Police Deviance

In one line

Police deviance is distinctive because the police decide whether anything else becomes a case at all, so their deviance is the one form that can conceal every other.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: police deviance covers custodial violence, extra-judicial killing, the refusal to register a complaint, false and fabricated cases, extortion, selective enforcement, the misuse of arrest, and corruption; it is distinguished from other official deviance because the police control the gateway to the criminal justice system and their deviance is therefore also a means of concealing the deviance of others.

The forms

Custodial violence and custodial death. The gravest form and the subject of the next chapter.

Extra-judicial killing. A killing described as an encounter, and the difficulty is that a genuine exercise of the right of private defence and a staged killing produce the same paperwork.

Refusal to register. The most common form by volume, described in its own chapter, and the one that decides whether an offence exists at all in the record.

False and fabricated cases. Registering a case that has no foundation, adding an accused, planting recoveries and manufacturing witnesses. It is used to oblige a complainant with influence, to settle a private score and to produce a detection.

Extortion. Payment for not registering, for not arresting, for granting bail from the station, for permitting a business to operate and for releasing a vehicle.

Selective enforcement. Enforcing against the visible, the unprotected and the powerless while leaving others alone, which is where police deviance meets the whole theme of this module.

Misuse of arrest. Arrest is a power that can be exercised immediately and remedied only slowly, which makes it the most effective instrument of pressure available to a police officer.

And custodial corruption of the process, meaning the alteration of records, the antedating of documents and the manipulation of case diaries.

Why it happens: the structural account

An answer that attributes police deviance to bad character has explained nothing, since the same conduct appears in every force. The structural account has five elements.

One: the detection target. A station is judged on detection and on the maintenance of order. Both create incentives to record less and to detect more, and both are met more easily by manipulation than by investigation.

Two: resources. The investigating officer at a station carries far more cases than can be investigated, has no forensic support and often no vehicle. Confession is the cheapest available method of investigation, and torture is the cheapest method of obtaining a confession.

Three: the law of evidence. A confession to a police officer is not admissible, which is a protection. Its unintended effect is that the officer must convert a confession into a discovery or into other evidence, and the pressure to produce a recovery is what much custodial violence is about.