Blowing the Whistle on Police Violence - Literature review Example

Table of Contents Introduction 2 A Detailed Explanation of the Methodology Employed 3 A Critical Analysis of the Methodology 5 Conclusion: 7 References 8 Introduction This research methodology attempts to analyse the outcome of a hypothesis on a specific subject. It is a systematized endeavour that unravels the various queries of the research with the help of scientific methods. Choosing the appropriate research methods for a particular topic is the foremost important task. The aim of the researcher decides the nature of research method executed. For example, to gain familiarity with the phenomenon, the exploratory research is applied and to know the behaviour of any situation, individual or group, the descriptive research is more viable. This report deals with the research methodology of an article named “Blowing The Whistle on Police Violence” written by Louise Westmarland which was published in British Journal on Criminology in 2001. “This article highlights a number of issues related to the witnessing of ‘illegal’ police violence by researchers” (Westmarland, 2001). The researcher focuses on a very sensitive issue i.e. the violence committed by police. The main purpose behind this research was to make the general population including the higher authority aware of the violence propagated by police so that a mass awareness can be developed against it. This article uses the ethnology study to reason out the factors for these types of violence. It unfolds many facts regarding the various degree of violence. This report will discuss the research methodology applied by the researcher and the extent to which this methodology is feasible for this subject. The validity of the outcome of this research will undergo various critical studies and suitable recommendation will be discussed and analysed. A Detailed Explanation of the Methodology Employed Westmarland in his article has identified the specific behaviour of police that lead to violence in society. This research can be termed as the outcome of the ethnographic research. The researcher has devoted a considerable amount of time to study the police violence through the ethnological study. Westmarland has himself been a first hand witness to various situations as a fieldworker and therefore have seen the situation more clearly. The fieldworkers are appointed to observe the real life violence committed by police. To analyse the qualitative aspects like human behaviours the ethnographic research plays a very significant role. “One primary difference between ethnography as science and other social and behaviour science methods of investigating is that ethnography assumes that we must first discover what people actually do and the reasons they give for doing it before we can assign to their actions drawn from our own personal experience or from our professional or academic disciplines” (LeCompte. et. al., 1999. p.1-2). The ethnographical research includes various ways of collecting data or observations. The researcher has used the ‘observations method’ through live case studies of the police violence. This observation method helps to find out the qualitative data and is mostly used to study the science of human behaviour. According to Adler & Adler, the observation has been characterized as the fundamental base of all research methods in the social and behavioural sciences and as the mainstay of the ethnographic enterprise (Denzin, et. al. 2005. P.279). He has used the real case studies to understand the scenario and to analyse the behaviours. Case study observations are a pertinent technique to identify certain human behaviours that are caused by stimuli. It is a real life scenario, where an intervention occurred, based on which many unnoticed fact about the human behaviours were observed. “...it will be appreciated that case studies do not focus the discovery of universal, generalisable truths. Instead, emphasis is placed on exploration and description” (Taylor, et. al. 2006 p.26). This research deals with the qualitative nature, as the article talks about human behaviour. Apart from the ethnography and case study, Westmarland has used previous literature, research and other articles related to police violence. These literature and articles have provided a deeper understanding of human behaviours. The researcher has used various methods to analyse the behaviour of police. The entire outcome of this article is qualitative in nature. It does not disclose any quantitative results of police violence. This research has been conducted after taking into consideration the prevailing social ethics. The increasing police violence has crossed the limit. The protector has become the perpetrator of violence. The article seems to be very useful in spreading awareness against police violence and in reducing police crime. However, it does not resolve any problem, as the aim of the researcher is to analyse the situation through case studies. This article notes the various dilemma faced by the observer after witnessing the situation. These dilemmas have been analysed according the researcher’s perceptions. The researcher has tried to explore the whole situation from the point of view of a witness. Westmarland has spent sufficient time to familiarise himself with such types of crime. He has tried to present an unbiased approach of the situation and the role of police in it. Another characteristic of this research is that it is descriptive in nature. It describes the different behavioural characteristics of police. The case study also observes the life of police. All the case examples, which have been chosen to study police violence, are taken from different situations so that the different attitude and reactions of police can be observed. The researcher has firmly proclaimed that the aim of the article is not to find solution to the police violence but to explore and describe the nature of police violence. Therefore, the outcome of this research has to be qualitative in nature. A Critical Analysis of the Methodology The findings of this research are typically qualitative in nature where the researcher has used the observation methods from various cases. The researcher has to patrol around six months and bear witness to the situations that led to police violence. The ethnographical research used in this article is considered as the most appropriate method to study human behaviour. The ethnographical research helps to analyse two types of results, the exploratory and the descriptive. In this article, the author is successful in exploring and describing the life of police and the violence committed by them. The researcher has very efficiently compared and supported his observations through empirical research and other literature reviews of the past. Illustrating the real case studies, the researcher is able to show the severity of the situation. All these considerations satisfy the researcher’s aim. However, there were many such cases, which could have been introspected more deeply by employing some other suitable method. First, the researcher has not interviewed the victims of the police violence. The researcher has analysed the situation but not the victims’ state of the mind and his response to it. In ethnographical research, interview is an important method to collect data as well as to note observations. The interview methods employed in this research methodology are informal and unstructured. According to Michael S. Lewis-Beck, informal interviews are more in-depth, less structured conversation (semi-structured, unstructured interviews) conducted with a small selected set of informants, often in a field setting (Lewis-Beck et. al. 2004. p.493). Apart from interviewing the victims, the researcher should also have interviewed the police who are the ones engaged in such violence. In such an interview, the researcher is required not to disclose the motive so that an unbiased opinion can be obtained. This would also help to analyse the conscience of police, whether they are suffering from guilt feeling or trying to defend themselves. Interviewing the third party, who has not been a victim to the violence but has witnessed it nonetheless, would have helped to generate more ideas. The general people are the potential victims of such police violence. Therefore, their views and opinions should have been observed and analysed. This would help to measure the extent of police violence perpetrated among the local people. Secondly, the researcher has not included any secondary data or historical data that discloses such violence. “Secondary data analysis is the method of using pre-existing data in a different way or to answer a different research question than intended by those who collected the data” (Schutt. 2006. P.411). This would have helped to observe the frequency or to analyse a different perspective that the researcher might have omitted. The researcher has used the literature reviews but it does not expose any past incidents. The researcher should have availed the past situations available from the human right organisations or registered criminal assault cases. This research does not include any quantitative data. This could be a major drawback, though the aim of the researcher was not to analyse the quantitative data. However, the quantitative data analysis would help to produce the quantitative outcomes that could measure the frequency and severity of such violence. The main aim of this article is to know whether the time is ripe enough to ‘blow the whistle on police violence’. The case analysis has documented the brutality of the situation and the resultant police reactions. By revealing the data that shows the frequency of police violence, research’s motive could have been served in a better way. The researcher has also earmarked those areas where such violence is more frequent. The use of such methods would have lend the air of authenticity and made the research more transparent. The researcher has missed out the analysis of the legal provisions against the police violence and the extent to which they provide help to reduce the police violence. Such legal analysis could have added more value to the article. It is very important to investigate the legal system while analysing such subject. Conclusion: The research work and the methodology used in this article have served the purpose of the researcher. However, this issue could have been explored in a bigger way, so that the outcome of the research could have produced more utility. To conduct such research it is important to decide the region in which the research should be conducted by observing the frequency of such violence available from various sources like cases registered in government offices or from newspapers. “One strategy might be to choose cities that have, over a significant period of time, the highest rate of police use of deadly force” (Ross, 2000 p.130). Next, the data pertaining to public violence by police needs to be collected. Joan R. Mars during his research on police violence in Guyana had collected the data for his study from Guyana, during field research over a two-month period (Mars, 2002. p.28). After analysing the data, the observation obtained through the interviews of victims, police and witnesses, it is necessary to understand the detailed nature of such violence. The observation made on such subjects where human behaviour is studied is very pertinent to the contemporary society and produces very valuable qualitative data. “Observational studies and other qualitative methods of research are critically important and of equal value to all other methods that produce valid findings” (DeRenzo. et. al. 2006. p.200). The idea of witnessing the real cases of police violence is a very good observational method employed by the researcher. Therefore, the case studies are very important for analysing the situations. The ethnographical research is the most appropriate methodology in the social science research. The ethnographical research produces both qualitative and quantitative results. As Schensul in his book ‘Essential ethnographic methods: observations, interviews, and questionnaires’ argues that the ethnographical research analyses of qualitative and quantitative data are vital for ethnographic research (Schensul. at. al. 1999. p.4). Therefore, such methodology has intensive implication while conducting qualitative analysis like that of police violence. References Denzin, N.K. & Lincoln, Y.S. 2005. The SAGE handbook of qualitative research. 3rd ed. SAGE DeRenzo, E.G. & Moss, J. 2006. Writing clinical research protocols: ethical considerations. Academic Press. LeCompte, M.D. & Schensul, J.J. 1999. Designing and conducting ethnographic research. Rowman Altamira. Lewis-Beck, M.S. Bryman, A. & Liao, T.F. 2004. The Sage encyclopedia of social science research methods, Volume 1. SAGE Mars, J.R. 2002. Deadly force, colonialism, and the rule of law: police violence in Guyana. Greenwood Publishing Group Ross, J.I. 2000. Making news of police violence: a comparative study of Toronto and New York City. Greenwood Publishing Group Schensul, S.L. Schensul, J.J. & LeCompte, M.D. 1999. Essential ethnographic methods: observations, interviews, and questionnaires. Rowman Altamira, Schutt, R.K. 2006. Investigating the social world: the process and practice of research, Part 3. 5th ed. Pine Forge Press. Taylor, et. al. 2006. Research Methodology: A Guide For Researchers In Management And Social Sciences. PHI Learning Pvt. Ltd. Westmarland, L. 2001. Blowing The Whistle on Police Violenceb vol. 41. British Journal of Criminology. Read More