Legality, Recognition, and the Bind of Legal Cynicism: Experiences of Policing During an Unsettled Time

• In Event: 1240 - Law and Culture

Abstract

This paper examines how people make sense of their continued reliance on an institution that was declared to be unjust. We draw on a unique data set of 60 semi-structured interviews with recently arrested suspects in Cleveland, Ohio – a city currently under federal consent decree due to police use of excessive force. In line with past research, we find that when confronted with unjust conditions, respondents are both skeptical about policing while still believing that the police remain the only viable institution for seeking security in their neighborhoods. Through these interviews we shed light on this apparent paradox by connecting research on legal cynicism with insights from cultural sociology and the sociology of law. In doing so, we examine how people make sense of a bind. On one hand, they reside in a city where the police department is being monitored for excessive use-of-force, and where people report high levels of fear of police; on the other, people identify law enforcement as a much needed and wanted presence in their neighborhoods. We argue that arrested residents of Cleveland make sense of this bind by drawing on multiple and enduring scripts of law enforcement’s potential, in spite of current police failures to provide redress for their situations. We conclude that these scripts allow them to aspire to legal recognition despite experiencing the unjustness of legal institutions, and that the polysemic quality of legality provides them with a cultural tool that helps to reconcile the bind in which they find themselves.

Authors

• Holly Campeau, University of Alberta

• Ron Levi, University of Toronto

• Todd Foglesong, University of Toronto