NCJ Number
197762
Journal
British Journal of Criminology Volume: 42 Issue: 4 Dated: Autumn 2002 Pages: 669-688
Date Published
2002
Length
20 pages
Annotation
This paper discusses how a fairly standardized sequence of actions performed by police detectives can be understood as a form of social process and seen to be productive of an incident of homicide as a “meaningful” event.
Abstract
The particular focus is upon how the law as a mode of rationality, the organizational properties of the police service, and the circumstances surrounding the incident under investigation shape the actions of individual officers, and in so doing constitute a process structure. The paper presents empirical data on homicide investigation work and uses it to develop the conceptual bases of understanding this aspect of policing. It seeks to determine how homicides are investigated and why they are investigated in the way they are. One of the aims of the paper is to identify elements that might contribute to the generation of a theory of crime investigations. A degree of routinization of social action in this matter is one of the central qualities of an organization. Organizations effectively function to produce problems and issues in a particular format that renders them relevant to its remit, and encourages particular forms of action in relation to them. Process structure thus conceptualizes the sense in which forms of organizational action are fluid and situated, but at the same time ordered and conditioned. Notes, references