Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Exploring the Myth of the Bobby and the Intrusion of the State into Social Space

  • Published:
International Journal for the Semiotics of Law - Revue internationale de Sémiotique juridique Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

This paper aims to increase the reader’s understanding of how the notion of the ‘bobby on the beat’ has been elevated to iconic, if not mythical, status within British policing. In doing so, the article utilises the semiotic idea of myth, as conceptualized by Roland Barthes, to explore how through representations of the ‘bobby on the beat’ police officers have been projected in a more avuncular re-assuring role to a public fearful of crime, which fails to do service to the signifying practices that accompany and embody the visible police patrol. Indeed, police patrol work secures social space for the State and although it does re-assure anxious members of society that their social world is safe and secure, for others, it further illustrates how their social space is fragile and troubled. On another level, the ‘bobby’ narrative has also been harnessed as part of a broader mythologizing of ‘Englishness’ and quintessential British characteristics.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. It is the idea of consent and legitimacy that are profound concepts within the discourse of policing. They shape the organisational framework and are interwoven within police practices. From a Durkheimian point of view they are themselves ‘sacred’ concepts [14].

  2. Lidichi [32: 174] has also noted that they can also be ‘the mental representation of a thing’.

  3. For Lemert [1979; cited 36: 30] discourse, ‘relies always on non-cultural material and natural (bodily) supports (or signifiers; phonetic signals, graphic marks) to produce cultural ideas (signified).’ For Foucault, however, it is better to consider the idea of discourses as systems of knowledge. Overarching discourses such as those of health and education inform social life in society.

  4. It was explicitly recommended in the HMIC commissioned report Open All Hours [45] that the police could capitalise on such imagery.

  5. The Home Secretary, Sir Robert Peel, generally recognised as the father of policing, has had a number of policing principles attributed to him. While the nine principles were not penned directly by Peel, they were surmised from some of the many speeches he made by police historians in the twentieth century. They are today regularly described as Peel’s Principles and remain at the heart of the conventional policing mission [30].

  6. Along with the development of the National Reassurance Policing Plan [43], the government projected itself a responding to the ubiquitous public demand for more visible police patrols.

  7. While it is clear that we have witnessed, on the one hand, a fragmentation of policing away from the overarching influence of the public police we have also witnessed a countervailing re-appropriation of policing by the public police in new forms [28]. The ‘new’ visible presence of the public police in local neighbourhoods was manufactured though Neighbourhood Policing Teams (NPTs) entering the stage in 2006 [24].

  8. There are also a well-established collection of regulatory measures available for social landlords and estranged partners.

  9. There is evidence of lower satisfaction rates among ethnic minority groups and the least affluent and healthy segments of society.

  10. The Coalition Government (in power since 2010) also appears committed to increasing the visibility of policing in local neighbourhoods. For them, the discourse of Robert Peel remains a basis from which their discourse is built to evoke early and continued concerns that policing should be undertaken only with the consent of the people whilst at the same time being committed to cutting funding to police services.

References

  1. Ascoli, D. 1979. The queen’s peace: The origins and development of the Metropolitan police, 1829–1979, Hamilton.

  2. Bahn, C. 1974. The reassurance factor in police patrol. Criminology 12: 338–345.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Barley, S. 1983. Semiotics and the study of organizational and occupational cultures. American Sociological Quarterly 28: 393–413.

    Google Scholar 

  4. Barthes, R. 2009 [1972]. Mythologies. London: Vintage books.

  5. Baudrillard, J. 1994. Simulacra and simulation. Michigan: University of Michigan.

    Google Scholar 

  6. Bittner, E. 1973. The functions of the police in modern society: A review of background factors, current practices, and possible role models, University of Michigan Library.

  7. Casey, L. 2008. Engaging communities in fighting crime: A review by louise casey. Available: http://cabinetoffice.gov.uk/media/cabinetoffice/corp/assets/publications/crime/cc_full_report.pdf.

  8. Castells, M. 1996. The rise of the network society. The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture Vol. I. Cambridge, MA; Oxford, UK, Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  9. Chaney, D. 1993. Fictions of collective life. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  10. Clarke, R.V., and J.M. Hough. 1984. Crime and police effectiveness, Home office research study 79. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office.

    Google Scholar 

  11. Cohen, S. 1985. Visions of social control: Crime punishment and classification. Cambridge: Polity Press.

    Google Scholar 

  12. Critchley, T.A. 1967. A history of police in England and Wales 900–1966. London: Constable & Company.

    Google Scholar 

  13. Du Gay, P., Hall, S., Janes, L., Mackay, H., and K. Negus 1997. Doing cultural studies: The story of the Sony Walkman, Sage.

  14. Durkheim, E. 1961. Moral education. New York: Free Press.

    Google Scholar 

  15. Eco, U. 1976. A theory of semiotics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  16. Goffman, E. 1959. The presentation of self in everyday life. New York: Doubleday Archer.

    Google Scholar 

  17. Gordon, P. 1984. White law. London: Pluto.

    Google Scholar 

  18. Greer, C., and E. McLaughlin. 2012. This is not justice: Ian tomlinson institutional failure and the press politics of outrage. British Journal of Criminology 52: 274–293.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Hall, S. 1997. Representation: Cultural representations and signifying practices. Sage: The Open University.

    Google Scholar 

  20. Hancock, L. 2012. ‘Securitization, urban policy and the ‘community’. Collegium vol 11: 23–45.

    Google Scholar 

  21. Hawkes, T. 1977. Structuralism and semiotics. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  22. Herbert, S. 1997. Policing space: Territoriality and the Los Angeles police department. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

    Google Scholar 

  23. Office, Home. 2004. Building safer communities. London, HMSO: Beating Crime.

    Google Scholar 

  24. Office, Home. 2005. Neighbourhood policing: You’re police Your Community Our Commitment. Home Office, London: HMSO.

    Google Scholar 

  25. Office, Home. 2008. From the neighbourhood to the national: Policing our communities together. London: HMSO.

    Google Scholar 

  26. Home Office. 2010. Policing in the 21st century-reconnecting police and the people. London: HMSO.

    Google Scholar 

  27. Jefferson, T. 1990. The case against paramilitary policing. Maidenhead: Open University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  28. Johnston, L., and C. Shearing. 2003. Governing security: Explorations in policing and justice. London, New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  29. Lee, J.A. 1981. Some structural aspects of police deviance in relations with minority groups. In Organizational police deviance, ed. Shearing C, Toronto.

  30. Lentz, S.A., and R.H. Chaires. 2007. The invention of peel’s principles: A study of policing. Textbook history. Journal of Criminal Justice 35: 69–79.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  31. Lewis, Paul, Newburn, T., Taylor, M., Mcgillivray, C., Greenhill, A., Frayman, H., and Proctor, R. 2011. Reading the riots: investigating England’s summer of disorder. Reading the riots, The London School of Economics and Political Science and The Guardian, London, UK. http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/46297/1/Reading%20the%20riots%28published%29.pdf.

  32. Lidichi, H. 1997. The Poetics and the Politics of Exhibiting other Cultures’. In Representation: Cultural representations and signifying practices, ed. S. Hall. Sage: The Open University.

    Google Scholar 

  33. Loader, 1997. Policing and the social: Questions of symbolic power. The British Journal of Sociology 48(1): 1–18.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  34. Loader, I., and A. Mulcahy. 2003. Policing and the condition of England. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  35. Manning, P.K. 1977. Police work. Long Grove: Waveland.

    Google Scholar 

  36. Manning, P.K. 1987. Semiotics and fieldwork, Qualitative Research methods series, Sage University Press.

  37. Manning, P.K. 2012. Drama, the police and the sacred.

  38. McLaughlin, E., and K. Murji. 1997. The Future Lasts a long Time: Public Police work and the Managerialist Paradox. In Policing futures, ed. P. Francis. Basingstoke: Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  39. McLaughlin, E. 2007. The new policing. London: Sage Publications.

    Google Scholar 

  40. Millie, A. 2012. Police stations architecture and public reassurance. British Journal of Criminology 52: 1092–1112.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  41. MORI (2005) Annual London Survey 2004: Final Topline 11th January 2005, London: London.gov.uk, http://www.london.gov.uk/mayor/annual_survey/docs/als05_topline.pdf.

  42. Morgan, R., and T. Newburn. 1997. The future of policing. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  43. National Reassurance Policing Programme (NRPP) (2005) The national reassurance policing programme, London: Home Office http://www.reassurancepolicing.co.uk.

  44. Potter, J. 1996. Representing reality, Sage Publications.

  45. Povey, K. 2001. Open all hours: A thematic inspection report on the role of police visibility and accessibility in public reassurance. London: HMIC.

    Google Scholar 

  46. Reiner, R. 1992. Policing a post-modern society. The Modern Law Review 55(6): 761–781.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  47. Reiner, R. 1995. Myth and Modernity: Reality and Unreality in the English Model of Policing. In Comparisons in policing: An international perspective, ed. J.P. Brodeur. Avebury: Aldershot.

    Google Scholar 

  48. Reiner, R. 2000. The politics of the police, 3rd ed. Harvester Wheatsheaf: Hemel Hempstead.

    Google Scholar 

  49. Savage, S. 2007. Neighbourhood policing and the reinvention of the constable. Policing 1(2): 203–213.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  50. Scraton, P. 1985. The state of the police, Pluto Press.

  51. Scraton, P. 1987. Editors introduction, law & order and the authoritarian state: Readings in critical criminology. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  52. Scraton, P., and K. Chadwick. 1996. The Theoretical and Political priorities of Critical criminology. In Criminological perspectives, ed. J. Muncie, E. McLaughlin, and M. Langan. CA: Sage Publications.

    Google Scholar 

  53. Storch, R.D. 1975. The plague of blue locusts: Police reform and popular resistance in Northern England, 1840–1857, International Review of Social History, 20.

  54. Taylor, D. 1997. The new police in 19th century england: Crime conflict and control, Manchester University Press.

  55. The Daily Mail. 2011. Where are all our bobbies? One in four Britons has NEVER seen a police officer on the beat, 18 November 2011. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2062963/Police-visibility-One-Britons-seen-police-officer-beat.html.

  56. Wakefield, A. 2006. The value of foot patrol: A review of research, The police foundation/London. http://www.police-foundation.org.uk/uploads/catalogerfiles/the-value-of-foot-patrol/foot_patrol.pdf.

  57. Woodward, K. 1997. Motherhood: Identities, Meanings and Myths. In Identity and difference, ed. K. Woodward. CA: Sage/The Open University.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Law and Criminal Justice Studies, Canterbury Christ Church University, Kent, UK

    Mark Brunger

Authors
  1. Mark Brunger
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Mark Brunger.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Brunger, M. Exploring the Myth of the Bobby and the Intrusion of the State into Social Space. Int J Semiot Law 27, 121–134 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11196-013-9316-y

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11196-013-9316-y

Keywords

Search

Navigation