Researching inside police custody in four jurisdictions: ‘Getting in’, ‘getting on’, ‘getting your hands dirty’ and ‘getting through it’
| Author | Layla Skinns |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/17488958221087491 |
| Published date | 01 April 2023 |
| Date | 01 April 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/17488958221087491
Criminology & Criminal Justice
2023, Vol. 23(2) 273 –289
© The Author(s) 2022
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DOI: 10.1177/17488958221087491
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Researching inside police
custody in four jurisdictions:
‘Getting in’, ‘getting on’,
‘getting your hands dirty’ and
‘getting through it’
Layla Skinns
The University of Sheffield, UK
Abstract
As a unique criminal justice organisation, the police present challenges, but also opportunities for
those who research them. These are examined, in terms of getting in, getting on, getting your
hands dirty and getting through it, using data collected as part of a comparative multi-method
study of police custody in large cities in Australia, England, Ireland and the United States in
2007 and 2009. As this research took place on the cusp of the proliferation of research with the
police, retrospective examination of field notes is used to reflect on how the research process
is influenced not just by one’s social origins but also by the culture of academia and the politics
of knowledge production. It is argued that while research with the police is becoming the norm,
research on the police is still of value as part of a diverse police research agenda.
Keywords
Comparative research, police custody, politics of knowledge production, positionality,
reflexivity
Introduction
Police detention is an important entrance to the criminal process, where large numbers of
suspects are held each year.1 Yet, it is relatively under-researched, especially in some
countries (e.g. Ireland), albeit that the last decade has seen a revival of interest (e.g.
Bevan, 2020; Dehaghani, 2019; Holloway et al., 2020; Skinns et al., 2020). Comparative
Corresponding author:
Layla Skinns, School of Law, The University of Sheffield, Sheffield S3 7ND, UK.
Email: L.Skinns@sheffield.ac.uk
1087491CRJ0010.1177/17488958221087491Criminology & Criminal JusticeSkinns
research-article2022
Article
274 Criminology & Criminal Justice 23(2)
research on police detention is limited to a few studies (see Blackstock et al., 2014;
Skinns, 2019), and those writing about the principles and practices of research inside
police detention are also scarce (e.g. Greene and Skinns, 2018; Phillips and Brown,
1997; Skinns et al., 2016), with none examining this research process comparatively. As
a result, this article makes a unique contribution. I return to field notes written as part of
a multi-method comparative police detention study conducted in 2007 and 2009 in
England and Ireland and jurisdictions in Australia and the United States.2 With the ben-
efit of hindsight, I look at what can be learned about the police detention research pro-
cess. This research took place on the cusp of the proliferation of research with the police,
that is, involving close collaborative relationships between the police and academics
(Bradley and Nixon, 2009). By contrast this project was an example of research on the
police, in which academics offer an external, sometimes critical, perspective and in
which I was thus an ‘outside outsider’ (Brown, 1996), even an ‘outside outside outsider’
given my ‘foreign’ status in Australia, the United States and Ireland. By looking at due
process rights in practice, and the dynamics of power, police culture and discretion in the
context of neoliberal political economies, it was also more theoretical and did not have
the impact focus of some of my subsequent research.
As argued in this article, this approach and the findings generated and presented by
Skinns (2019) are still valid, and there is also much that can be learned about the police
custody research process. Although research with the police has come to dominate, at
least for the moment, I argue that it is only one part of what Bowling et al. (2019: 14) see
as an increasingly ‘diverse’ and ‘plural’ police research agenda. In order to support these
arguments, I offer a reflexive ‘fieldwork confessional’, in which I demystify the field-
work process in police custody research (Van Maanen, 1988: 73), considering what can
be learned from the challenges of ‘getting in’, ‘getting on’, ‘getting your hands dirty’ and
‘getting through it’. However, first, I review the literature on doing police research and,
second, the politics of police research.
Doing police research
Police research presents a number of ever-changing challenges for researchers. The nature
of the police role – which includes the use of coercion and controversial, if not illegal
tactics – means that one of the peculiarities of police research is that it explores actions
and information that research participants may prefer to hide (Reiner, 2000). This ten-
dency towards being closed off is also rooted in aspects of police culture, such as suspi-
ciousness (and also isolation and solidarity; Skolnick, 1966: 42–70), which may extend to
researchers (Fassin, 2013: 18–19). At the same time, others have remarked on the surpris-
ing degree of openness that police participants display towards researchers (Reiner, 2000;
Souhami, 2020), including in police custody (Phillips and Brown, 1997). However, this
openness may be contingent, for example, on the actions of researchers including the
frequency of their presence and their efforts to build trust (Fassin, 2013; Marks, 2004;
Reiner, 2000; Souhami, 2020; Westmarland, 2016: xii), on their status and positionality
(Phillips and Brown, 1997) and on the politics of police–academic collaboration.
In the past, police actions were also hard to uncover by researchers due to the ‘low
visibility’ of everyday police work (Reiner, 2000: 219), especially in police custody,
given its ‘back stage’ nature (Holdaway, 1980: 89). However, this has since changed.
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