Negotiating Nothing: Police Decision-Making in Disputes

This book explores police handling of domestic and other personal disputes between citizens and neighbours. Methodologically it is based on in-depth observation of routine police work including 60 dispute incidents. The authors adopt a "negotiated order" approach to understanding police interaction with citizens in dispute. Analytically, they develop the notion of negotiation to explain how police (more or less successfully) orchestrate resolutions to disputes in line with various constraints. The latter derive from police organization and culture and crucially, law. The two main conclusions to be noted concern first, the complexity of the negotiation process into which police officers are drawn when called to resolve a dispute; and second the end result of negotiation which is usually to "negotiate nothing". Police tend to downgrade and, on occasion, to upgrade the significance of disputes in order to achieve short-term resolutions which suit their expectations and priorities rather than those of disputants.