Police stops in Germany – between legal rules and informal practices

IF 0.9 Q4 MANAGEMENT

Journal of Organizational Ethnography Pub Date : 2022-03-01 DOI:10.1108/joe-03-2021-0016

H. Aden, A. Bosch, Jan Fährmann, Roman Thurn

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

PurposeThis paper analyzes micro-political strategies that police officers use during police stops, mostly based on their professional or personal life experience. Police stops take place in an asymmetric power relationship. Actions of police officers during a stop are backed by strong legal powers, and citizens typically do not negotiate how the stop should be carried out.Design/methodology/approachThe paper is based on ethnographic observation, semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions with German patrol officers.FindingsThe authors demonstrate that micro-political strategies relying on the officers' personal experience, rather than on strategies developed by the police agency based on empirical evidence, are highly problematic. Depending upon the acting officer, micro-political strategies can vary considerably according to the individual officer’s experience and attitudes. This leads to a risk of discrimination in police stops and of potential infringements on the citizens’ fundamental rights.Research limitations/implicationsSee the paper’s methodology section on the limitations of the empirical approach.Practical implicationsThe paper suggests improvements for the practice of police stops.Originality/valueThe article provides new empirical insights in the practice of police stops in Germany and situates the findings in a broader international debate on police stops and shortcomings of the legal rules that govern the police stops.

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德国警察在法律规则和非正式惯例之间进行拦截

本文分析了警察在警察拦截期间使用的微观政治策略，主要基于他们的职业或个人生活经验。警察拦截发生在一种不对称的权力关系中。警察在拦截过程中的行动有强大的法律权力支持，公民通常不会就如何进行拦截进行谈判。设计/方法/方法本文基于民族志观察、半结构化访谈和与德国巡逻人员的焦点小组讨论。研究结果表明，依赖于警官个人经验的微观政治策略，而不是依靠警察机构基于经验证据制定的策略，是非常有问题的。根据代理官员的情况，微观政治策略可能根据个别官员的经验和态度而有很大差异。这导致警察在拦截时受到歧视的风险，并可能侵犯公民的基本权利。研究的局限性/意义参见论文的方法论部分关于实证方法的局限性。实际意义本文对警察拦截的做法提出了改进建议。原创性/价值本文为德国警察拦截的实践提供了新的实证见解，并将研究结果置于更广泛的国际辩论中，讨论警察拦截和管理警察拦截的法律规则的缺点。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Journal of Organizational Ethnography MANAGEMENT-

CiteScore

1.90

自引率

37.50%

发文量

期刊介绍： The Journal of Organizational Ethnography (JOE) has been launched to provide an opportunity for scholars, from all social and management science disciplines, to publish over two issues: -high-quality articles from original ethnographic research that contribute to the current and future development of qualitative intellectual knowledge and understanding of the nature of public and private sector work, organization and management -review articles examining the history and development of the contribution of ethnography to qualitative research in social, organization and management studies -articles examining the intellectual, pedagogical and practical use-value of ethnography in organization and management research, management education and management practice, or which extend, critique or challenge past and current theoretical and empirical knowledge claims within one or more of these areas of interest -articles on ethnographically informed research relating to the concepts of organization and organizing in any other wider social and cultural contexts.