The Psychology of Police-Public Relations
| Published date | 01 July 1973 |
| Author | Jennifer Hilton |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032258X7304600304 |
| Date | 01 July 1973 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
CHIEF
INSPECTOR
JENNIFER
HILTON,
M.A.
Metropolitan Police
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF
POLICE-PUBLIC RELATIONS
Communication is not a unitary concept - it embraces varied
types of human behaviour that convey messages, both intended
and unintended. Not only actions and words but also clothes, hair
style, accent and tone of voice are an integral part of a message'.
The intended content of a message also varies enormously -
police officers may wish to cajole, warn or inform the public; or
may need to persuade them to co-operate in some activity such as
a search for stolen property or a missing child. Most difficult of
all, perhaps, are the occasions when
it
is necessary to explain or
defend police actions to an unsympathetic public.
Communication, moreover, is essentially a duologue - it is only
effective when the reaction of the audience is recognized and used
to modify further messages so that they are more intelligible or
acceptable. Repetition of a message that is unwelcome or per-
sistently misunderstood can only provoke an emotional and an-
tagonistic response. Two people in conversation can only exchange
ideas if they are aware of, and adapt to, each other's reactions.
The same is true, although on a more complicated and cumbersome
scale, of two groups of people who are trying to communicate.
Human communication is never a whole and undamaged trans-
fer of the intended message from the transmitter to the receiver.
To employ briefly the jargon of information theory - there is
always some "noise" in the channel of communication and the
repertoire of concepts of the transmitter can never be identical
to the repertoire of the de-coder so that misunderstandings in-
evitably arise. One reason why communication has become more
complex is that the conceptual repertoires of the people in this
country have perhaps become more elaborate during this century.
The majority of society no longer accepts a single code of ethics
and the spread of education means that more people distinguish
the shades of moral grey between the extremes of right and wrong.
Ours is also now a multi-racial society containing groups with
language and cultural differences.
Before considering means of improving the clarity of the dialogue
between police and public we must make a small expedition into
the tangled thickets of English society.
Although there are no longer the wide divisions between rich
and poor today that there were 50 years ago, we are not the
homogeneous society that the fantasies of advertisers suggest. Many
July 1973 232
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