In challenging the orthodoxy,
Shearing goes too far: there would appear to be good explanatory reasons for
(and no theoretical reasons against) developing a broad conception of culture
which includes both elements. For example, Janet Chan has done this in her
combination of insights from organisational theory with Bourdieus analysis
of habitus and field (Chan 1996a; see also 1996b). This approach, which sees
police culture as constituted by interaction between the legal and political
context of policing and police organisational knowledge, provides a
sophisticated and comprehensive understanding of police culture.
Shearings rejection of normative accounts of culture finds some of its roots
in critiques of the conventional reform analysis by McBarnet (eg 1981) and
Ericson (eg 1981). They stressed the breadth of law as a resource, its crime
control commitment, and its role as retrospective legitimator of police action.
McBarnets work, in particular, had a major influence in shifting the focus of
policing studies. However, the limitations of this analysis have now to be
acknowledged. Her theory of law was never fully articulated, and remains an
underdeveloped combination of structuralism and radical realism which lent
itself to excessively deterministic conclusions (Dixon, forthcoming chl). The
inherent problems are is exemplified in McConville, Sanders and Lengs The
Case for the Prosecution (1991). The controversy over interpretations of how
policing in England and Wales has been affected by legal regulation shows the
need for a more positive view of the role of law in policing, and consequently
for the prospects of using legal regulation as one of the tools of police reform

Crime, Criminology and Public Policy 65


(Dixon 1992). Shearings analysis is rather ambivalent here. He acknowledges
that new rules are important because changing the framework within which
action can be justified does shape action. This accords with the argument in
Policing for a New South Africa, in which Brogden and Shearing include legal
regulation of state policing as a significant part of their program for change in
South Africa (1993:114). However, he goes on to say that the framework of
rules does not directly instruct and that this must be done via the creation of
new stories. While it is clearly true to say that rules are not self-executing, it
seems to me to be too narrow to claim that their influence must be transmitted
through stories.
An additional contribution to our understanding of culture is Shearings
insistence on the link between Afrikaner culture and police culture in South
Africa. He begins here to deal with one of the crucial questions in
contemporary police studies: how do we distinguish and relate apparently
universal and specific aspects of policing? His account allows police culture
to be seen as being remarkably adaptable to contexts, and as being able to
express varying cultural messages. The practical significance of this is that it
shows the need to focus on local contexts of policing - its social, political,
economic environments. This has particular importance in Australia, where
police culture is often used loosely as a reference to all that is wrong in
policing. Shearings account emphasises the need to see police culture as an
expression or extension of a broader political or social culture. This arises
most directly in relation to corruption. Australian states such as Queensland
and New South Wales demonstrate the need to see police corruption as
intricately related to broader patterns and traditions of corruption. Similarly,
responses to other police misconduct must take account of social attitudes:
authoritarian pragmatism has constituted a serious obstacle to the reform
process in Queensland in the very material shape of juries and magistrates
refusing to convict police officers of palpable offences in dealing with real
criminals (Bolen 1996). The implications for reform are clear enough:
attempts to tackle undesirable elements of police culture have little chance of
success if the contextual culture is undisturbed.

Conclusion
Shearings paper introduces several crucial developments in the contemporary
study of policing. Instead of the orthodox focus on England and America,
policing elsewhere in the world is taken seriously. It is considered not just as
the appropriately grateful recipient of gifts from North and West, but as a
source of inspiration and education (see also Findlay & Zvekic eds 1993).
Secondly, a radical challenge is made to the identification of policing with the
state: policing is seen as not just a concern of, but also an activity carried out
by civil society. Thirdly, police culture is rescued from its status as little more
than clich6, and is subjected to critique and development. Fourthly, a concern
to use and develop theory permeates the work. Fifthly, there is an exemplary
articulation of the proper relationship between academic work and political
action. In all these respects, Shearings work demonstrates what is currently
best in policing studies.

66 (1995) The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology

References
Bolen, J (1996) Prospects for sustained police reform Current Issues in
Criminal Justice, forthcoming.
Brogden, M & Shearing, C (1993) Policing for a New South Africa,
Routledge, London.
Chan, J ( 1996a) Changing police culture, British Journal of Criminology,
forthcoming.
Chan, J (1996b) Changing Police Culture: Policing in a Multicultural Society,
Cambridge University Press, Melbourne.
Dixon, D (1992) Legal regulation & policing practice, Social & Legal
Studies vol 1, pp 5 1 5 4 1 .
Dixon, D (forthcoming) Law in Policing: Legal Regulation and Police
Practices, Clarendon Press, Oxford.
Dixon, D, Bottomley, A K, Coleman, C A, Gill, M & Wall, D (1989) Reality
and rules in the construction and regulation of police suspicion,
International Journal of the Sociology of Law, vol 17, pp 185-206.
Ericson, R (1981) Rules for police deviance, in C Shearing, ed
Organizational police Deviance, Butterworths, Toronto, pp 83-1 10.
Findlay, M & Zvekic, U, eds (1993) Alternative Policing Styles:
Cross-Cultural Perspectives, Kluwer Publishers, Deventer, The
Netherlands.
Guelke, A (1995) Policing and the South African miracle, Social and Legal
Studies, vol 4, pp 413-19.
Johnston, L (1992) The Rebirth of Private Policing, Routledge, London.
McBarnet, D (1981) Conviction, Macmillan, London.
McConville, M, Sanders, A & Leng, R (1991) The Case for the Prosecution:
Police Suspects and the Construction of CriminaliQ, Routledge, London.
Shearing, C D (1992) The relation between public and private policing, in M
Tonry & N Morris, eds Modern Policing, University of Chicago Press,
Chicago, 399-434.
Shearing, C D & Stenning, P (1984) From the panopticon to Disney World:
the development of discipline, in Perspectives in Criminal Law, eds AN
Doob & EL Greenspan, Canada Law Book, Toronto.
Shearing, C D & Stenning, P, eds (1987) Private Policing, Sage, Newbury
Park, Cal.

You might also like