Three Forces: Comparing Space and Place
摘要
Continuing the theme of autoethnography, this chapter moves the story of the scenario-based surveys into police behaviour forward by about 10 years. After a hiatus where I went back to ethnographies of policing, including a study of US homicide officers’ ethical attitudes and opinions (Westmarland, Police Integrity Feedback Report, The Open University, Milton Keynes, 2013a; Westmarland. An International Journal of Research and Policy, 23(3):311–327, 2013b) I returned to surveying UK police officers. Once again it uses the ‘Klockars’ scale and scenarios to collect data from serving police officers. It analyses police perspectives on the seriousness of potential misconduct or unethical behaviour. As in the previous chapter, it looks the factors that might shape whether they would report their colleagues’ misdemeanours. In this particular study however, first published in the journal Policing and Society, online in 2016 and in printed form in 2018, we compared responses from police officers in UK three forces, to compare attitudes in contrasting forces from various parts of the UK. As before, the discussion includes why some types of misbehaviour seem more likely to be reported and in the original paper the potential effects of a newly introduced formal UK Home Office’s Code of Ethics were discussed.