A fly on the wall?Ethical challenges in doing fieldwork the police

Lars Holmberg, Ph.D.Associate Professor,Faculty of Law

The problem of consent in police research

• Policing involves encounters with citizens, victims, suspects and arrestees

• Many of these encounters are involuntary• Police encounter many people in different stages of

distress• The researcher wants to witness all kinds of

encounters – while at the same time maintaining an ethically defensible research position, including obtaining consent

But:• Will the police consent to be observed?• Will – and can – the public consent?

Outline of the presentation

1. Why study policing, and why participant observation?

2. Ethical challenges in qualitative research in general

3. Ethical challenges regarding the police4. Ethical challenges regarding the public5. Ethical challenges regarding people in police

custody6. The impact of research7. Can participant observation of police work be

defended?

1) Why study the police?

Public interest:• Police officers are vested with great power• Officers enjoy a large degree of discretionary

freedom• Decisions made by the police may influence

citizens’ lives a great deal• Public oversight of the police is limited

Police interest:• Acknowledgement• Informed dissent(?)

Why participant observation?

“Participant observation is the self-evident method” (Finstad 2000)

• Police work is partly invisible• Many decisions leave little or no trace

• Police work may be guided by implicit policies• Such policies are very hard to discover in

any other way• Participation gives insight into the interplay of

actions and attitudes

Why participant observation? - II

What people say they do is often different from what they actually do

Participant observation of policing:a bundle of approaches

• Observation of police officers on duty• Observation of police officers off duty• Smalltalk, smalltalk, smalltalk • Interviews with officers

• Formal and informal, taped or recollected

• Participation in incidents • Observation of encounters• Talks with citizens, victims, suspects and

arrestees

2) Participant observation:Ethical challenges in general

• Gaining access to the field• Who should one ask – and how?• Can a few consent for all?

• The role of the researcher• Defining and explaining the project• Friend or spy?• Does the researcher’s presence influence

situations?• What about the results?

• Studies have impact – and researchers are subjective

• Replication is not possible

3) Participant observation:Ethical challenges in (police) organizations

• Management decides – in principle• Can management consent for the rank and

file?• The police feel alienated from the public – and

expect the impossible from the researcher• “It would be really good if someone finally

could tell it as it really is!”• Management must oversee – and react to

misconduct• If you tell it like it is, it may have serious,

personal consequences for the police force or for individual officers

• A researcher’s influence may have serious consequences for citizens/suspects

Participant observation:Practical challenges in police organizations

Possibilities for participation are limited

• Problems of legality• Problems of uniform• Concerns for safety

Ethical challenges – and practical solutionsPersonal guidelines as they emerged

• I maintained a researcher’s identity• I openly maintained a field diary• I sometimes let officers read fieldnotes

• I imposed myself on the hostile informants• But would respect an open denial of contact

• I did not discuss personnel with managers• Once bitten, twice shy

• I never vented my opinions about managers with personnel

• I never gossiped about individuals in private• But often joked about them to their face

Ethical problems regarding police officers

Can – over time – be satisfactorily overcome

4) Ethical challenges in encounters with the public

The central problem:Does the researcher need consent from citizens?

If so – how can it be obtained?

The general experience: People rarely ask about you!

Consent in public space

The police encounter a lot of people in a day’s workTo obtain consent to my presence from them all would:

1. Be a formidable task2. Be extremely time-consuming

For me, and for the officers3. Probably interfere with police work in a

number of situationsPossibly influence the results of the study

The solution in the public sphere

I didn’t try to obtain consent from the public

In defence of this solution:• Public space is public

People can be observed and/or photographed by other citizens, the media, and CCTV

• Most encounters were brief and unobtrusive• I had very little direct contact with citizens• I have maintained citizens’ anonymity

All personal information has been changed

The problem of consent in the private sphere

Citizens have a right to privacy in their own homeIs consent to the researcher’s presence a problem?

• Most citizens have little experience with the police• Many subject themselves willingly to police

authority• Victims calling the police may be in a state of

distress

Can consent be informed in such circumstances?

The problem of privacy – for the police

Conflicts of interest:• The police want to get the assignment done as

expediently as possible• The police want to maintain their relationship with

the public• The police also want to ‘do the right thing’

• They seek to obtain consent to the researcher’s presence from citizens

The problem of privacy – for the researcher

• The researcher wants access • But not intrusion

• The researcher wants to minimize his/her influence on the incident• To see ‘the real thing’• Not to complicate police work

• Police work is unpredictable• There is no way of staying away from the

ethically problematic incidents – except staying away entirely

The problem of privacy – practical solution

• Laying low and letting the police do the talking• I acknowledged and explained my role when

asked – but only when asked• The police often presented me ‘almost one of us’

‘He’s a sort of apprentice’‘He’s here to see how we do our job

• I was lucky

Another ethical problem

Police may be in the wrong – and their decisions impact citizen’s lives

To what extent can/should a researcher interfere when

• Officers misunderstand a situation• Officers abuse their power• Officers disregard the law or their guidelines• Officers discriminate

5) And yet another: suspects and arrestees

• Police encounters are almost always of a coercive nature – implicitly or explicitly • Suspects and arrestees have their privacy

violated as a routine part of police work• Suspects and arrestees are most often

exclusively focussed on the police• The researcher often goes unnoticed

• Can they consent to the researcher’s presence while under arrest?

• How would a demand for consent influence the situation?• And what if they said no?

When with suspects and arresteesPractical – and questionable – solutions

Principle of least possible interference – in most circumstances

• I never volunteered information that could incriminate suspects

• I did present my observations on factual matters – when asked

• I did not take an active part in frisking or house searches – not witness to strip searches

• I did – occasionally – offer information that would point to the innocence of suspects

A decision based on ethical considerations: If I was wrong, no great harm was doneThe ideal of innocence until proven guilty

6) A different ethical problem: the impact of research?

Police research may lead to improvements in policing – and thus in police-citizen encounters

This does not pose any ethical challenge

But what if it leads to the opposite? Two possible examples:• Increased distrust in the police resulting in

increased hostility• Decreased trust in ‘symbolic policing’

resulting in increased level of fear

7) Can participant observation of police work be defended? Utilitarian arguments

• Civilian oversight of the police is limited• The police need critique

• But they will dismiss all ‘outside’ criticism as being uninformed

• Participant observation is necessary for the study of policing. Without it, I would not know that…• Police sometimes coerce people to consent to

searches• Police threaten suspects into revealing drugs• Police rely on stereotypes when doing stop and search• Officers may choose to look away, when they believe

their partners will resort to unlawful use of power• And a lot of other things…

• Research may result in improved policing

Can participant observation of police work be defended? Proportional arguments

• Police work is intrusive. The researcher’s presence adds little to the invasion of privacy that is a frequent part of police work in general

• In comparison with other privacy invasions suffered by citizens in modern society, participant observation is – in general – not very serious.

Can participant observation of police work be defended? Arguments against

Even if observation of policing in the public sphere is acceptable, observation in private is not

• Citizens have a right to privacy, and should be asked for consent

• Even though researchers study the police, they will get access to a lot of other – possibly intimate – information about citizens’ lives

• Informed consent is difficult to obtain in the kinds of situations that police are responding to

• Informed consent is crucial in all forms of research• Practical hindrances cannot not legitimize a

dispensation

The official stance at the moment

The Swedish government says no• When informed consent is impossible to obtain, research

cannot be allowed• No more ride-alongs in Sweden

The Norwegian Ethics Board says Yes and No• Observation of police is OK in the public sphere• Researchers can no longer follow police into private

homes

Other Western countries including Denmark – so far• Pragmatic solutions

• Do the observation• Do not contact citizens, suspects or detainees that you

encounter during fieldwork

A personal conclusion

• Participant observation of policing can be defended, but should be limited• Clarification of rules are needed

• Banning participant observation would seriously impair police research in general

A prediction for the (near) future:• Participant observation of police work will be

limited/completely banned• The explicit reason will be ethics/consent• The implicit reason may (also) be to avoid

insight/critique