ABSTRACT

Other research has shown that a woman’s appearance, as opposed to what she appears to have done, can also affect how she is treated once she enters the police station. In the language of police research, women suspects are placed either into the category of the ‘disarmer’ or ‘police property’. Disarmers are those ‘who can weaken or neutralise police work’, because the police consider that they should temper their normal behaviour towards suspects to take account of the disarmer’s frailty.69 This alteration of behaviour is due in part to ‘chivalrous’ policing-stemming from a belief that

some groups are inherently weaker than others.70 However, it is also due to a police belief that they may be open to criticism from outside monitors for any failure to temper their normal behaviour in the light of the ‘disarmer’s vulnerability.71 Conversely, suspects are categorised as ‘police property’72

when they belong to ‘low status powerless groups whom the dominant majority see as problematic or distasteful’.73 As a result, the police are left to control this group alone, with little or no outside interference.