How the police (over)use explicit apology language to manage aspects of their identity

Abstract

Abstract Public and academic debate suggest a perception that institutions such as the police may be reluctant to apologise or ineffective when they do. This article takes the unusual step of considering the apology culture of the institution potentially offering apology as a crucial step in identifying possible barriers to change in institutional practice. I have analysed explicit apology language in letters written by Scottish police to individuals as a final stage in responding to their complaints about the police. Rather than police reluctance to apologise, I found the police potentially overusing apology language, in the sense that explicit apology language was consistently used where evidence both had and had not been found that the police were at fault. The grammatical construction of the explicit apology language differed between these two contexts. I conclude that police politeness culture includes an empirical norm to use explicit apology language in response to public complaints regardless of the outcome of that complaint, as part of their identity as a public service institution. Tension between this empirical norm and another aspect of police identity, as a law enforcement institution, is managed by a systematic grammatical distinction in apology language patterning with the complaint outcome.