A Piece of Business: The Moral Economy of Detective Work in the East-End of London
1991; Wiley; Volume: 42; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/591449
ISSN1468-4446
Autores Tópico(s)Crime, Illicit Activities, and Governance
ResumoThe practice of policing takes many forms, yet all correspond to a perceived demand for a specific style of social control. However not all police specialisms emerge as the result of rational organisational processes. In the case of detective work, a combination of historical precedent, and the demands made upon officers by the enacted environment has resulted in the policed providing the occupational style for the police. Of course I am like a businessman. Put it this way, out there you got the punters, taxpayers and regular civilians, they pay my wages and they want a service from me. Then there's villains. For me to provide a service to the punters I nick the villains. But if I do deals with some villains I can nick those that really need nicking. So I do a deal here, a trade there, somebody goes down and I keep paying my mortagage. This may not be the conventional way in which officers express the need to define priorities in police work, but this quote exemplifies the manner in which detectives in one area of London attempt to make sense of the daily grind. This paper is based on a three year study utilising historical analysis, formal and informal interview and, most prominantly, ethnography,l The genesis of British Policing has been well established in recent years as having its origins in pre-industrial settings.2 However, the growth of industrialisation and its concomitant urbanisation, established both the philosophical and economic framework upon which modern state policing was grounded. In London urbanisation created its own special conundrums. Acting as a magnet for those escaping agricultural destitution, London's population expanded daily, and while other urban centres absorbed this surplus population into the factories and mills, London, due to a lack of heavy industry proved immune to both the hierarchies of labour that emerged from factories, and to the factory discipline that bound the workers to the mode of production.3 London's working class emerged as an undisciplined group reliant upon the casual labour market. The cost of land
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