ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the key concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book explores the way that police authority is held to account through formal and informal rules. It examines the evidence for R. V. Ericson’s conceptual schema of “following the rules,” “using the rules,” “beyond the rules,” “within the rules,” and “without rules,” paying particular attention to how this framework applies to police detention. The book explains the significance of whether citizens are accorded their rights and entitlements in police detention, that is, their legality, which has traditionally been framed through notions of crime control and due process. It also examines the language, conditions, routines, rituals, and informal and formal rules inside police detention. The book argues that to an extent, all the detention facilities in the research exercised some degree of coercive control over detainees.
