ABSTRACT
Having empirically examined the custody environment and the relationships between suspects and those working in custody areas, the aim of this chapter is to examine the implications of these findings for theories of governance and legitimacy, the central tenets of which were outlined in Chapter 2. As shown in Figure 8.1, my argument in Chapter 2 was that the actions of the police were governed partially through ‘vertical’ constitutional and institutional arrangements such as PACE, although the effectiveness of these mechanisms can be undermined by officer’s agency, the occupational culture of the police and their positioning in the criminal justice process. Moreover, the multi-professional nature of police custody and other criminal justice settings means that, on their own, constitutional and institutional forms of governance are insufficient to explain how the police are governed. What is also required is an understanding of what I have called relational forms of governance, which concerns the largely horizontal relationships between the police and other criminal justice practitioners. Both of these forms of governance likely influence how the police and police staff use their authority, thereby affecting their legitimacy and contributing to citizen compliance with the law. The aim of this chapter is to explore what the empirical research on police custody examined in the book thus far has added to these ideas about the links between governance and the legitimacy of police/police staff. A further aim is to situate this discussion within the context of managerialism and neo-liberalism (which have contributed to developments such as workforce modernization, partnership-working and governing at a distance).
