Purpose

This paper explores the challenging nexus of police custody, risk and intra-organisational boundaries in the context of a recently reformed national police service. Police custody is an often-hidden aspect of policing, away from the public gaze and scrutiny. Although there is increasing recognition of the importance of rural policing (e.g. Harkness (2020); Mawby and Yarwood (2011); Ruddell and Jones (2020); Yarwood and Wooff (2016)), there has been little or no focus on rural police custody. This paper seeks to begin to redress this by focussing on the challenges faced by rural police custody in the context of large-scale organisational change.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper draws on data from a study funded by the Scottish Institute for Policing Research (2016–2018), entitled “Measuring Risk and Efficiency in Police Custody in Scotland”. The paper adopts a qualitative methodology to develop an understanding of the varying nature of police custody across Scotland. Two contrasting case study locations were selected, one urban and one rural. 12 semi-structured interviews and 15 hours of observation were carried out. Data was transcribed, coded and analysed and thematic analysis enabled themes to be developed. This paper draws on the data from the rural custody suite.

Findings

Drawing on the theoretical framework of Giacomantonio (2014) and more recent considerations of abstract policing Terpstra et al. (2019), this paper offers insights into the ways that police custody in rural Scotland has been organised, against the backdrop of challenging organisational change. I argue that as policing services in Scotland have become increasingly “abstract” from communities, police custody as a national division has witnessed the impact of this more greatly than other parts of local policing. Intra-organisational management around staffing has led to complex management of risk, illustrating some of the challenges of national organisational change on police custody.

Originality/value

This paper focuses on the impact of large scale organisational change on rural police custody and intra-organisational relationships and dynamics. Rural policing is still a largely neglected area of study and rural police custody is even less understood. This paper therefore provides an original contribution by focusing on this under-researched area of policing. It also illustrates complexity around risk, staffing and management of people being held in rural police custody suites. It is therefore of value to policing scholars in other contexts, as well as rural criminology more generally. It has applicability to international contexts where macro level policing reform is occurring.

中文翻译：

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苏格兰农村地区的警察拘留：谈判边界、风险和组织变革

目的

本文探讨了在最近改革的国家警察部门背景下警察拘留、风险和组织内边界之间具有挑战性的关系。警方拘留是治安工作中经常隐藏的一个方面，远离公众的视线和审查。尽管人们越来越认识到农村警务的重要性（例如 Harkness (2020)；Mawby 和 Yarwood (2011)；Ruddell 和 Jones (2020)；Yarwood 和 Wooff (2016)），但很少或根本没有关注农村警察保管。本文试图通过关注大规模组织变革背景下农村警察羁押所面临的挑战来开始纠正这一问题。

设计/方法论/途径

本文借鉴了苏格兰警务研究所资助的一项研究（2016-2018）的数据，题为“测量苏格兰警察拘留的风险和效率”。本文采用定性方法来了解苏格兰各地警察拘留的不同性质。选择了两个截然不同的案例研究地点，一是城市，一是农村。进行了 12 次半结构化访谈和 15 小时的观察。数据被转录、编码和分析，主题分析使主题得以开发。本文借鉴了农村监护套件的数据。

发现

借鉴 Giacomatonio (2014) 的理论框架以及 Terpstra等人对抽象警务的最新考虑。（2019），本文深入探讨了在组织变革充满挑战的背景下，苏格兰农村地区警察拘留的组织方式。我认为，随着苏格兰的警务服务变得越来越“抽象”于社区，警察监管作为一个国家部门比当地警务的其他部分更能感受到这种影响。围绕人员配置的组织内管理导致了复杂的风险管理，这说明了国家组织变革在警察拘留方面面临的一些挑战。

原创性/价值

本文重点研究大规模组织变革对农村警察羁押以及组织内部关系和动态的影响。农村警务仍然是一个很大程度上被忽视的研究领域，对农村警察拘留的了解更是少之又少。因此，本文通过关注这个研究不足的警务领域提供了原创性贡献。它还说明了农村警察拘留室中被关押人员的风险、人员配备和管理的复杂性。因此，它对于其他背景下的警务学者以及更广泛的农村犯罪学具有价值。它适用于正在进行宏观警务改革的国际背景。