Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
This article was downloaded by: [Tulane University]On: 29 August 2013, At: 10:42Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK
International Journal of SocialResearch MethodologyPublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/tsrm20
Tripping Over Molehills: Ethics and theEthnography of Police WorkMichael RowePublished online: 26 Feb 2007.
To cite this article: Michael Rowe (2007) Tripping Over Molehills: Ethics and the Ethnographyof Police Work, International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 10:1, 37-48, DOI:10.1080/13645570600652792
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13645570600652792
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE
Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the“Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis,our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as tothe accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinionsand views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors,and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Contentshould not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sourcesof information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims,proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoeveror howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to orarising out of the use of the Content.
This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Anysubstantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms &Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions
Int. J. Social Research Methodology
Vol. 10, No. 1, February 2007, pp. 37–48
ISSN 1364–5579 (print)/ISSN 1464–5300 (online) © 2007 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/13645570600652792
Tripping Over Molehills: Ethics and the Ethnography of Police WorkMichael Rowe
Taylor and Francis LtdTSRM_A_165253.sgmReceived 11 March 2005; Accepted 18 July 2005
10.1080/13645570600652792International Journal of Social Research Methodology1364-5579 (print)/1464-5300 (online)Original Article2007Taylor & Francis101000000February [email protected]
Ethnographies of policing have referred to the difficulties that researchers face as they
encounter corruption, malpractice and police deviance. This paper reflects on the author’s
ethnographical work with a British police force and suggests that while only relatively
minor instances of misbehaviour were witnessed, these nonetheless raised challenging
ethical issues. In addition to exploring the practicalities of negotiating access to the field and
the difficulties of securing informed consent, the paper highlights the importance of
anticipating the ethical dimensions of the mundane realities encountered during fieldwork.
Introduction
This article examines the difficulties of operationalizing principles of ethical research
in the context of a study of British policing. While other ethnographies of policing have
faced ethical dilemmas relating to serious incidents of malpractice or police deviance,
this researcher’s experience was that only apparently minor dilemmas were encoun-
tered. The article argues, however, that these low-level issues might be more typical of
the research experience and that, nonetheless, they raise important ethical concerns.
The molehills of ethical dilemmas proved as difficult to negotiate as the anticipated
mountains would have done had they materialized. For 18 weeks, in 2004, I accompa-
nied uniformed police officers, usually constables, as they went about their routine
activities in three areas within one British police service. Approximately 660 hours were
spent ‘in the field’. The research explored the factors that shape officers’ decision
making and their exercise of discretion. While designing the project, and discussing it
with academic colleagues and gatekeepers within the police service, I read many of the
Dr Michael Rowe is director of the Institute of Criminology, Victoria University, Wellington. He has published
widely on topics relating to diversity and policing, including, in 2004, a book Policing, Race and Racism that explores
the impact of the Lawrence Inquiry on the British police service. Correspondence to: Michael Rowe, Institute of
Criminology, School of Social and Cultural Studies, Victoria University, PO Box 600, Wellington, New Zealand.
Email: [email protected]
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Tul
ane
Uni
vers
ity]
at 1
0:42
29
Aug
ust 2
013
38 M. Rowe
methodological texts on ethnography and accounts by previous researchers who had
used similar methods with the police. This preparation shaped my expectations of the
difficulties facing a police ethnographer. Moreover, while ethnography was new to me,
I had considerable previous experience of police research and felt familiar with many
aspects of police subculture. Many previous studies, as outlined further below, saw
ethnographers confronted with instances of police corruption or use of excessive
violence and it was partly from this vicarious experience that my expectations were
shaped. Despite these potential problems an observational approach was preferable to
other qualitative methodologies such as interviews or documentary analysis, a point
made by Punch (1979, p. 4) in his classic study of policing in Amsterdam. Similarly,
Reiner advocated this approach on the grounds that:
the wish to penetrate [the] low-visibility [of police work] is why participant observation
has been the main technique adopted by researchers wishing to analyse the practices and
cultures of policing. All other methods rely on some sort of account offered by the police
themselves … the veracity of which is often precisely the question being studied. (2000,
p. 219)
This article focuses on three broad themes—access and reliability, informed consent,
and ethical dilemmas relating to malpractice. In conclusion it is argued that doing
research in a dynamic environment such as policing means that principles laid down
in the texts or professional codes of practice are very difficult to operationalize. The
research was in the tradition described by van Maanen (1995, p. 9) as ‘critical ethnog-
raphy’, which locates subjects in a broader social, political, cultural and historical
context than they themselves may be aware of. Following van Maanen’s (1995)
insistence that contemporary emphasis on textual analysis in ethnography (see e.g.
Willis, 2000) can be reconciled with a more traditional factuality, this article provides
insight into one attempt to conduct ethnographical research.
Access and Reliability
While methods textbooks give advice on accessing research subjects, this is often
narrowly understood as a formal pre-requisite. In practice, access is not just established
at the outset but, rather, a process of continuing negotiation and explanation. While a
contractual form of access was necessary, this represented only a preliminary require-
ment, an agreement that was essential in order to proceed with the work but was insuf-
ficient on a day-to-day basis in terms of securing the participation of subjects. Indeed,
demonstrating that formal access was agreed at a high level might have been counter-
productive when trying to convince junior staff that I was trustworthy, since they were
sometimes concerned that I had been ‘planted’ by senior managers to report on them.
For ethical and practical reasons I decided against attempting a covert programme
of research. Such an approach clearly breaches the principle that the subjects of
research should offer their ‘informed consent’ to being included. As will be discussed
further below, it is far from clear that this principle was met fully in any meaningful
sense, but a covert approach would have allowed no prospect of doing so. Those who
have conducted covert research have tended to use an ‘ends justify the means’
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Tul
ane
Uni
vers
ity]
at 1
0:42
29
Aug
ust 2
013
International Journal of Social Research Methodology 39
argument, such that exposing malfeasance of some kind could not have been achieved
in any other way. Fountain (1993) described her study of drug dealers on this basis, and
noted that she often felt that she was betraying subjects who had treated her as a friend,
unaware that she was conducting research. However, she arrived at a fundamentally
pragmatic position:
After the euphoria over all the information had died down, however, I felt that we had
abused the hospitality of this friendly man [a cannabis dealer], who had so clearly enjoyed
our company. We agreed that we would not have spent so long with him, listening to his
long rambling tales, it they had not been so useful for research purposes. We did it again,
though. (Fountain, 1993, p. 166)
Covert fieldwork might be preferred because of the greater reliability of findings.
Fielding noted that covert research, while demanding and ethically problematic, offers
the advantage that the researcher is ‘… much less likely to disturb the setting, avoiding
the risk of studying an artefact of [their] presence rather than normal behaviour’ (1993,
p. 159). Additionally, some justify covert research if access cannot be obtained by other
means. Six months or so before I began my study the British Broadcasting Corporation
(BBC) documentary The Secret Policeman had revealed, through the use of hidden
recording equipment, the racist views of some police trainees (BBC, 2003). In an effort
to demonstrate that I was not seeking a similar exposé of police behaviour an overt
approach seemed most appropriate, and on this basis the permission of the Chief
Constable was sought. Concern that the police service might be a relatively closed
organization following The Secret Policeman affair proved unfounded and formal
agreement was straightforward.
Furthermore, an overt approach was preferable in this case, since the pressure of
sustaining a covert project would have been considerable and the risk of losing the data
too great in the event of being ‘uncovered’. One sergeant reinforced my confidence that
I had followed the best course when he noted—in no uncertain terms—that I would
have been physically thrown out of the police station had officers suspected that I was
an undercover researcher.
While formal agreement was vital to the project, it was not enough to ensure the
meaningful cooperation of officers. The police constables (PCs) that were shadowed
were picked on a structured but random basis, whereby a series of shifts were identi-
fied but particular staff were only identified during the initial briefing. Sometimes the
officer(s) were selected simply because they volunteered, or because their colleagues
were attending court or training, or doing administrative duties away from the ‘front-
line’ work relevant to the study. Since more than five weeks were spent in each police
station and only six shifts worked out of each of them, the pool was relatively small
and so there were times when officers were selected simply because it was their turn to
have me tag along. Usually the shift sergeant allocated me to officers, although there
were occasions were none was on duty and so I negotiated directly with the PCs
involved. These few instances did bring into sharp relief the fact that access was a
continuing matter of negotiation, even once formal agreements had been signed. Not
only did I have the challenge of negotiating my way past the police-only rear entrance
to the station at various times of the day and night, I then had to sit in a briefing room
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Tul
ane
Uni
vers
ity]
at 1
0:42
29
Aug
ust 2
013
40 M. Rowe
under the curious gaze of officers who were clearly wondering who the quiet stranger
in the corner was. More than once I was mistaken for a fellow officer, albeit in plain
clothes, since it was relatively routine for unfamiliar colleagues to be wandering
around the police station. Usually the sergeants working on each shift knew I would
be attending and what my remit was, but this was not always the case and I had to
explain myself to them as well as to the PCs in the briefing room. My standpoint as a
researcher was clearly as an ‘outside outsider’ in Reiner’s typology (Reiner, 2000),
which meant that I lacked the occupational and cultural capital that might make
acceptance easier to secure. However, I was otherwise relatively well placed in this
respect. Like many of the officers, I was a white male in my mid 30s and I benefited
from the experience of previous research that had grounded me in many aspects of
police work.
Gaining access in terms of being given permission on a daily basis to accompany
officers was one thing: not getting thrown out the police station by suspicious officers
was clearly of fundmental importance, but was not enough in itself. Access was of wider
significance in terms of gaining the trust of officers such that they would share their
perspectives with me candidly. Whyte noted the importance of personal relations in his
classic study of ‘an Italian slum’:
I soon found out that people were developing their own explanation about me: I was
writing a book about Cornerville. This might seem entirely too vague an explanation, and
yet it sufficed. I found that my acceptance in the district depended on the personal rela-
tionships I developed far more than upon any explanations I might give. Whether it was a
good thing to write a book about Cornerville depended entirely on people’s opinions of
me personally. If I was all right, then my project was all right; if I was no good, then no
amount of explanation could convince them that the book was a good idea. (1969/1943,
p. 300)
While there were times when officers seemed to be guarded and reluctant to engage in
discussion, these were relatively rare. I soon noticed that the way in which I completed
my field notes seemed to influence the extent to which officers talked freely: making
notes in the rear of a patrol car, for example, inhibited discussion as officers were
reminded that I was making a record of what they said. Once a sergeant who had been
discussing an incident with PCs spotted that I was making notes across the other side
of the room—not, as it happened, about their conversation—and said to me ‘I hope
you’re not going to cost me my job’ and was noticeably more reticent in my presence
thereafter. Several officers expressed their desire to read my notes but, although I
consented to this in order to cultivate their trust, none actually did so. On one occasion
I was assigned to two female PCs, one of whom I had not previously met. The officer I
had met took her colleague to one side, into the ladies toilets, for a ‘quick word’ before
we went on patrol: although I do not know what was said between them, neither spoke
to me for several hours afterwards. Equally there were times when it seemed officers
were presenting the ‘official line’ on their work, rather than sharing their own perspec-
tives. Emerson, Fretz, and Shaw noted that writing is a ‘strange, marginalizing activity,
marking the writer as an observer, rather than as a full ordinary participant’ (1995,
p. 37). Moreover, they noted, writing sets the researcher apart conceptually and
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Tul
ane
Uni
vers
ity]
at 1
0:42
29
Aug
ust 2
013
International Journal of Social Research Methodology 41
mentally from their subjects, which is paradoxical in terms of the realist and empa-
thetic tradition of ethnography.
By spending upwards of five weeks in each station, I hoped officers would come to
trust me. For this reason too, I assured them that my notes would be both anonymous
and confidential. By working late and night shifts and ‘staying the course’ when shifts
over-ran or when officers were tied up in tedious routine activity, I hoped to demon-
strate commitment to experiencing the reality of police work, even when that meant
sitting in a car all night with little to do. After a few weeks in one police station a
sergeant I had spoken to on a few occasions told me that officers had dubbed me
‘University Mike’, and assured me that being given a nickname—something assigned
to many of the officers—was a sure sign of acceptance.
Becoming ‘one of the team’ might help to develop trust, but it also presents potential
problems. Occasionally, officers, perhaps conscious of the repercussions they might
experience, urged me—quite unnecessarily, I assured them—that I should not ‘get
involved’ should trouble occur, as they were trained, and insured, for such eventuali-
ties. Marks’s (2004) account of being instructed by members of the Durban public
order policing unit in the use of semi-automatic machine guns—‘just in case’ it proved
necessary for her to defend herself—was not an experience shared by this ethnogra-
pher. There were occasions, though, when, in order to increase officers’ view of my
reliability and trustworthiness, I occasionally found myself taking details of those
involved in minor road traffic accidents, advising victims of crime, or helping to shift
fallen branches from the carriageway. Only on rare occasions did such interventions
give me serious cause for concern. One such time was when two PCs and I responded
to reports of a ‘break-in in-progress’ at around 04.00 am one summer morning. As we
ran towards the address I was asked by one officer to cover the rear of the property in
case the offender fled in that direction. It was only as I walked out of sight that I began
to wonder what I would do if a frightened burglar suddenly jumped out in front of me:
while my adrenalin levels were high, I was not convinced that I would be much use
should there be a physical confrontation. Fortunately, or otherwise, there was no sign
of the intruder. As we ran off in the direction he may have taken, the PC, who had
established some distance on me, turned, threw me a bunch of keys and shouted ‘bring
the car round’. Without too much option I picked up the keys and ran back to the car.
It was only as I drove cautiously around the corner and pulled alongside an officer that
I did not know who eyed me—clearly a civilian— with some suspicion that it occurred
to me that driving the patrol car might not have been entirely within my remit!
On another occasion, I was left with a comparatively junior PC and a suspect in the
station ‘chute’ where prisoners are held before being formally ‘booked in’ to the
custody suite. As we chatted I noticed that the prisoner surreptitiously put something
in his mouth and swallow it. The PC did not seem to notice and I was unsure whether
to mention it to him. I was concerned that if the prisoner had swallowed drugs this
might have serious repercussions for both him and the officer. Methodologically,
however, I did not want to interfere in the situation and influence the way in which
events unfolded. Eventually I decided that the potential impact on both the prisoner
and the officer was primary, and when the opportunity arose I discreetly mentioned to
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Tul
ane
Uni
vers
ity]
at 1
0:42
29
Aug
ust 2
013
42 M. Rowe
the officer what I had seen. He thanked me and discussed this with his more
experienced colleague, and the two of them decided to ‘keep this between ourselves’.
While such incidents suggest some success in building trust and negotiating mean-
ingful access, ultimately there is no way of establishing the extent to which officers genu-
inely shared their perspectives on police work and the public at large. Waddington
noted, following his study of policing, that ‘… it is a least conceivable that they sought
to protect themselves against any damage that I might do … one can only speculate about
how things were done in my absence …’ (1999, p. 212). Frequently I was surprised by
the candid comments that officers made about their work, senior managers and the
nature of policing. The extent to which critical opinions were offered suggested that
officers were speaking honestly and directly, but it is inevitable that the research subjects
‘framed’ their views as they sought to tell me about their work or were keen to show me
incidents or events that would be, they thought, particularly salient. On a number of
occasions officers informed the control room, as we began a shift, that I was in company
with them, and sometimes they asked that the controller be aware of this when assigning
us to jobs. This clearly raised the prospect that the control room might not have sent
me to situations thought to be dangerous or problematic in some way, although we could
hear all of the radio traffic for the police area and it did not seem to me that there were
such incidents happening while we were being kept away. At other times officers asked
me if there was anything in particular that I wanted to see or experience during the shift:
we could have done some traffic stops, for example, if I had wanted to. When asked, I
told the officer not to do anything in particular with me in mind, and explained that I
wanted to see the usual flow of police work. What I cannot account for, however, is the
number of times when officers were selective on my behalf without discussing it with
me, and it must be assumed that this happened to some extent.
The Ethics of Informed Consent
Since the principle of informed consent is a fundamental canon of research methods, I
tried to ensure that participants were fully aware of the nature of the study and asked
explicitly for their consent. Unlike some other professional associations, such as the
American Sociological Association, the British Sociological Association (BSA) code of
practice does not offer absolute rules but establishes guiding principles. Informed
consent is clearly central to the BSA code, as paragraphs 16 and 17 demonstrate:
As far as possible participation in sociological research should be based on the freely given
informed consent of those studied. This implies a responsibility on the sociologist to
explain in appropriate detail, and in terms meaningful to participants, what the research is
about, who is undertaking and financing it, why it is being undertaken, and how it is to be
disseminated and used.
Research participants should be made aware of their right to refuse participation whenever
and for whatever reason they wish. (2002)
Fetterman maintained that ‘ethnographers must be candid about their task, explaining
what they plan to study and how they plan to study it’ (1989, p. 134); this was the
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Tul
ane
Uni
vers
ity]
at 1
0:42
29
Aug
ust 2
013
International Journal of Social Research Methodology 43
approach I adopted. However, practical problems made this difficult to realize. Often
it was not feasible to seek the consent of all those encountered. Members of the public,
whether victims, witnesses or enquirers, sometimes were told of the research and
assured that I was not interested in their personal details. Often when officers intro-
duced me they described my role in generic terms—’he’s a researcher from the Univer-
sity’—that actually revealed little about what I was doing, or they mis-described me as
‘an occupational psychologist’, ‘criminal profiler’, or—in jest—‘the chief constable’.
Fetterman’s purist approach might have required me to clarify my position, but to do
so would have damaged my relation with officers since it might have got in the way of
their main business. While people were asked for their permission before I entered
their home, for example, it was rare that they were in a position to withhold their
consent, or at least could not do so without inconvenience or embarrassment. Equally,
those who had been victims of crime, or witnesses, may have been vulnerable or
distressed, and it is highly likely that they did not properly understand the research. In
such circumstances, the extent to which consent was given in a meaningful way was
limited. Very occasionally people taken into custody were asked if they had any
objection to my presence. Again the extent to which consent could be offered in
aproperly ‘informed’ manner seems likely to have been restricted by the subordinate
position of the arrestee.
The ethical dilemmas arising from such encounters were mitigated by a number of
factors. First, anonymity was ensured by the data protection agreement signed with the
police service, which stated that no personal details would be divulged, and that my
research notes would be kept in a secure environment. Furthermore, only minimal
details of individuals were recorded; certainly, no full names or precise locations were
included. Despite the fact that the research was conducted on an ethical basis in the
strict narrow sense, it was unavoidable that, by encountering members of the public in
situations of distress, there was a danger that details of their private lives were being
extrapolated and that they were often unable to properly consent to this. Watching for
several hours as officers and paramedics dealt with a man who had attempted suicide
was a deeply uncomfortable experience in terms of research ethics: clearly he had not
consented to my presence. With relevance to this study, Hey reflected on her study of
schoolgirl friendships that ‘despite seeking to establish non-exploitative field relations,
I was never able to evade the facts … not only was I generally more powerful than most
of the girls but my agenda was in part to appropriate parts of their lives for my own use’
(2002, p. 75). Fundamentally, though, these individuals were not my research subjects
in the strict sense, as my focus was on the perspectives and behaviour of police officers.
Relations with officers were negotiated on an ongoing basis and their informed
consent was sought, although this too was subject to certain qualification related to the
institutional context in which the research was conducted. While I explained the
rationale of the work and offered officers the opportunity to decline to participate, in
practice it was unlikely that any would do so, and in fact none did. Since shift sergeants
were responsible, with informal negotiation involving myself and the PCs, for allocat-
ing me to particular officers as each shift began work, the extent to which they were in
a position to opt out of the study was limited by the implicit power relations at play. As
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Tul
ane
Uni
vers
ity]
at 1
0:42
29
Aug
ust 2
013
44 M. Rowe
the sergeants were in a position of authority over the PCs, it must be assumed that their
assent to my presence was informed, in part at least, by the recognition that it was their
supervisor who was ‘requesting’ that they accommodate me during the shift. Norris
encountered a similar problem and noted that ‘when sergeants assigned me to specific
officers it was difficult to know whether having me along constituted an order’ (1993,
p. 129). Although officers tended to be friendly toward me, it might be assumed that
those who were less enthusiastic may have simply kept their reservations hidden even
as they accepted that I would be observing their work.
The fluid nature of policing meant that officers were encountered who did not know
what my role was. Although I became familiar to most officers working in the stations
included in the study, there were occasions when I observed other officers who had no
idea of my role. Sometimes I was introduced; more usually, circumstances meant that
this was not possible. While it might be, as with members of the public, that these
officers were not the direct subjects of the research, it is clear that their perspectives on
police work inform the study’s findings. It must also be noted that officers may not
have fully understood the scope of the project and remit of issues that were of interest.
This difficulty was compounded since there was no direct opportunity, in most cases,
to explain the research in detail. While a document outlining the project had been
circulated, in practice few officers had seen it.
‘Guilty Knowledge and Dirty Hands’
My prior reading of ethnographic accounts of police work left me with the impression
that it was likely that I would encounter malpractice or unethical behaviour of some
kind. Such an experience might mean that I would need to choose between reporting
officers, and so breaking the promise of anonymity that I had made, or ‘turning a blind
eye’, and so conniving in behaviour that was itself unethical, illegal, or both. Relating
to his own ethical dilemmas, discussed further below, Norris points out that the ‘soci-
ological literature on policing includes well-documented cases of police deviance … if
I had not contemplated having to face such an issue I would, indeed, have been naïve’
(1993, p. 140). In discussing his study of policing in Amsterdam, Punch made a similar
point, noting that: ‘the literature on the police alerts one to widespread and deeply
engrained malpractices such as corruption, mistreatment of suspects, racial prejudice
and the denial of rights to suspects’ (1979, p. 12). Fetterman defines the twin problems
in the following terms:
Guilty knowledge is confidential knowledge of illegal or illicit activities. Dirty hands refers
to situations in which the ethnographer cannot emerge innocent of wrongdoing. (1989,
p. 135)
Having re-visited much of the ethnographic literature on police work (Foster, 1989;
Holdaway, 1983; Marks, 2004; Norris, 1993; Punch, 1979; Westmarland, 2001), one of
the striking features of my own research is that I did not experience any incidents of
serious malpractice. Norris (1993, pp. 133–135) witnessed a situation in which officers
used excessive force on a prisoner and then concocted charges against him. Punch
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Tul
ane
Uni
vers
ity]
at 1
0:42
29
Aug
ust 2
013
International Journal of Social Research Methodology 45
(1979) uncovered, somewhat inadvertently, rumours of corruption. Marks (2004,
pp. 876–881) described her experience with the public order unit in Durban on night
patrol during which she was instructed how to use an Uzi machine gun, asked to search
a female suspect and warned by officers that some of their activities were likely to shock
her. She described how she ‘felt morally compromised by knowing that many of the
responses of the platoon were brutal and completely disregarding of the human rights
framework that was supposed to guide police behaviour’ (Marks, 2004, p. 879).
Accounts of racist, sexist and other forms of offensive language litter the police studies
literature (Graef, 1990; Reiner, 1978), but this too was relatively rare given that it seems
to have been an endemic feature of police subculture as described in other studies.
Against the expectations raised by this literature, the ethical dilemmas I faced were
relatively minor. There are a number of reasons why this may have been the case. First,
it may have been a matter of happenstance. Although I spent more than 600 hours
completing the study, it is possible that I did not witness incidents of serious wrong-
doing, just as I did not deal with the serious road accidents that officers confidently
predicted I would be faced with. I did not accompany officers to the scene of a murder
or a street robbery, and yet such events, especially the latter, do feature in police work.
It is possible that other researchers have sought out more dramatic aspects of police
work. Furthermore, it might be that I did witness such events, but that I did not judge
that officers had behaved inappropriately. Certainly there were circumstances in which
officers used violence, but, even having carefully reviewed my field notes, I judged this
to have been proportionate. On one occasion officers used some force to restrain a
drunk prisoner, who had been highly aggressive prior to arrest. Upon arrival at the
custody suite the man calmed down, but as his handcuffs were removed inside the cell
he tried again to physically assault officers. In response, several staff rushed in and
jumped on him until his hands and feet could once again be secured. As this was done
the custody sergeant looked at me with some concern and asked who I was and what I
was doing. He seemed acutely aware that I had witnessed events, but I did not think that
the force used had been excessive: as soon as he stopped struggling officers desisted and
once he was re-secured they left him alone in the cell. Perhaps another researcher
would have reached a different conclusion.
Third, it is possible that officers successfully hid their malpractice from me and
managed to dupe me in relation to their real attitudes and activities. This would be
consistent with Punch’s experience, where it was only towards the end of his research
that he began to realize that their deviance had been successfully concealed (Punch,
1979). A recurring theme among police officers during my study was to remind one
another that I had concealed surveillance equipment and that I was from the ‘integrity
squad’ sent from headquarters to check on them. While superficially said in jest, this
does indicate that officers, for all their candour, did not entirely forget that an outsider
was present. Reiner noted that while these problems are generic to participant observa-
tion research, they are especially acute in the context of policing, since ‘… there is the
particular skill officers are likely to have in tactics for covering up what they do not
want known. Police researchers are investigating subjects whose job it is to investigate
the deviance of others’ (2000, p. 219).
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Tul
ane
Uni
vers
ity]
at 1
0:42
29
Aug
ust 2
013
46 M. Rowe
While I did not have experiences relating to ‘guilty knowledge and dirty hands’ to
rival those of other researchers in terms of drama or seriousness, there were times when
I witnessed incidents or heard things that caused concern. The most prominent of these
related to an incident in which an officer lied to a victim of a minor crime. Having
listened to her account of the recent theft of a mobile phone by a youth known to her—
and to the police—the officer and I left, telling her that we would go and speak to the
offender and find out what he had to say. Even at this stage I was surprised by the direct
way in which the officer challenged the woman’s version of events by telling her that
‘you shouldn’t have lent it to him if you knew he was a thief’. Once we had left, the
officer told me that in his opinion the woman may not have had her phone stolen at all;
she had some form of learning difficulties and could have loaned her phone to the
youth who had failed to return it as agreed. Even if this were not the case, and he had
stolen it, he would tell us that he had borrowed the phone since he would be astute
enough to lie his way out of trouble. Given the woman’s vulnerability she would not be
a credible witness, and the youth’s account was likely to be accepted. In any event this
was, to repeat a phrase much used by officers, a ‘weary job’: one that related to a minor
incident and offered little or no prospect of any criminal proceedings. The constable
told me that his next step was to tell
a little white lie, I’m going to tell her that I spoke to [the youth’s] mother and she promises
to make him bring the phone back as soon as he gets home. There’s no point making a
crime report, or a statement. We would have got the same result after two hours’ paper-
work, so why bother? And I don’t like getting my pen out.
After a brief drive around the neighbourhood we returned to the woman’s house and
the officer gave her this version of events.
I was surprised by this episode: both that the officer had lied to the woman and that
he had been so open to me about it. I did not disagree with his interpretation of events,
or that there was little chance of recovering her property. However, my experience
during the study was that officers were quite candid with victims in these circum-
stances. That the woman had learning difficulties seemed to compound the problem as
far as I was concerned, and I identified that three options were available to me: to say
nothing, to discuss the matter with the officer or, most gravely, to report it to a more
senior officer. The first of these protected my position as a researcher since it meant
that I was not intervening. However, this meant that I was doing nothing to address the
officer’s inappropriate behaviour—which clearly fell short of the proclaimed standards
of the police service that stipulate that officers would ‘provide support and reassurance
in a fair and professional manner’.
Alternatively, I could have reported the episode to a senior officer and left the service
to take the appropriate action. In terms of Israel’s review of the grounds for guarantee-
ing subject confidentiality (Israel, 2004), this would have been against the duty of fidel-
ity made while securing access. Israel also noted that consequentialist arguments are
often used to justify maintaining confidentiality, and negative repercussions were
envisaged in this context as it would have been difficult to regain the trust of other
officers. Furthermore, it would potentially spoil the field for future researchers, which
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Tul
ane
Uni
vers
ity]
at 1
0:42
29
Aug
ust 2
013
International Journal of Social Research Methodology 47
runs contrary to the BSA code of ethics. In this case I decided not to refer the matter to
any other party, primarily because I judged that the gravity of the officer’s action
weighed less heavily than the possible consequences that may follow from a reporting
of it. Ultimately this response was based upon a calculation of outcome rather than the
content of the action—and so reflects broader debates about the status of ethics in a
postmodern era. Bauman (1993) has noted that ethical certainty is difficult to secure in
postmodern times, marked by an absence of social norms. While this might be liberat-
ing in some respects, it tends to replace a coherent ethical framework with ‘… the strag-
gly shoots of never ending, never resolved moral anxiety’ (Bauman, 1993, p. 80).
Promises of anonymity are conditional, however. If an officer had committed a crimi-
nal offence of a serious nature then I might have decided that details had to be passed
on to authorities inside or outside of the police service. Even in such circumstances
though, as Norris (1993, p. 140) notes, such decisions will always remain a matter of
judgement—what constitutes a ‘serious’ offence?—and it might be that the public
interest is best served not by ‘blowing the whistle’ in response to the first instance of
deviance but by keeping quiet and trying to establish ‘structural regularities’ that might
provide a more rigorous basis from which reform can be instigated.
Conclusion: Situational Ethics and Reflexivity
Reviewing my field notes and the experiences of other researchers who have conducted
ethnographic studies of policework, similarities are apparent in terms of negotiating
access and gathering reliable data. The formal negotiation process regarding access
proved relatively straightforward. Informally, though, access was an ongoing matter of
negotiation for the duration of the study. As others have also noted, I can never be sure
of the extent to which I won the trust of the officers that I observed and it is likely that
some officers framed their attitudes and behaviour. To that extent my experiences were
broadly consistent with those of other ethnographers.
Where my experience diverged was in the absence of dramatic ethical dilemmas
faced during my 18 weeks on patrol. I found molehills where I had expected moun-
tains. One reason for this may have been the focus on studying the normal routine of
police work. The issues faced by researchers such as Punch (1979) or Norris (1993)
have been alluded to in the previous discussion of the ethics of ‘guilty knowledge and
dirty hands’. Reiner (2000) recalled the dilemma he faced a few days before the 1987
general election having been given information by a senior officer that, should he have
revealed it to the media, might have had a significant impact on the political agenda.
Before beginning my research I was aware that I might witness events or uncover infor-
mation that would raise ethical conundrums. Other researchers might bear in mind
that, just as policing can be dull, repetitive and mundane, so too the experiences of the
police researcher can be less than sensational. However, there were ethical issues to be
faced even in the ordinary. Ultimately I think I arrived at the correct decision in the
circumstances, but it is hard to draw general conclusions of prescriptive value. It is the
nature of ethnographic research that the principles contained in methodological
textbooks or professional codes of conduct will be stretched and perhaps distorted as
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Tul
ane
Uni
vers
ity]
at 1
0:42
29
Aug
ust 2
013
48 M. Rowe
they are applied in dynamic situations. Since policing is unpredictable, the ethical
dilemmas police researchers might face cannot be easily anticipated. Given this,
Norris’s conclusion that ethics are inevitably situational (Norris, 1993) was borne out
in this study. If an absolute code of ethics is not feasible, researchers must be prepared
to be reflexive in terms of ethical dilemmas and the methodological difficulties experi-
enced in securing informed consent and meaningful access to research subjects.
References
Bauman, Z. (1993). Postmodern ethics. Oxford: Blackwell.
British Broadcasting Corporation (2003, 21 October). The secret policeman. Documentary, BBC1.
British Sociological Association (2002). Statement of ethical practice for the British Sociological
Association, http://britsoc.co.uk (accessed 24 February 2005).
Emerson, R. M, Fretz, R. I., & Shaw, L. L. (1995). Writing ethnographic fieldnotes. Chicago, IL:
University of Chicago Press.
Fetterman, D. M. (1989). Ethnography: Step-by-step. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
Fielding, N. (1993). Ethnography. In N. Gilbert (Ed.), Researching social life (pp. 154–171). London:
Sage.
Foster, J. (1989). Two stations: An ethnographic study of policing in the inner city. In D. Downes
(Ed.), Crime and the city: Essays in memory of John Barron Mays (pp. 128–153). London:
Macmillan.
Fountain, J. (1993). Dealing with data. In D. Hobbs & T. May (Eds.), Interpreting the field: Accounts
of ethnography (pp. 145–173). Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Graef, R. (1990). Talking blues: The police in their own words. London: Fontana.
Hey, V. (2002). ‘Not as nice as she was supposed to be’: Schoolgirls’ friendships. In S. Taylor (Ed.),
Ethnographic research: A reader (pp. 67–90). London: Sage.
Holdaway, S. (1983). Inside the British Police. Oxford: Blackwell.
Israel, M. (2004). Strictly confidential?: Integrity and the disclosure of criminological and socio-legal
research. British Journal of Criminology, 44(5), 715–740.
Jupp, V. (1989). Methods of criminological research. London: Routledge.
Marks, M. (2004). Researching police transformation: The ethnographic imperative. British Journal
of Criminology, 44, 866–888.
Norris, C. (1993). Some ethical considerations on field-work with the police. In D. Hobbs & T. May
(Eds.), Interpreting the field: Accounts of ethnography (pp. 122–143). Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Punch, M. (1979). Policing the inner city. London: Macmillan.
Reiner, R. (1978). The blue-coated worker: A sociological study of police unionism. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Reiner, R. (2000). Police research. In R. D. King & E. Wincup (Eds.), Doing research on crime and
justice (pp. 205–235). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
van Maanen, J. (1995). An end to innocence: The ethnography of ethnography. In J. van Maanen
(Ed.), Representations in ethnography (pp. 1–35). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Waddington, P. A. J. (1999). Policing citizens. London: UCL Press.
Westmarland, L. (2001). Gender and policing. Cullompton: Willan Publishing.
Whyte, W. F. (1969/1943). Street corner society—The social structure of an Italian slum. Chicago, IL:
University of Chicago Press.
Willis, P. (2000). The ethnographic imagination. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Tul
ane
Uni
vers
ity]
at 1
0:42
29
Aug
ust 2
013
