Straight line
Abuse of authority and the invitational edge
GIVEN the fact that the police have discretionary authority to institute proceedings that the population finds inconvenient or costly, there are obviously many opportunities for officers to abuse their discretion by accepting or demanding bribes to "turn a blind eye." Thus, in many societies citizens are expected to offer bribes to avoid tickets for traffic violations, or to speed up the processing of some administrative task for which the police are responsible.
The above rarely occurs in isolation: in such countries government officials commonly also demand bribes. The reason is usually pretty clear: it is that impoverished governments are unable adequately to remunerate their officials, and bribery, though illegal, is accepted as one of the means by which officials, including police officers, enhance their salary.
The notion of the "invitational edge" is useful because it draws our attention to how policing itself is structurally conducive to illegality and breaches of rules. The implication of this being that anyone placed in the position of a police officer would be similarly tempted. This is a conclusion that undermines easy condemnation and adopts what some criminologists have called an "appreciative" stance towards other forms of deviancy.
There are many who would like to argue by saying that policing allows officers to become corrupt. Such a statement would not amount to much because many occupations do so, from small shop-keeping to being executives of multi-national companies. However, policing invites deviancy and that invitation, in undercover operations, is extended by those with a vested interest in subverting the enforcement of the law -- namely the participants in the illicit activity. They actively seek to ensnare officers in a web of mutual dependence and reciprocity that compromises the integrity of the police and, thus, safeguards their business interests.
Much more common, indeed endemic, is the breaking of the rules that supposedly govern police behaviour. Police officers take actions strictly forbidden by law, such as stopping and searching someone without the necessary grounds for suspicion. Equally, procedures designed to safeguard the rights of suspects and other vulnerable people might be ignored or circumvented. Improper bargains are sometimes struck with some suspects.
Policing is a thoroughly bureaucratized activity governed by voluminous rules and procedures that stipulate in great detail what the police should do in any situation. However, "invitational edges of corruption" enables us to see that these rules, far from being part of the solution, are often actually a principal cause of the problem.
Police organisations epitomise bureaucracy: they attempt to orchestrate the behaviour of officers through a dense set of rules and procedures. Police officers, like personnel in other bureaucracies, suffer the frustrations that any such organisation produces. The response of officers to these frustrations is to circumvent or subvert the formal rules, just as their counterparts do in other bureaucracies. However, police organisations belong to a distinctive sub-set of bureaucracy, that is they are "punishment-centred."
It is important to recognise that the above rules are almost purely negative in their effect: that is, police officers may be disciplined, prosecuted, or otherwise put into difficulties if they are seen to break the rules, but they will not necessarily be praised, or enjoy their work, or achieve their career objectives if they keep to them.
The "punishment-centered bureaucracy" of police organisations arises from the "invisible" exercise of discretionary authority that leaves senior officers unable to effectively command their subordinates. The history of policing has been characterised by the attempts of senior officers to extend effective control over their subordinates. The threat of penalties for transgressions is one of the few available means of achieving this and, so, formal rules mushroom as particular problems surface from the depths of invisibility that surrounds most police work.
The "punishment-centered" style has consequences that can bring officers to the "invitational edges of corruption." The formal rules of the organisation are regarded with almost complete contempt and, perhaps, good reason. An incompetent, ineffective, and injudicious officer could remain in good standing in his department provided it cannot be shown by any accepted method of proof that he has violated some expressly formulated norm of conduct. This comes very close to saying that an officer who shows up for work, does what he is told to do and no more, and stays out of trouble, meets the criterion of adequacy demanded of him. "Real" police officers do more, and in so doing risk violating "inhibitory" and "presentational" rules.
A significant implication of "punishment-centred bureaucracy" is that it obliges senior officers to be hypocritical. They are aware that subordinates cannot police "according to the book," but they are obliged to maintain the fiction that policing is rule-governed. This creates the contradiction that police organizations are both "punishment-centered bureaucracies" and also notoriously indulgent; for senior officers and middle-ranking supervisors often give the "nod and a wink" to their subordinates, especially if the latter are achieving "results."
We know that discretion is an unavoidable corollary of policing: full enforcement of the law is impossible, and to attempt it would be undesirable. Laws, however specific they might appear, are universal precepts that must be applied to very specific circumstances. We also know that the use of discretion necessarily relegates legality to a secondary status, for the law is used selectively to enforce prevailing notions of respectability.
We also know that policing in modern liberal democracies involves the police living a lie: they pretend that they are mere servants of the law, whereas their daily experience is that they are, if anything, its master -- employing the law as and when necessary to achieve their discretionary goals. This is a situation calculated to encourage cynicism, for the ideals are not just unattainable they are actually inappropriate -- to enforce the law blindly would be to perpetrate massive injustice.
Policing is a scandal-prone occupation, not simply because the opportunities for illicit conduct exist, for they exist in almost any occupation. Temptation is more active than that: policing places officers repeatedly at the "invitational edge of corruption," where exactly the same actions may be taken with proper or improper motives.
The reason for the above reality is that the police operate in a nether world just beyond the limits of respectability. In the fulfillment of their duties officers lie, deceive, conspire to allow illegal activities to continue, and use force. Yet, this can never be acknowledged, for the legitimacy of police authority in liberal democracy rests upon the myth that they impartially enforce the law according to "the book."
In situations as above, officers are repeatedly tempted to secure their purposes, which are often the same as those of the police organization itself, by exploiting the latitude that their role affords them. This might involve the accepting of bribes from, and performing corrupt services for, those with whom they are invited to establish close rapport. Often, officers have to ensure that those they believe to be guilty are convicted, or use excessive force against those who challenge or threaten them.
In societies where there is a large and threatening underclass, police misconduct is endemic. In more developed societies, especially where notions of universal citizenship are firmly established, it is more restrained, both quantitatively and qualitatively. Yet, the public in many societies tacitly conspire in police illegality, provided it is targeted at excluded groups and does not erupt into a public scandal.
Muhammad Nurul Huda is a columnist of The Daily Star.
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