Demystifying Deaths in Police Custody: Challenging State Talk
| Published date | 01 June 2008 |
| Author | Simon Pemberton |
| DOI | 10.1177/0964663908089614 |
| Date | 01 June 2008 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
POLICE CUSTODY:
CHALLENGING STATE TALK
SIMON PEMBERTON
University of Bristol, UK
ABSTRACT
This article seeks to understand the processes which occur after a death in police
custody in England and Wales. The analytical focus falls upon the identities which
are attributed to the victim by state actors. It will be argued that these identities are
part of a discursive formation ‘state talk’ which seeks to inflate the dangers faced by
state actors in order to legitimate their often oppressive interventions in the lives of
marginalized groups. A death in police custody poses serious questions about these
interventions. Consequently, considerable ideological attention is required to ensure
hegemonic support for coercive state apparatus. This article seeks to challenge the
discourses of danger and disorder that state talk preaches in order to maintain author-
itarian populism’s hold over the historical bloc. Drawing upon a number of empiri-
cal sources, the article interrogates these narratives and presents a series of alternative
truths about deaths in police custody.
KEY WORDS
authoritarianism; custody; neglect; police; populism; violence
INTRODUCTION
Even when Roger was still on life support, the press was manipulated to portray
negative images of him; you see, when someone dies in custody and it is suspi-
cious this is what usually happens. Immediately, the press is used to blame the
victim for their death . . . No opportunity was missed to demonise Roger.
(Bernard Renwick, Roger Sylvester Justice Campaign)
SOCIAL & LEGAL STUDIES Copyright © 2008 SAGE Publications
Los Angeles, London, New Delhi and Singapore, www.sagepublications.com
0964 6639, Vol. 17(2), 237–262
DOI: 10.1177/0964663908089614
238
SOCIAL & LEGAL STUDIES 17(2)
THISARTICLEISconcerned with the events that occur when someone
dies in police custody and the identities which are attached to such
victims. It argues that these identities are manipulated by the discur-
sive formations of the state for wider ideological purposes. Deaths in police
custody raise a number of questions and these represent a point of conflict
within the hegemony that surrounds the coercive apparatus of the state. Ulti-
mately, these deaths must be explained to prevent the unravelling of this
hegemony and the loss of the apparatus’ legitimacy. In order to explore this
process, the article draws upon Sim’s (2000a, 2004) use of Corrigan and
Sayer’s (1985) notion of state talk. Sim deploys state talk to describe the
discursive processes whereby state servants within the criminal justice system,
misrepresent the dangers their jobs present to legitimate their often coercive
interventions in civil society. In the context of deaths in police custody, the
presentation of certain identities within state talk – the ‘brave and besieged’
front line police officer alongside the ‘violent’, ‘dangerous’, or ‘feckless’ victim
– have arguably served to obfuscate the reality of the victim’s vulnerability
and the levels of police violence and neglect. Moreover, this process of mysti-
fication seeks to negate wider structural questions of a social system where
increasing numbers of vulnerable people – mentally ill, drug- and alcohol-
dependent individuals – are being drawn into the criminal justice system, as
it continues to replace the welfare state as a means to deal with social
problems (Christie, 1993; Bauman, 2000). Yet despite the difficult questions
these cases pose, the narratives which emerge as a consequence of state talk
have arguably consolidated rather than weakened the ‘authoritarian’ populism
which pervades our ‘law and order’ society (Hall, 1980).
The article is divided into three sections. The first situates deaths in police
custody within a broad structural and ideological context. It will be argued
that these deaths should be considered within the developments of authori-
tarian statism; the expansion of the criminal justice system and the contrac-
tion of the welfare state. Given the structural determinants of these deaths,
the article investigates how authoritarian populism has ensured continued
support for the current mode of social organization. The second section
describes the discursive formation of state talk, which presents starkly
contrasting identities of the victim and officers involved. The final section
seeks to understand the social processes that circulate these messages and
ensure that they are received.
DEATHS IN POLICE CUSTODY: THE AUTHORITARIAN STATE AND
AUTHORITARIAN POPULISM
Police custody deaths should not be viewed as isolated or random events.
Rather, their analysis should refer to the broader structural conditions which
surround them (Sim, 2000b). Consequently, this section of the article will
locate current trends within the specific mode of social organization that
prevails within the United Kingdom. The first part of this section seeks to
PEMBERTON: DEMYSTIFYING DEATHS IN POLICE CUSTODY
239
persuade the reader of these structural determinants. The remainder of the
section attempts to understand the ideological and discursive formations
which exist to explain these deaths and, ultimately, legitimate the structural
conditions that perpetuate them.
AUTHORITARIAN STATISM AND DEATHS IN POLICE CUSTODY
For Poulantzas (1978), the 1970s marked a distinct historical conjuncture,
whereby capitalist states expanded and intensified their coercive apparatus.
Poulantzas termed this process authoritarian statism. In the UK, the embodi-
ment of this shift is often seen to be the demise of the post-war consensus
and the corresponding rise of the ‘New Right’, culminating in Margaret
Thatcher’s 1979 election victory. Thatcher had an unstinting faith in the
market as a force for social ‘good’ and this determined her ‘remoulding’ of
the state. If the market was to be ‘free’, wealth accumulation should be incen-
tivized and ‘low’ inflation maintained. The former was achieved through
reductions in taxation – leading to cuts in public spending on benefits and
services – while the latter was achieved through the disciplining of trade
unions (Hutton, 1995) and benefit claimants (Callinicos, 2001).1, 2 The criminal
justice system increasingly replaced the welfare state and corporatist politics,
as a means to deal with social problems and the inherent tensions within capi-
talist society (Hall, 1980; Christie, 1993; Bauman, 2000).3
While a number of authors have sought to dispute the growth of the
coercive state (see, for example, Waddington, 2005), Norrie and Adelman
(1987: 115) argue that there exists ‘a substantial empirical basis for the claim
that the British state has developed an authoritarian mode in the 1980s’.
Norrie and Adelman (p. 114) cite four key developments to evidence this
claim: (1) the increasing ‘centralized and militarized form of policing’ utilized
to intervene within social ‘disorder’; (2) the utilization of the court system as
‘an auxiliary form of social control’; (3) the rise of prison populations during
this period, and their continued dramatic rise thereafter; and finally (4) the
significant enhancement of police powers during this period, particularly
under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984.
While Norrie and
Adelman’s analysis relates to the Thatcher administration, a number of writers
have demonstrated the clear continuities of authoritarian statism in successive
Conservative and Labour governments (for example, Scraton, 1997; Brownlee,
1998; Sim, 2000a, 2000b). When discussing such continuities it is imperative
that the differences between the different projects of the New Right and
Third Way are noted. Sim (2000b: 327) quite correctly warns against conflat-
ing the authoritarian statism of Thatcherism with Blairism, as ‘sociologically
reductionist’ and ‘politically naïve’. He notes important concessions within
the New Labour project, and of particular relevance to police custody deaths,
is the introduction of the Human Rights Act 1998, the Macpherson Report
and the creation of the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC).
Moreover, when describing the emergence of authoritarian statism, it would
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SOCIAL & LEGAL STUDIES 17(2)
be easy to slip into crass juxtapositions of ‘social democracy vs neo-liberalism’.
As Norrie and Adelman (1987: 112) point out, it is important to view
Thatcher’s authoritarian statism in terms of historical continuity rather than
a ‘wholly new departure’. Nevertheless, in the context of the post-war British
state, the conjuncture is an identifiable one, because of the intensification of
the ‘coercive’ state and the corresponding retrenchment or curtailment of the
‘social’ state, and, consequently, this provides a valuable point of analysis. It
is the twin-track process of the expanding ‘strong’ state and the relative
shrinkage of the ‘social’ state which forms the context for this analysis of
police custody deaths.
To understand these developments in relation to deaths in police custody
is a complex issue. To relate the two phenomena requires detailed empirical
analysis. An obvious starting point is to compare historical trends in police
custody deaths alongside the rise in authoritarianism.
Table 1 demonstrates the trend in deaths in police custody, which have
risen from an average of 27 deaths in the 1970s to 51 a year for the period
1981–2000. It should be noted that during this period deaths rose steadily
from 8 in 1970 to its peak of 48 in 1978 (HAC, 1980). There would appear
to be a prima facie case for arguing that custody deaths have risen alongside
the expansion of authoritarian...
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