We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
THE POLITICS OF DISCREDITABILITY: DISARMING COMPLAINTS AGAINST THE POLICE.
- Authors
Box, Steven; Russell, Ken
- Abstract
Sociological studies on the administration of justice tend to echo the popular suspicion that there is one law for the rich and another for the poor. For example, they show that whilst there exist different rates and types of criminal behavior between social classes, these are exaggerated and ultimately distorted by the judicial process. This distortion does not appear to occur at any single stage in this process-police surveillance, apprehension, discretionary on-the-street decisions, arrest, pre-trial bargaining or bail, prosecution, defense facilities, verdict, sentence and parole-but rather it seems to occur at every stage. Each addition may in itself be insignificant, but the effect is cumulative, so that there finally emerges the vision of a criminal class, which happens to be the economically less fortunate. One lacuna in this body of research is any attempt to understand the social processes which comprise complaints against the police. Although these are a very minor aspect of the administration of justice, they nonetheless concern a very fundamental democratic right to have redress against deviants in the police force. It would be serious, although not more so than elsewhere in the judicial process, if it were found that the social organization of the complaints procedures resulted in this right being systematically twisted out of shape when it was exercised by the less privileged or marginal members of the society.
- Subjects
JUSTICE administration; SOCIAL classes; SOCIAL status; CRIMINAL behavior; SOCIAL structure; PUBLIC administration
- Publication
Sociological Review, 1975, Vol 23, Issue 2, p315
- ISSN
0038-0261
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1111/j.1467-954X.1975.tb00530.x