{"title":"‘We were the Guinea pigs’: Police uncertainty enforcing coronavirus regulations in the UK.","authors":"Camilla De Camargo","doi":"10.1016/j.ijlcj.2022.100566","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The regulations introduced under the UK's Coronavirus Act 2020 to help curb the spread of COVID-19 caused considerable confusion due to conflation between what was regarded as ‘guidance’ and what was ‘law’. The fast-paced nature of the pandemic meant that restrictions on public liberty and increased police powers to enforce the new ‘rules’ led to accusations of over-zealous enforcement behaviour of some officers, including a record number of Fixed Penalty Notices (FPNs) issued. This paper explores the experiences of police officers in a range of English police forces, using 28 h of qualitative interview data at two research points in time (2020 and 2022). The extracts presented here illustrate some of the challenges that officers faced enforcing the frequently changing rules and regulations during the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":46026,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Law Crime and Justice","volume":"72 ","pages":"Article 100566"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0000,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9701640/pdf/","citationCount":"1","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"International Journal of Law Crime and Justice","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1756061622000441","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"CRIMINOLOGY & PENOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 1
Abstract
The regulations introduced under the UK's Coronavirus Act 2020 to help curb the spread of COVID-19 caused considerable confusion due to conflation between what was regarded as ‘guidance’ and what was ‘law’. The fast-paced nature of the pandemic meant that restrictions on public liberty and increased police powers to enforce the new ‘rules’ led to accusations of over-zealous enforcement behaviour of some officers, including a record number of Fixed Penalty Notices (FPNs) issued. This paper explores the experiences of police officers in a range of English police forces, using 28 h of qualitative interview data at two research points in time (2020 and 2022). The extracts presented here illustrate some of the challenges that officers faced enforcing the frequently changing rules and regulations during the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK.
期刊介绍:
The International Journal of Law, Crime and Justice is an international and fully peer reviewed journal which welcomes high quality, theoretically informed papers on a wide range of fields linked to criminological research and analysis. It invites submissions relating to: Studies of crime and interpretations of forms and dimensions of criminality; Analyses of criminological debates and contested theoretical frameworks of criminological analysis; Research and analysis of criminal justice and penal policy and practices; Research and analysis of policing policies and policing forms and practices. We particularly welcome submissions relating to more recent and emerging areas of criminological enquiry including cyber-enabled crime, fraud-related crime, terrorism and hate crime.