Skip to main content

Research Repository

Advanced Search

Policing a Crisis: A narrative account of pandemic policing, technological opportunities and ethical challenges

People Involved

Project Description

This PhD Studentship will employ narrative inquiry to map the technological opportunities and ethical challenges faced by Police Scotland when responding to the Pandemic. By inviting frontline officers, managers, and police staff to tell their story of policing a pandemic, the project will shed light on how the organisation navigated complex issues of enforcing emergency powers, constraining civil liberties, maintaining public trust and legitimacy all while being a 'socially distanced' service. Through narratives of police experience, the project will map the practical everyday challenges and ethical issues frontline officers faced in responded rapidly, as well as the more strategic and organisational issues faced by managers and police staff. Second, in mapping this institutional experience the project will also seek to understand how information technologies played a role, as well as how the ethical questions raised by their were navigated in a time where opportunity for deliberation and debate is limited.

Status Project Live
Funder(s) Scottish Institute for Policing Research
Value £31,144.00
Project Dates Oct 1, 2020 - Sep 30, 2025



You might also like

The Special Constabulary in Scotland: Enhancing understanding of the motivations, roles and expectations of the Special Constable in Scotland Jan 1, 2019 - Dec 31, 2019
The number of special constables in Scotland have been dropping in recent years (Police Scotland, 2018), however, little has been done by researchers to explore the reasons behind these rates of attrition and lower levels of recruitment. With special... Read More about The Special Constabulary in Scotland: Enhancing understanding of the motivations, roles and expectations of the Special Constable in Scotland.

Going AFK: interrogating the viability of desistance theorising for narratives of cyber-dependent criminal careers Jan 1, 2021 - Oct 31, 2022
This project brings together two of the Co-Investigators’ fields of criminological research: desistance research and cybercrime. These areas currently exist in relative isolation to each other but offer the potential for important insights from cross... Read More about Going AFK: interrogating the viability of desistance theorising for narratives of cyber-dependent criminal careers.