Women in Police Precincts: Violent crime and gender relationships

This project aims to analyse the Portuguese institutional setting, the politics and atmosphere of how women are attended in police precincts, from the perspective of gender violence related crimes and gender social relationships guided by asymmetries. As such, the central methodology is based on the production of ethnographies in Portuguese urban precincts, albeit not exclusively. There will be a survey of policy-making and laws, resources, investments, distribution of services, organisation of spaces and the role played by police agents; in particular that played by women in the Police Force when dealing with such crimes. The project raises some questions: does the denunciation of crimes against women call for the dynamics of cultural change in a police organisation that is still predominantly masculine and seems to advocate a masculine ethos? Have there been changes facilitating the framing of police response to and understanding of this type of crime? Is there some relation between the greater presence and action of women in the Police Force and a growing institutional sensitivity concerning "gender crimes"? What degree of symbolic and material investment has there been for the resolution of problems that either concern the basic rights of women or presents them as common citizens in the eyes of the law? It is vital to analyse the concepts in use for this type of crime, the ambiguities of institutional understanding and arrangements viewed in police actions, as well as the production of professional identities, gender, moral and ethics - the images of what the police are and what they should be. Features defining gender, ethnicity, social class, professional status and residence are indelibly present in the responses to this type of crime in a street-level bureaucracy such as the Police Force. It is, therefore, pertinent to find out what ideas of "person" are involved here, for both the police officer and the victim. Theoretically, crimes against women raise still wider problems, such as the debate between the positive vision of citizens' equality in access to justice and the negative vision of the "judicialization" of society, of family relations and the private life, that is, the State being seen as a "technology of power" (and also as a possible agent of "double victimisation"). Accordingly, it is fundamental to involve the police themselves in this argument since they are central actors in the contemporary processes of social and moral order, and in the production of ideas on gender, family, violence, crime, rights/equality.

This study will have three methodological stages: document analysis and problematic framework; an ethnographic approach; and an extensive survey within the Police Force.

Estatuto:

Proponent entity

Financed:

Entidades:

Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia

Keywords:

Police and Women; Crimes Against Women; Gender Practices and Representations; Ethnography

This study will have three methodological stages: document analysis and problematic framework; an ethnographic approach; and an extensive survey within the Police Force.

Objectivos:

The team will organize an international and interdisciplinary workshop where concepts such as authority, power, violence, victimization experiences and the status of victims of crime are going to be discussed. In this workshop, the research team will present the final empirical results of the project and will open to debate the theoretical scope of the analysis. We aim to interpret, either in qualitative and in quantitative terms (based on a survey), the cultural trends of the Portuguese Police when facing victims of crime (punishment, impotence, indifference and atonement being the most manifested sentiments), and also to signal and interpret the main moral restrains associated with gender issues in policing contexts.

State of the art:

The Police, as an institution, have been characterised as one of the most fundamental examples of "street-level bureaucracy" (Lipsky 1980). And Police Forces of the world have been described by social scientists as organisations that have and produce their own objective and subjective policies. The cultural construct of ideal bureaucracy was first designed by Weber (1958): a strict hierarchical system, governed by rules, characterised by specialisation and impersonality, and administered by officials in different roles, loyal to the system rather than to persons. To a certain extent, it may exist today; but as an analytical model that has been questioned in recent years. Even in the case where bureaucrats are challenged for not understanding and taking into account individuals' everyday living situations, Albrow points out that "rigid, inflexible, cold behaviour is just as emotional as warm and loving responses" (1997: 120). This is a good starting point for the study of police responses to violence against women. Policemen swing between a world full of political and legal normativeness, bureaucratic technicalities and one with a wide range of discretion (Manning and Van Maanen 1978, Reiner 1985, Durão 2008). However, the liaison, articulations and relations between local politics and policy-making processes have hardly been explored and interpreted, at least at an ethnographic level, which is one of the aims of this project. Some anthropological conceptualisations are useful here. Anthropologists have identified the popular stereotype of the bureaucrat as a rigid, inflexible, boring person (Herzfeld 1992: 71). Nevertheless, empirical studies inside Police Forces show that some of the police clientele demand different roles from these street-level bureaucrats, such as social and psychological support, moral commitments and solidarity. They also require identification with their problems and life styles, not only for the resoltution of conflicts but for the restitution of justice (Cumming, Cumming and Edell 1973, Durão 2008); even if this is without questioning the asymmetries of power involved in these interpersonal relations.Gender violence and the attendance on women in precincts are at the core of the changing representations and practices of policing. In some countries, such as Portugal, this kind of crime demands special programmes (like "proximity policing") inside traditional precincts. In others, Brazil for example, they develop special units for victimised women, a process historically generated by a wider social debate about gender inequalities and violence (Debert et al. 2006). Brazilian cases, intensely studied from an ethnographic perspective (for example, Brandão 1999, Muniz, 1999, Soares, 1999), are good for a cross-cultural comparison with Portuguese and other European contexts. Contextual and situated based comparisons allow us to reflect on the political and organisational tensions between particular demands and universal responses, as well as the theorisation of the debate between the egalitarian access to the judicial system and the State as a "technology of power" (Donzelot 1977, Fonseca 2006). At another level, also pertinent to this study, it has been shown, in various national and postnational bureaucracies, how politicians and bureaucrats may present projects and programmes whilst keeping the culturally intimate hidden from view. In other words, not revealing aspects of cultural identity that might be considered a source of external embarrassment, but making visible those in which the State takes some pride (Herzfeld 1997, Thedeval 2006). On this point, it is important to understand the effect of social movements that confront State institutions with the necessity of transformation. In Portugal, the victimisation processes and representations have concentrated the main research resources on social sciences (Lourenço et al. 1997). The institutional role of the police in this matter is still very much unknown. The sociological literature has shown that there is a "canteen culture" inside police organisations (McLaughlin & Muncie (1996). "Domestic violence" is one of the most ambiguous fields of law enforcement. Policemen feel uneasy with victims and tend to judge that the women's behaviour is responsible for their remaining victims, especially in poor contexts. Generally, they prefer not to enter such a crime scene, saying it will never be resolved; in contrast with drug control (Durão, 2008). With an anthropologically and sociologically theoretical framework in mind, we can ask what model of State and policing intervention is in question in Portugal concerning gender violence, and what are the main understandings and social representations in process.  Bibliography:Albrow, M., 1997, Do Organizations Have Feelings?, London, Routledge.Brandão, E., 1999, "Violência Conjugal e o Recurso Feminino à Polícia", in Bruschini, C. and  H. Hollanda, Horizontes Plurais, São Paulo, Fundação Carlos Chagas/ Editora 34.Cumming, E.; Cumming, I. & L. Edell, 1973 (1965), "The Policeman as Philosopher, Guide and Friend", in Niederhoffer, Arthur & Blumberg, Abraham, The Ambivalent Force, San Francisco, Rinehart Press.Debert, G. G., M. F. Gregory and A. Piscitelli (ed.), 2006, Género e Distribuição da Justiça: As delegacias de defesa da mulher e a construção das diferenças, Pagu/ Núcleo de Estudos de Género, Unicamp.Donzelot, J., 1977, A Polícia das Famílias, Rio de Janeiro, Graal.Durão, S., 2008, Patrulha e Proximidade. Uma Etnografia da Polícia em Lisboa, Lisbon, Almedina.Fonseca, C., 2006, "Reflexões Inspiradas no Projecto "Género e cidadania, tolerância e distribuição da justiça", in G. G. Debert et al. (ed.), 2006, Género e Distribuição da Justiça: As delegacias de defesa da mulher e a construção das diferenças, Pagu/ Núcleo de Estudos de Género, Unicamp.Herzfeld, M., 1992, The Social Production of Indifference. Exploring the Symbolic Roots of Western Bureaucracy, New York, Oxford, Berg Publishers. -----, 1997, Cultural Intimacy. Social Poetics in the Nation-State, London, Routledge.Lipsky, M., 1980, Street-Level Bureaucracy. Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Services, New York, Russel Sage Foundation.Lourenço, N. & M. Lisboa and  E. Pais, 1997, Violência Contra as Mulheres, Lisbon, Comissão para a Igualdade das Mulheres.Manning, P. K. & J. Van Maanen (eds), 1978, Policing. A View from the Street, New York, Random House.McLaughlin, Eugene & Muncie, John, 1996, Controlling Crime, London, Sage Publications.Muniz, J., 1999, "Os Direitos dos Outros e Outros Direitos: Um estudo sobre a negociação de conflitos nas DEAMs", in L. E. Soares et al., Violência e Política no Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Relume Dumará/ISER. Reiner, R., 1985, The Politics of the Police, Sussex, Wheatsheaf Books & Harvest Press.Soares, B., 1999, "Delegacia de Atendimento à Mulher: Questão de género, número e grau", in L. E. Soares et al., Violência e Política no Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Relume Dumará/ISER. Thedeval, R., 2006, Eurocrats at Work. Negotiating Transparency in a Postnational Employment Policy, Stockholm Studies in Social Anthropology, 58.Weber, M., 1958, From Max Weber. Essays in Sociology, New York, Oxford University Press.

Parceria:

Unintegrated