Opinion | Wednesday, 1st April 2020

Coronavirus: How can the police enforce social distancing and maintain public trust?

Police forces are now under the spotlight like never before, explain Kevin Wong and Kris Christmann

New guidelines have been drawn up to help police enforce social distancing measures
New guidelines have been drawn up to help police enforce social distancing measures

This opinion piece has been adapted from a blog post written for MetroPolis, the University's think-tank, by criminologists Kevin Wong, Associate Director of Manchester Metropolitan University's Policy Research and Evaluation Unit and Kris Christmann from the Applied Criminology and Policing Centre at the University of Huddersfield

Some police forces have been accused of heavy-handedness in their interpretation of the unprecedented emergency powers granted by government last week to enforce social distancing measures.

New guidelines have already been drawn up to ensure that police take a consistent and proportionate approach in how they deal with people travelling, gathering in groups or refusing to return home.

This should come as no surprise – this aspect of the coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis has put the police under the spotlight like never before.

Whilst these severe measures taken to tackle the spread of coronavirus have been couched in a persuasive argument – ‘saving lives’ and ‘protecting the NHS’ – they have been codified within criminal law. Police officers are empowered to “disperse gatherings”and issue on-the-spot fines for anyone contravening social distancing rules and other lockdown breaches. One police force has been criticised for using drones to capture footage of countryside walkers.

That this is already an issue just one week on from the adoption of these measures demonstrates how enforcing these unprecedented restrictions on previously basic freedoms sets up a fascinating mass social experiment – will the police be able to maintain their claim to public legitimacy and public trust?

Unknown territory for police

There are good reasons to ask this question. Firstly, the majority of the population do not come into contact with the police, and certainly not where they are required to justify their actions under the threat of official sanction.

Much policing is centred on the minority sections of society who find themselves, often uncomfortably, the focus of police scrutiny. The lockdown threatens to turn this on its head with non-compliance becoming a ‘crime of the law abiding’ such as driving over the speed limit or while using a mobile phone, offences that ordinary members of the public do, but shouldn’t. 

Exposing more of this ‘respectable class’ to police attention may not do the police any favours.  Research shows that often public confidence in the police does not survive first contact. Having a bad police experience is four to 14 times as ‘impactful’ as having a positive experience. 

This ‘asymmetry’ between how people perceive they are treated and people’s confidence in the police can be damaging. At its worst the police get little credit when they do a good job, conversely, a bad experience can negatively influence people’s views of police performance and police legitimacy.

Enforcing these unprecedented restrictions on previously basic freedoms sets up a fascinating mass social experiment – will the police be able to maintain their claim to public legitimacy and public trust?

Secondly, the continental experience demonstrates the potential scale of non-compliance. In Italy, in a matter of weeks more than 100,000 people have been fined for breaching the lockdown. In France (over a shorter period), 4,000 have been reported

Thirdly, people obey laws when they feel they are just – not simply due to fear of punishment. Threepeople from different households going for a walk is a very different kind of criminal act to burglary or mugging – offences that would raise general moral criticism.

Taken together these considerations shift us into unknown territory. The UK’s lockdown followed a weekend where groups of people were out and about enjoying the good weather – seemingly in defiance of government guidance to stay at home. Hence the big stick of the criminal law. But the longer the restrictions last, the more onerous they will become, especially as the long days of summer beckon.

How to retain public support

Fast forward to a year from now – after potentially several cycles of lockdown, relaxation and then lockdown again. Is public perception of police legitimacy and trust likely to tumble?  How can the police navigate this difficult terrain – where they could be pitted against larger sections of normally law-abiding society?

Research demonstrates that for the public to defer to police decisions and directives during the lockdown, it requires the public to perceive the police role as legitimate. This legitimacy rests on: treating the public with dignity and respect; police motives (and the government’s) are seen to be fair; police decisions are based on facts not biases; and the public are able to voice their concerns before the police make a decision.

The research also indicates that people are willing to accept decisions that go against their interests provided they consider that the officer is wielding legitimate authority. The question is whether these tenets can hold up under the current extraordinary conditions.

So what should the police, police and crime commissioners and other policy makers do?  If the lockdown is a mass social experiment, then these potential solutions are equally experimental and are multi-stranded. There is no magic bullet. They should include:

Rapid learning by the police so that they can make appropriate adjustments to how they implement these measures can help to preserve their relationship with the public as long as the coronavirus measures need to be kept in place.

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