Coercion, consent, and the policing crisis: a sociological critique of procedural justice theory

• In Event: Theoretical Perspectives in Critical Criminology

Abstract

This paper takes a critical approach to understanding the emergence of the ‘Procedural Justice Theory’ (PJT) research canon, mapping its spread from the academy to street policing. Placing PJT in the context of the rise of Evidence Based Policing (EBP) and the ‘professionalisation’ of the police, the paper traces the ways in which so-called ‘value neutral’ PJT research has been increasingly imposed upon and utilised by police departments as an ‘evidence-led’, PR friendly and low-cost means to respond to ongoing crises of authority and legitimacy among the public. These reform projects may contain a kernel of well-intentioned aims to reduce suffering among policed members of the public. In practice however, I argue, these ameliorative programmes have only been able to ‘stick’ due to their ability to generate compliance, submission and public/political support for increasingly authoritarian and controversial forms of criminal legal system and coercive state interventions. Drawing on revisionist histories of the police and the work of Antonio Gramsci (via Stuart Hall) I argue that this use of ‘consent-building’ and reforms to due process alongside increasing authoritarianism is not an historical aberration but, rather, speaks to a recurring role of liberal-capitalist states in times of social and economic crisis.

Author

• Tim Head, University of Essex