Megan O'NEill

The Clarus project investigated communication and forms of bias within the handling of digital forensic evidence. The research took place in five partner countries (UK, Finland, Portugal, Czechia and Greece) and involved forensic science practitioners, law enforcement organisations, researchers and the public. This comic introduces the fictional Clarusia scenario and explores the research findings from the project, specifically how digital evidence is managed in an investigation into two murders in the fictional city of Clarusia. The focus is on how information is communicated within and between individuals and teams within law enforcement and forensic science. The research highlights how information travels through the different stages of an investigation, indicating where communication can fail, and how bias can appear within systems, tools, and organisational cultures. Some examples contained in the comic were taken directly from the research. The comic does not reflect how all investigations are conducted but brings together different examples and scenarios for the purposes of illustrating where bias and miscommunication can occur.

In several Western countries, police stops have become the object of political controversies on what the objectives and targets of police activities should be. By using the examples of two European countries (France and Scotland) where the issue has been highly politicised over the last 15 years, we will conduct a comparative analysis to show how it has led to significant change in legislation, policy and police practice in Scotland and yet to a policy blockage in France. In both cases, police stops have been politicised through the combination of three interlinked axes: the production of critical scientific evidence, intense media coverage and forceful political attention. Differing national traditions are not sufficient to explain the divergent outcomes. Drawing upon historical institutionalism, we will underline how institutions, understood as stable sets of formal and informal rules, favour certain policy developments rather than others. We will explore how each political context has shaped the balance of constraints and opportunities for reform and we will stress the importance of the respective dynamics of reforms. While both jurisdictions experienced ‘hot’political climates, certain conditions needed to be met in order for significant reform to manifest.

We examine how stakeholders (n = 74) in the United Kingdom, Finland and Norway perceive security authorities’ online surveillance capabilities, and how these perceptions form patterns transcending national borders and organisational boundaries. Using a Q-methodological approach, we found variation within and between nations that is usually obscured in the polarised public debates. Furthermore, our stakeholders presented areas of consensus not usually apparent in public discourses. We argue for using awareness of this nuance and areas of convergence as platforms on which to build more effective public debates to further principles of deliberative democracy.

Guest editorial: Police encounters - Author: Megan O'Neill, Mike Rowe, Sofie De Kimpe, Zeljko Karas

This paper examines ‘auxiliary’ police in three European countries and the extent to which they continue to present a pluralisation of public sector policing. Examining findings from existing empirical research, we will argue that despite different origins, systems of governance, formal powers and levels of centralisation, the police auxiliaries in England and Wales, France and The Netherlands have all experienced an overall trend towards becoming more ‘enforcement-orientated’. This unique comparative analysis measures each agency's powers, appearance, organisational dimensions and mandate and the associated drivers towards change, such as the politicisation of law and order, large-scale institutional transformations and professionalisation attempts. This analysis will have implications for pluralised policing scholarship as it questions the extent to which auxiliary officers provide a true alternative to the standard or national public policing mandate, which has historically highlighted the ‘law and order’ function of the police. It also highlights the lack of research on what ‘policing by government’ ( Loader, 2000 ) looks like in practice and the need for further comparative research with these auxiliary state policing actors.