Impactos ambientales y riesgos ambientales

One strong common feature o f all interviewees was the very positive attitude towards order and discipline as the foundation for a "decent" way of life, the need for discipline was repeated again and again in relation to the inadequacy o f eduction, the family, the effects o f the media, unemployment and so on. Perhaps one of the most striking indicators o f the extent to which police officers identify their own occupation with discipline was the large number of ex-servicemen and the reasons they gave for joining the police service.

46.2.1 Ex-services

There has been a good deal of debate in police studies about whether the characteristics of police occupational culture and police psychology are derived from the nature of the work itself or from the type of people who tend to join the police. As suggested in chapter 2, the former explanation has been favoured. One interesting example o f where the latter may hold at least some water, however, is in the case o f recruitment o f ex-service men and women. Again and again one hears them explain that they were drawn to the police because they were used to a disciplined, hierarchical, and highly ordered, environment and they believed that this was what they would find in the police force.

When I came out o f the Royal Navy I applied to join the Police Force. 1 was used to a uniformed environment, disciplined environment. V3

Asked whether he felt that his forces background affected his attitude to the job he said

It is useful in the station. It doesn't, 1 don't think, do any good out on the street. However, it may affect the way you speak with different people because you are speaking to people who you feel are senior to yourself and you speak to them differently than to people who you feel are below yourself. V3

4.6.2 2 Ambivalent feelings about PACE

The general desire for order, clear cut boundaries, and predictability pervades much of what police officers feel and believe. One interesting and surprising example however was with regard to the Police and Criminal

Evidence Act (PACE). A mixture of feelings emerged. Some, especially older officers, felt that it had tied there hands with regulations. They felt that it had reduced their discretion. For other, perhaps younger or at least shorter serving officers, however, it had brought a welcome order and predictability in an increasingly ambiguous and threatening world

The big worry with PACE was that it was going to screw us all down, 1 don't think it has really, 1 think you've got to live with it. Some people try to bend the rules and you just can't do. 1 don't think there is any problem, you don't have to bend the rules, if you stick by it. That way there is no grey areas, there is black and white and that is that. There's no worries, you either do it, if you don't you're in trouble. You've lost the job, it obviously standardises it all. T3

4 6.2.3 Use o f discretion in combatting the threat to order

As I have already indicated, police officers believe that punishments affect different people differently depending on their social standing. Do they act on the basis o f such beliefs however? An area in which it is clear that they do is in that of using discretion regarding whether an individual should be "booked" or verbally cautioned ("advised”) for a minor offence. Officers explain that in the case of a minor offence they will tend to give a verbal warning when they believe it will be sufficient. They gauge this on the basis of the appearance and attitude of the offender. The major pre-requisite is that the offender should show signs of remorse and an acceptance of police authority and definition of the situation. Another thing to take into account is whether an individual's attitude and appearance suggest that the offence committed was a one off or whether it is part of a general life style involving criminal and generally irresponsible activity. So using discretion is all about having a feeling for the level of threat, danger, criminality which lies beneath the crime itself. Apparently very similar circumstances can be dealt with very differently by the police officer depending upon how he feels about the situation.

It's only a proportion of the community that have ever committed these offenses. Occasionally you get the odd one that crops up and has never committed an offence before. Sometimes the best way of dealing with that kind o f person is a caution which I've done in the past If I think this is a one-off job and it's not too serious then I think sometimes its better off to treat him. He's made one slip up, perhaps he'll never make it again. V2

Of course this necessity for (and desire for) discretion can find itself in tension with the desire for clear cut rules, as indicated in the last section. This is yet another source of unwelcome ambivalent feelings.

4.6.2 4 "Pet hates" and "gypsies warnings": The enjoyment o f willing order

1 think, though, that we can get much deeper into the affective structure of discretion. Speaking about the more informal dimensions to police-work this officer commented that

People have pet hates, rightly or wrongly.... For instance no seat belts is an offence, and that is my pet hate. I won't go looking for somebody but I will stop someone with no seat belts. It all stems from something as simple as that and it goes up all the way. If you go to a large disturbance, again a lot of the time you go for it and it's all over bar the shouting. Most officers will try, if somebody' is mouthing off to try and calm them down some other way. That's the way to do it I think. You have to. You will get the gypsies warning, you will get a couple o f warnings and that's it. He's overstepped the line he's got to come. Policemen don't just go and nick people straight away. I am sure if you can send somebody off with a little bit o f advice to calm down a bit that's got to be a better idea. T3

These two instances of informal aspects of police-craft are directly linked somehow in the police officer's mind. At first glance it is difficult to see precisely how this is so. "Pet hates" are all about pro-active intervention where others might turn a blind eye, "gypsies warnings" are all about giving someone a second chance where you could in fact go much further. I would suggest that what links these occasions is the pleasure o f exercising powers of discretion. Lurking behind the power o f discretion is always the threat of potential violence - "he's overstepped the line, he's got to come". The world must conform to authoritarian desires. Where it does not it is threatening and disgusting. The authoritarian will asserts itself, first verbally and then physically, but it will gain conformity and respect.

As I suggested in the section on laughing and being laughed at' (section 4.1.3.6), this complex o f feelings is compounded by the conviction that the disrespecter of authority is laughing at authority and will do so all the more if it does not assert its will most firmly.

4.6.3.0 Towards a tvpoloyv of affective orientations

It has become commonplace in the police studies literature to assert the existence of a number o f types' of onentation to police-work. Robert Reiner's summary o f this work pulls the various typologies together to come up with four distinct types. These are "the bobby", "the new centurion", "the uniform carrier" and "the professional" (these were discussed in section 2.5.0 of Chapter 2) 18 If we focus on these types not as types of officer but as possible subject positions, and then look at them from an the point of view of affect, 1 think that they begin to resolve slightly differently. 1 would say that there are two general groups of subject positions which I would loosely label "the re-moralisers" and "the despisers". Within these two broad groups there are a number o f subgroups. The category of the "professional" for example cuts across both o f these groups. There are upwardly mobile "re-moralisers" and "despisers". There are also demoralised and even despairing sub-groups on each side. There are also hedonistic and non-hedonistic "despisers".